Memory

 This painting is titled War: Canadian Soldiers In Afghanistan, by Douglas Laing, from the experiences of his son, who fought as part of what was called Operation Medusa.

Here we have a copy of a journal by a veteran of that war. Master Corporal Paul Franklin would lose both of his legs after an attack. He sketched his own condition into the page.

I've always liked this photograph of an interaction between an Afghan child and a Canadian soldier. The Canadian mission to the country is a decade in the past, and the country has fallen back into the hands of the very people we went to fight in the first place. A dark world for that child to have ended up in.

As the mission ended and military forces returned home, the dead and injured of that war loomed over them.

The formal galleries of the museum end with this display. 

The Royal Canadian Legion Hall of Honour is beyond, and concerns itself with how we've remembered the dead of our wars, from time immemorial to the present.

At the heart of the room is a model of the National War Memorial.

Also here is a stained glass window which once was in the Dutch consulate in Montreal. Now it finds its home here.

The Museum has two focal points in its architectural design. This is one of them. Regeneration Hall is the name of the space within the large spiked structure seen from the outside. The window directly looks towards Parliament Hill, a deliberate choice by the architect, Raymond Moriyama. Within are the plaster casts of the Vimy Memorial. A harpist was playing down below, and a recorded sound resonates through the space. It is the sound of wind, recorded when the place was under construction, and haunting in its way. Moriyama wanted the sound recorded and preserved in here, played in a loop.

Behind me and on the wall is this dramatic painting. Sacrifice was painted by Charles Sims around the end of World War One.

Hostilities

 This sign was at the Canadian air base in Qatar during Desert Storm. The mission to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait was a success, well planned out and carried out. In retrospect, it might have been better to have brought down Saddam Hussein.

As the 90s played out, Canadian forces served as peacekeepers in volatile conflicts of particular viciousness- Somalia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. It was that last country, a hotbed of ethnic conflicts that had only been held at bay by communism, where this flak vest comes from. It was worn by Lewis Mackenzie, the senior commanding general at Sarajevo. The other object is an Olympic torch from the Sarajevo games, given to Canadians.

The mission disintegrated into brutal partisan fighting, with war crimes being committed, and no peace to keep. It would take force to bring it to an end.

This transport Jeep, carrying Canadian soldiers, was shot at by Serb partisans. The men got away with their lives, but just barely.

This is the uniform of a Canadian pilot during the Yugoslavian mission.

Here we have a piece of one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Canada would be drawn into war as a result.

Canadians went to war in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban alongside other western allies. This sniper rifle was used by a Canadian, who held the record for longest distance sniper kill for a number of years in killing a Taliban sniper- 2430 meters.

This transport is an artifact in and of itself. Its front end was blown up by an IED in 2005. Protective shielding in the rest of the vehicle saved the lives of the three occupants.

On the wall beyond it is Waiting For Twilight- Patrol Base Wilson, by William MacDonnell.

Berlin Wall

 This is a C2 105mm Howitzer, standard issue for Canadian military reserve units.

The path ahead features faces of the last decade of the Cold War- Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev.

Canadian officer uniforms by the 80s were looking much as they do today.

This Warsaw Pact tank, along with some of the side arms, stands along the path.

1989 was the year of momentous change, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. A section of the Wall stands here.

The Canadian government hosted a conference of foreign ministers to work out the process of German reunification. Germany presented this section of the wall to the Canadian people. Its place here makes sense. What has always surprised me is that it's not that thick. 

It was a time of optimism, the ending of tensions and of new possibilities. It didn't turn out that way.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein sent Iraqi forces into neighbouring Kuwait. President George H.W. Bush built a coalition of international forces to drive him out. Canada sent military forces into the Gulf, in what became known as Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

With the Canadian military was a commissioned war artist. Ted Zuber had fought as a young man in Korea. He painted Night Run in 1991.

The Stand Off

 Here we have a mock up of a command center of the Cold War, one done with monitor screens that play out scenarios in English and French as to how a potential World War Three might play out. As events proceed and casualties mount, a scroll tells the story on the bottom of the screens.

Weapons of the Warsaw Pact are found here. On its own is one of the things that the Soviets built well- the Kalashnikov, which is all over the world today.

Here we see a NATO tank.

It was a tense time, with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation.

Here we have the crest of NORAD- a joint agency of American and Canadian air forces which carries on today, vigilant about the possibility of a missile attack.

Here we have a UN Peacekeeper scout vehicle.

The concept dates to the Suez Crisis. Lester Pearson, who was our foreign minister at the time, proposed neutral soldiers be used to prevent the escalation of hostilities.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his concept, a replica of which is here. And he would later be one of our greatest prime ministers.

Canadians have taken part in numerous peacekeeping operations.

The era was, as noted, a time of worry about nuclear war, and a map of the continent is found here, with documents that get into things like fallout shelters.

In 1970, the country faced the October Crisis. FLQ terrorists, who had been active for years in bombings, kidnapped a Quebec provincial cabinet minister and a British diplomat. The former would die while the latter was freed. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, seen on screen speaking to a reporter about his decision to invoke the War Measures Act to bring the crisis to the end, was asked how far he would go. His answer was "just watch me."

Times change. Women were active in the military. A staff uniform and dress uniform stand in contrast to field utilities.