The Canadian War Museum

The Canadian War Museum, located in Ottawa, is a Canadian museum that honours Canada’s veterans and commemorates the wars and conflicts in which Canada has taken part. The original museum was quite small and much of its collection had to be stored in Ottawa’s former streetcar garage.

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa A new building was constructed at Lebreton flats just west of Parliament Hill, and the museum reopened in this new facility in May 2005. This modern building is large enough to allow the museum to display more of its artifacts. Its design evokes war imagery, and the small and large windows on the part of the roof that spikes up, spell out Lest we forget and N’oublions jamais (the French equivalent) in Morse code. The copper used on the inside of the building is from the roof of the Library of Parliament.

The Canadian War Museum has an extensive collection with artifacts from early colonial times up to the Gulf War and Peacekeeping.

Perhaps the most invoking design is found within Memorial Hall, a place of rest and reflection within the new Canadian War Museum. Fixed therein is a lone artifact: the headstone of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War. Through a precisely placed window, the sun directly illuminated it for the very first time this past Remembrance Day, November 11, at 11 a.m.

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