The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People

Canadian Military History Volume 19 Issue 3 Article 3 2010 The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People Norman Hillmer Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Norman Hillmer "The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People." Canadian Military History 19, 3 (2010) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People Norman Hillmer he Canadian War Museum was having invented peacekeeping, and its country’s first national history Abstract: Late in the twentieth politicians for decades after tried to T century, intent on a new vision and museum, but also one of the most repeat his success. There was hardly new building for their museum, neglected of federal institutions. Its Canadian War Museum planners a peacekeeping mission in the second usual fate was pedestrian quarters, crafted an interpretative scenario half of the twentieth century that did meagre financial resources, and a that emphasized the military as a not have Canadian participation.4 miniscule staff. Canada, after all, national symbol and the importance Peacekeeping might constitute a of war and conflict in the shaping of styled itself as the very opposite very small part of the defence budget, Canada and Canadians. A striking of a warrior society. Governments architectural design followed, and a but it bulked very large in the public promoted an official brand of renewed war museum opened in May and official mind. Peacekeeping nationalism that obliterated the 2005. A flood of visitors came, and became indelibly Canadian as national internal divisions and dilemmas that they have continued to come. Public interests, ideals, and expectations prominence has brought applause Canada’s wars exposed.1 Their project combined, accumulated, and took and controversy as a buried military succeeded, and not simply with identity is refolded into the nationalist firm hold. With peacekeeping came Canadians. One visitor to Ottawa, narratives of Canada. the conviction that other countries a museum scholar from California, waged war, and that a superbly, was astonished by the very idea of a an understanding of themselves that supremely moral Canada cleaned Canadian War Museum. The image made it easy to overlook the pivotal up their messes. The world needed of Canada that rushed to her mind role of warfare in the definition Canada, the belief went, just as was that of the cartoon Mountie of their country. Modern Canada Canada needed the world.5 Dudley Do-Right, not of a country began to see itself, and ostentatiously The peacekeepers of the United with a long pedigree of military describe itself, as cosmopolitan, Nations were given the Nobel service and distinction.2 progressive, tolerant, generous – and Peace Prize in 1988, an award that Yet a magnificent new Canadian peaceful. The military personnel who Canadians promptly appropriated War Museum building rose up in caught the national imagination were to themselves. Two years later the the national capital during the first Canada’s peacekeepers, who became government of Canada decided to years of the twenty-first century. the leading international practitioners erect a peacekeeping monument The renaissance of the war museum of the craft. The country’s foreign to reflect “a dramatic shift in the was the result of an extraordinary minister, L. B. Pearson, won the 1957 role and purpose of the Canadian alchemy of events and impulses that Nobel Peace Prize for the diplomacy Armed Forces” and to represent “a challenges the notion of Canadians that had solved the Suez Crisis fundamental Canadian value: no as an unmilitary people. (and “saved the world,” in the missionary zeal to impose our way Military conflict and military words of the Nobel Committee) of life on others but an acceptance endeavour are woven into the with the expedient of a Middle East of the responsibility to assist them national fibre,3 but post-Second peacekeeping force. Although it in determining their own futures World War Canadians constructed wasn’t true, Pearson got credit for by ensuring a non-violent climate Published© Canadian by Scholars Military Commons History @, Laurier,Volume 2010 19, Number 3, Summer 2010, pp.19-26. 19 1 Hillmer - CWM.indd 19 9/27/2010 11:25:49 AM Canadian Military History, Vol. 19 [2010], Iss. 3, Art. 3 in which to do so.” So read the commercial played repeatedly before it fights still. An outspoken general, guideline for the competition to and on 11 November; it featured a Chief of the Defence Staff Rick choose the monument’s sculptor.6 contemporary young man’s telephone Hillier, championed the war effort, The monument was unveiled in call home from a Second World War downgraded peacekeeping, and 1992, very near the National Gallery battlefield in France thanking his forged a populist link between the and the Canadian War Museum and grandfather for his military service. military and the people. Politicians, pointing directly at Parliament Hill. In May 2000 Canada’s Unknown who had already begun to respond to At the same time, however, Soldier was brought from France the increasing calls for more defence a Canadian military identity that and interred at the National War spending, incorporated military stood apart from peacekeeping Memorial in the centre of Ottawa, in themes and support for the Canadian was beginning to reassert itself. front of 20,000 observers and millions Forces into their rhetoric. Canadian The celebrations of the fiftieth more on television. governments under Paul Martin and anniversaries of the last years of After years of neglect, veterans Stephen Harper, the first a Liberal the Second World War brought its and veterans’ issues were being and the other a Conservative, agreed diminishing numbers of veterans integrated into ideas of what it that a robust military engagement to the fore. They and their lobby meant to be Canadian. A Veterans with the world was indispensable Museum (CWM) 20020045-1904 Canadian War groups in turn took a notable role Memorial Highway sprung up on to Canada’s national security and in promoting their causes and the road leading away from Ottawa international standing. The public defending themselves against towards the United States, and a seemed to take the same view.9 revisionist history that questioned parade of other memorials, coins, The war museum had meanwhile their actions and sometimes their stamps, advertisements, and tributes stumbled into the 1990s.10 Its building integrity.7 Remembrance Day on 11 marched into the cultural content of had a prominent address at 330 November, the date that the First Canadian identity. The vets became Sussex Street, beside the Royal World War had ended, attracted “imbedded in a powerful narrative of Canadian Mint and not far from more attention and more participants sacrifice, honour and nationhood.”8 the residences of the prime minister and spectators. Late in the 1990s When the Cold War ended, the and governor general. However, a popular Bell Canada television Canadian Forces found themselves the structure, the former national challenged to justify archives, was unsuited to the needs their existence on of a museum. The inadequacies, in the one hand and the words of war museum historian y e t b u s i e r t h a n Cameron Pulsifer, who had to live ever on the other with them, were manifold, ranging hand. Peace support from “awkward and cramped exhibit o p p o r t u n i t i e s space, environmental conditions a b o u n d e d , a n d which were hazardous to artifacts, O t t a w a s e l d o m the lack of a freight elevator, floor refused international loading capacities that could not requests, but the support heavy artifacts, and lack trend as the last of space for educational and other d e c a d e o f t h e public activities.”11 Moreover, the century dwindled war museum was dwarfed by a new away was toward next door neighbour, the Moshe enforcement and Safdie designed National Gallery Canadian Forces Joint Imagery Centre ISC00-400-25 Canadian Forces combat operations of Canada, which spilled onto the of the type Canada museum’s property. Next to the c a r r i e d o u t i n gallery’s imposing modern glass t h e B a l k a n s . I n structure, the Canadian War Museum 2002, the country looked more ancient and threadbare w e n t t o w a r i n than ever. Afghanistan, where The repatriation of Canada’s unknown soldier in May 2000 capped a decade of growing interest in Canada’s military identity. https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol19/iss3/320 2 Hillmer - CWM.indd 20 9/27/2010 11:25:49 AM : The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People Canadian War Museum (CWM) 20020045-1904 Canadian War The original Canadian War Museum on Sussex Drive (here photographed in 1967) enjoyed a prominent location in Ottawa (note the Parliament Buildings in the background) but the building itself was unsuitable for a national museum. The 1991 report of a Task Force on for the design of an extension to 330 the day after the end of the Second Military History Museum Collections Sussex that would make use of the World War in Europe, that they in Canada damned the museum as space in front of the building, which would spearhead a major fundraising an “embarrassment” and a “national was set well back from the street.

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