Canada Guide
Ontario
Canadian War Museum
Address: 1 Vimy Place, on Lebreton Flats
Opening time: May– June & Sept to early Oct daily 9am–6pm, Thurs till 9pm; July– Aug daily 9am–6pm, Thurs & Fri till 9pm; early Oct to April Tues– Sun 9am–5pm, Thurs till 9pm
Price: $10, but free on Thurs after 4pm
Website: www.warmuseum.ca
The ambitious, gleaming Canadian War Museum is easily reached by OC Transpo bus: get off at Lebreton station on the Transitway. The museum prides itself on its temporary exhibitions, featuring everything from Canada's current involvement in Afghanistan to obscure imperial campaigns its soldiers conducted with – and sometimes on behalf of – the British. Spread over one large floor, the well-researched and well-considered permanent collection is divided into seven main areas, beginning in Gallery 1 with Canada's First Peoples and the Franco-British and then American-British colonial wars of the eighteenth century. Gallery 2 deals with the Boer war and World War I, Gallery 3 World War II and Gallery 4 the Cold War and Canadian Peacekeeping. For many Canadians, World War I is the centre of attention for it was then that the country sustained enormous losses in a string of fruitless battles, especially at the storming of Vimy Ridge in 1917. The historical orthodoxy has long been that these very losses made Canada ‘come of age' as an independent country beyond its ties with – and dependency on – the mother country.