The Crisis

 There is a portion of this area of the War Museum set up to resemble a command centre, circa the 1960s, with several simulations of World War Three playing out on screens. It is a chilling but effective way to look at the Cold War.

A momentous time of perpetual tension and standoff. Many of you lived directly through it.

Some of the weaponry at the time, complete with a NATO war games exercise map.

This is the Centurion tank, a mainstay of NATO armies.

And of course air power was a critical factor.

The large object we see here is the nosecone of an Avro Arrow, with a model of the plane behind it. This was a Canadian initiative for a military interceptor. The scrapping of the program was one of the more appalling blunders in Canadian political history.

The Diefenbaker government had scuttled it, and then tried replacing it with the BOMARC missile program. Voters later replaced the Diefenbaker government.

The world was brought as close to the brink of nuclear was as ever with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

While the Cold War raged, a Canadian concept started to be realized: the peacekeeper.

This is the Ferret Scout car, a standard vehicle for UN peacekeepers.