A different way to look at the Senate

I'm still working on this graphic, but there were a few tweets from Kady today about the Senate arguing about seat assignments and it made me think of my graphic, which I was working on only last night.

As you can see, I'm trying to indicate and follow the transition from a partisan to a non-partisan senate. The move from the oppositional seating to facing the speaker is supposed to represent this.

The problem I'm currently having is that you could pretty well fit the entire senate on either of the three benches. A long term project is using these graphics to show party standings, in all houses (Senate, HoC, Provincial Legislatures) across Canada going back to Confederation (and maybe even before) and I don't want to have to end up changing the Senate graphic radically. As such, I've ensured there are enough seats for the highest ever level of Senators (Liberals during St. Laurent) on the same benches, which will result in some very large bench sizes (I'll also need to fit Mulroney's majority into the HoC graphic)

Anyway, the just wanted to share!