Canada Life Assurance Building

With clean lines, and an ornate white terra cotta exterior, I wanted to explore this building from the moment I first saw it. Signs proclaimed the building was home to Canada Heritage- but half the prime real estate on the ground floor was vacant. Walking inside, I was immediately impressed. Though the lobby/ foyer area was not large, it gave an impression of richness and quality. I went past the elevators, straight for the main staircase, and descended through an open door into the basement. At the bottom, I was surprised to see a barred gate, that was open, allowing me into the short, white-painted brick hallway beyond. Several old vault doors lined the walls, but to my dismay, they were all locked- as was the door labled "boiler room".
Eager to see what else the building had in store, I went back up the stairs into the office floors. Poking my head out on the fourth floor, I was greeted by a deserted-looking reception area. Unable to resist a closer look, I discovered the office was indeed vacant, and I had the entire floor to myself. It looked as though some firm has packed up and left recently, leaving some fancy wood furniture and desks as the only tenants. I was stunned by the classy washrooms; though tiny, they were incredibly nice. Marble floors, stalls & dark wood doors, with gleaming fixtures and porcelains.
Sad that I didn't need to use them, I left the washrooms behind and went back into the stairs. Sneaking up past the obviously occupied top floor, I climbed some steep metal stairs to a set of locked doors- one for a mech room, the other for the roof. Luckily, there was a small window, which I was carefully able to slide open and climb through onto the roof.
Under a grey, cloudy sky, it felt fantastic to be on the roof and feeling the wind. I wasn't too worried about being spotted, since Regina has few tall buildings; but I stayed cautious because the building was close to a nearby skyscraper. The rooftop was pretty boring- standard gravel, with a high surrounding lip and a locked mech penthouse.
After shooting a few photos, I went back inside and descended the creaky stairs back to street level.