Born here in 69. My big brother and I when we were kids (summer of grade 3 and 4) use to ride our bikes to town, lock them to the railing in front of the Douglas building, take the stairs to the Basement, then take the tunnel that led to the East side of the Parliament building first level basement. There is a tunnel that leads to the Empress. Way back in the days, the Royals when they stayed at the Empress would use the tunnel underground systems for security reasons. My brother and I spent 3 weekends/ many hours exploring the Underground network in and around the Parliament buildings in the summer of 1977. The first room we walked into had the door open, was full of all the plans of the Parliament building, surrounding building/ structures. We scanned all the planes for anything that had dashed lines and took notes. All of a sudden, we had a feeling someone was watching us. We looked at the door that we had left open a crack like we found it, to see an eyeball staring at us, the door opened to the Guard asking where our MoM was, I replied she is working in the Douglas building. The guard told us he did not have a problem with us being there, as long we put everything back, and you did not steal anything. As the guard was closing the door, he said, " You boys know there is treasure around here". My big brother and Eye looked at each other, as if to say, If there was, we will find it. Well Over the Average tourist has no idea how extensive the underground network is in this city. Take Government street for instance where that whale bush is, if you walk almost to China town, and look back towards the House of Parliament, you will see a hump in the road, that hump never use to be there/ when you walk into the stores on that hump, you are actually walking into the second floor of those stores. Where that hump is, if you walk west to the water, you will see a parking lot that has a retaining wall built from large rocks. those large stones were from the ballast of the old long-range sailing ships from South America, British Isles and Europe or so the story goes. The guy that built the Parliament, Empress and a few other buildings left too many clues about the so-called treasure that is hidden under this city. One of the best free things to do in this city is the Directed Tour of the Parliament building. As they tell you Gene wanted to fill the Decor of Parliament with so much gold trim, but it was shot down because it would have shown that house had too much of it. Gene was also rumored to have been kill in some sex scandal and died penny less as he was taken for everything he was worth as it was evident that he new something. Or so the story goes.
