by Tom MacGregor

Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps announces new museum site.

It has been 13 years since Legion Magazine first called the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa a national shame.

Now a handful of senior cabinet ministers, local members of Parliament and bureaucrats have announced the museum will be the centrepiece of a long-overdue restoration project for downtown Ottawa.

In process, the $12-million fix to the museum that was proposed in 1997 has grown into a $105.75-million project designed to highlight Canada’s proud, but often ignored military history.

The museum is scheduled to open in November 2004, and the federal government’s contribution to its construction is pegged at $83.75 million. The Canadian Museum of Civilization will contribute an additional $7 million while the Friends of the Canadian War Museum is promising $15 million from its Passing The Torch campaign.

There was little surprise last May when the office of Heritage Minister Sheila Copps announced the minister would be holding a news conference in a tent at the Sparks Street Lookout overlooking 65 hectares of vacant riverfront property, known locally as LeBreton Flats. The land, which is located on the western edge of downtown Ottawa, contains pollution from various industrial shops that operated there during the first half of the 20th century. Most of the privately owned property was expropriated by the federal government in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until 1994 that municipal government handed the streets over to the National Capital Commission.

And so on a sunny afternoon in May, Copps, Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley and local MPs Mac Harb and Mauril Bélanger announced the redevelopment of the area for the museum, parkland, trendy shops and housing for an estimated 4,500 people. As well, the government announced plans for several other projects that had been speculated to be part of Jean Chrétien’s legacy to the capital. The Canada Aviation Museum will get a 10,000-square-foot storage hangar to be built adjacent to the museum at its Rockcliffe site. The government will also study the idea of building a new facility for the aging Canada Science and Technology Museum, also situated in Ottawa. As well, $99 million will be spent to decontaminate LeBreton Flats before construction work begins.

The $105.75-million price tag for the museum includes $25.5 million to accommodate the expected increase in the number of visitors, the construction of 400 parking spaces as well as architectural improvements to fit the character of the redeveloped area.

While the politicians basked in the glory of their announcements, little reference was made to the battles fought by veterans and veterans organizations in order to create a proper home for Canada’s military heritage.

Currently located on Sussex Drive, the Canadian War Museum is housed in a building originally used by the National Archives of Canada. It has never had enough space to exhibit its vast holdings, including a comprehensive Canadian war art collection. The Legion has often said that the source of the museum’s problems is that it is administered by the more popular Canadian Museum of Civilization. While innovative programming was being designed for the CMC’s showcase building in Hull, Que., the war museum was left mostly untouched.

In 1988, Legion Magazine published a cover story under the heading Shabby And Shunned. That story is sometimes credited with giving impetus to the need for a new war museum. The story said the museum has suffered greatly after being starved by successive governments for funds and personnel. In 1986, a group calling itself The Friends of the Canadian War Museum was established to help persuade the government to do something about the museum. The group began lobbying for improvements and in 1995 launched its Passing the Torch campaign.

In 1991, the Task Force on Military History Museum Collections in Canada released a report recommending the war museum operate independently from the CMC. However, it also advocated keeping the museum at its current site.

In November 1997, Adrienne Clarkson, then the chairwoman of Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation’s Board of Trustees, announced a $12-million expansion plan that would have involved covering the museum’s current courtyard with glass and including a Holocaust gallery. At the time, The Royal Canadian Legion denounced the museum’s lack of consultation with veterans groups. The Legion, the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada and the National Council of Veteran Associations questioned the amount of space the plan dedicated to the Holocaust gallery and concluded if it went ahead the museum would still only be able to exhibit a fraction of its collection.

Clarkson, Copps and museum officials faced intense grilling from senators in explaining the plan. Copps recruited World War II veteran and former defence minister Barney Danson to head up an advisory group. Another positive development occurred when respected historian Jack Granatstein became the museum’s director in 1998.

The museum cancelled the plan to include a Holocaust gallery by stating the Holocaust story can best be told in a separate venue fully dedicated to it. However, the expansion was still expected to proceed with $7 million coming from the federal government and $5 million from the Passing the Torch campaign.

That same year the Senate released a report stating the war museum is not being administered by people with a vested interest in Canadian military history. It, too, recommended the museum be given full administrative autonomy.

Granatstein made his mark by championing the notion that an entire new building was needed. He advocated locating the museum beside the Canada Aviation Museum, an idea applauded by the Legion. In March 2000, the federal government announced a grant of $58 million for a war museum at Rockcliffe. To date, the Legion has donated $517,000 towards the project.

When the grand plan for redeveloping LeBreton Flats was accepted by cabinet earlier this year, the war museum was chosen as the centrepiece.

Plans for the museum have taken many turns since 1988. And while it can be said the veterans community is aging, it has not lost its ability to fight.