Rather than taking a giant wrecking ball to the prime minister’s official residence, the body overseeing federal properties in Canada’s capital is making clear it wants instead to give the crumbling building a major facelift.

We couldn’t have made the nation we celebrate on Canada Day without a menagerie of iconic beasts that supplied food and clothing, became economic staples, made it possible to clear trees and till the land – then attracted tourists and filmmakers.

Vancouver’s 1899-built New Fountain Hotel may not be around for much longer. A proposal would see the building demolished, except for its facade, and a new 11-storey building with social and rental housing built on the site.

One of two recently constructed replica biplanes was unveiled as part of a First World War commemoration project called Wings of Courage.

Conservative MP Larry Miller says hope is not lost that the John Diefenbaker's boyhood home in Neustadt, Ont., might some day be declared a national historic site, despite a Liberal minister's reply to him that the government “is unable to consider that option at the present time.”

A park in the Montreal borough of Outremont that is named after France’s Vimy Ridge, where more than 3,500 Canadians died in a First World War battle remembered as Canada’s coming of age, may be renamed in honour of man whose central mission in life was to break Canada apart — former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau.

The faded blue Royal Bank of Canada sign at the top of the Union Bank Building in Winnipeg’s Exchange District will soon be replaced with a sign for the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute at Red River College.

For all of the pan-Canadian hoopla that will surround the 150th anniversary of Confederation next year, there’s arguably a more important sesquicentennial for Ottawa and the rest of the national capital region.

Dave Leblanc is angry with Drake because the Toronto rapper wants to tear down a home in Toronto’s tony Bridle Path neighbourhood. Back in the 1950s, Leblanc says, this subdivision of two-acre lots was one of the most architecturally progressive neighbourhoods in the city.

The Town of Amherstburg, Ont., will seek to purchase the historic Belle Vue House and all its surrounding properties on Dalhousie Street.