The second biggest country in the world could soon look a lot smaller.
Toronto businessman Jean-Louis Brenninkmeijer and his team of skilled model builders are working towards building a miniature Canada.
Over the past several months, the team has been replicating Ottawa’s Parliament buildings in exquisite detail for Canada 150. Using fibreboard and plastics, they even managed to create tiny gargoyles on the Peace Tower.
“We’ve actually built an HO scale, 1:87th scale of the infamous Parliament buildings,” model train enthusiast and team member, Dave Maclean told CTV National.
Now the team is setting their sights on the rest of the nation.
Brenninkmeijer got the idea in 2011 when he saw something similar in Germany.
“I was fascinated by the sheer scale, the size of it,” he said.
Over the past three years, Brenninkmeijer and his colleagues have built much of southern Ontario. They’ve recreated Toronto, with landmarks such as Union Station, the Rogers Centre and the Air Canada Centre.
Their model even has working streetcars, a subway system and custom-made microchip cars that can drive on their own.
Then, a short drive west on along miniature Highway 401, they’ve built Hamilton and Waterloo.
With Parliament finished, the team plans to finish building the rest of Ottawa.
The project has already cost about $4 million, so Brenninkmeijer is looking for investors to help them finish his dream of re-creating Canada’s coast-to-coast cities in miniature.
Brenninkmeijer is also looking for a place to house it all as he would like to turn it into a tourist attraction by next year.
“Ideally, we find a home in downtown Toronto,” he said.
With files from CTV’s John Vennavally-Rao
