An expansive wallof west-facing windows at the new Canadian War Museum will give visitors to its cafeteria an enviable view of the Ottawa River.; Photo: The east-end rooftop of the new Canadian War Museum points toward Parliament Hill and three-storey windows will provide a breath-taking view from inside the open display space.; Photo: Museum CEO Joe Geurts, above, says a Voodoo fighter jet will hang over the display space and will be visible from Booth Street.; Photo: A construction worker measures one of the massive air cylinders that will be fitted into the new Canadian War Museum's ceiling, forming the backbone of the large building's ventilation system.; Photo: Artists' conceptions show the Canadian War Museum from the south, above, and from the northwest. The museum's roofline will merge into the landscape, giving visitors the sense of crossing a years-old, healing battlefield. The rooftop views of the downtown Ottawa skyline, the river and the Gatineau Hills will be stunning.; Photo: Artists' conceptions show the Canadian War Museum from the south, and from the northwest, above. The museum's roofline will merge into the landscape, giving visitors the sense of crossing a years-old, healing battlefield. The rooftop views of the downtown Ottawa skyline, the river and the Gatineau Hills will be stunning.
Canada's war history on display: The $136-million Canadian War Museum, the centrepiece of the LeBreton Flats revival, will be reminiscent of a cratered battlefield after years of healing
One of the worst things you can say about most institutional buildings is that they look like bunkers, but Joe Geurts' new $136-million museum is supposed to.
"You can see the walls are slanted, so it looks like it's a building under some kind of strain," says the director of the Canadian War Museum, standing in its half-finished lobby on a spring day. The walls are concrete and, indeed, scarcely any are vertical in what will be the public parts of the building.
From the outside, the museum's shell doesn't look like much -- it slopes up from the ground in the west to a jutting copper-skeleton protuberance in the east, reminiscent of the prow of an aircraft carrier. The southern entrance is about halfway along the wall, where the building is about two storeys high.
"It's more than it seems," Mr. Geurts says. The war museum covers 446,000 square feet, nearly half the footprint of the sprawling Museum of Civilization. "That gives you an idea of the scale."
When it's finished, Mr. Geurts says, the museum's outside design is intended to blend into the surrounding land, but not perfectly -- it'll be reminiscent of a cratered battlefield after years of healing, complete with grass on the roof. There will even be a route for people to hike over the museum roof to get to the Ottawa River islands, now occupied by Domtar. The National Capital Commission hopes to purchase and develop those islands.
That concerns Cliff Chadderton, chairman of the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada. He expected that, in the LeBreton development, "the war museum would be the chief attraction and maybe the only attraction," he says. "But gradually, the government said no, we have to have residential and commercial development here, and I'm concerned that the museum will end up crowded out, maybe not giving it the attention it deserves."
Mr. Geurts says he's pleased the government decided to build the museum on the Flats, instead of at the Rockcliffe airbase, as was once planned.
"This location is central and that's important, especially for tourists," he says. The Aviation Museum is on the east side and it struggles to attract visitors to its extraordinary collection of planes, he says. "They've found that for people who live in Kanata, the city stops at Centretown and people just don't go past it. Here, we'll be central and there will be lots of pedestrians able to just stop by. It's going to be great for the museum and great for the city."
There would have been more room at Rockcliffe, he concedes, but "there, I wouldn't have a blues festival in my front yard. People are going to see this thing."
In other words, if skateboarders find they like the long smooth ramp off the building's roof, that's pretty much OK with the CEO. The museum, he says, is fundamentally about people and their experiences, and the less intimidating it is to those who have never fought, the better.
Inside, the museum is indeed intended to be evocative (though not a replica) of a damaged bunker. The slanted concrete walls are the biggest contributors to the effect, with metal acoustic tiles on the ceilings also a factor.
For now, the place still feels like a war zone. Only a few square metres of the acoustic tile are installed in the whole building, so the racket and roar of power tools echoes through the caverns of the exhibition areas. Skylights are sealed against the cloudy sky with metal or plywood, so most of the rooms are lit by a few very bright utility lights. Lifts and carriers wheel and honk. Gaps that will eventually be filled by windows and doors are covered with plywood and worn orange tarps that flap in the moist breeze. The lobby is crowded with stacks of sheet-metal ductwork that will soon be installed.
"We've found it'll be so easy to get oriented here," Mr. Geurts says in the lobby. "There's some discussion about putting in little maps, but we're not sure it'll be necessary."
From the lobby, there's one route to the main collection, a gently angled ramp up to the second floor, to the eastern half of the building.
"You come in, you follow the obvious path, you're there," Mr. Geurts says. "The design at the (Museum of Civilization) isn't as simple, but this one is."
For now, the space for the permanent exhibitions is practically indistinguishable from the public garage two levels below: concrete, windowless and pillared. When the interior is completed, it'll be divided into four zones, each of which will be entered from one hub.
The first will cover Canadian history to 1885, the period in which Mr. Geurts says the story of Canadian wars is one of geography.
"People sometimes forget that we were fighting here, on our own territory, until then, mainly over where the borders were going to be settled," he says. "Here in Canada, and that's only 120 years ago, which isn't very long."
That era ended with the Battle of Batoche, when 800 government troops defeated 300 natives and Metis led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, and broke the back of the Northwest Rebellion in Manitoba.
The second zone covers 1885 to 1931, the period of the Boer War and the First World War, where the theme is brutality.
"By that time, we'd settled things here and we were sending troops over there," Mr. Geurts says, pushing his hands to his left side to indicate away. "But this is also when war got really, truly terrible, fought in trenches over very small pieces of land, in just brutal, hellish conditions."
Museum workers are trying to find a way to dramatize the three-month Battle of Passchendaele, where Canadians were instrumental in securing victory in 1917.
"There had been a village, but by the end all that was left were trenches and mud and craters and blasted trees," Mr. Geurts says. "What I'm saying I want is for visitors to go in and come out with mud and blood on them, but we're not sure how we're going to do it."
The third zone covers 1931 to 1946, encompassing the Second World War, with a theme of politics.
"There were tremendous efforts to avert the war by political means, and then the alliances that formed were very political, not necessarily historical," Mr. Geurts says. "So the zone deals with that topic, and it goes into 1946 to deal with the return home, and how Canada was changed after the war was over."
The fourth zone is for 1946 to the present day, examining Canada's involvement in peacekeeping and other interventions in which the country's national interest hasn't been directly at stake.
Visitors who want a break from the permanent exhibition can exit onto balconies at the far east end. They'll overlook the museum's "open storage" space -- "We're still looking for the right term," Mr. Geurts says -- holding about 20 tanks, personnel carriers and planes. The collection, from a replica of flying ace Billy Bishop's First World War plane to a 65-tonne Soviet T-72 tank, is currently being readied for transfer from nearby Vimy House, an old bus barn on Champagne Avenue.
The bright new display space is at the far east end of the museum, a sidewalk's breadth from Booth Street, with a wall of windows facing Parliament Hill and the rest of downtown Ottawa. The floor isn't yet poured and the space is still open to the elements, but it resembles the Museum of Civilization's totem-poled grand hall, with its view of Parliament Hill from the north.
"We'll be hanging a Voodoo fighter jet that you'll be able to see from Booth Street," Mr. Geurts says on the balcony off the third zone, a boyish smile cracking through his usual all-business expression. "Some people are saying we'll be causing traffic accidents, but I think it'll be OK."
This part of the collection pleases Mr. Chadderton. He says he was concerned the museum's presentation would be dry.
"Back at the beginning, they were talking about it as a centre of excellence for documents and for really top-end research," he says. "I didn't get the impression they were planning to have this stuff out at all. ... Those are the things that kids climb on, and it gets their attention and then you can interest them in the finer details."
To get to the open storage space, visitors will have to return to the central lobby and head down a long, fairly narrow ramp that runs along the museum's southern wall. The three-storey walls are again slanted, and with the sloped floor, the effect is unsettling, both claustrophobic and dizzying.
The ramp features two of the museum's clever touches.
High windows on the outside wall let in light that, falling on the inside wall, spell out the initials of the museum's name in English and French. Carefully placed windows are everywhere, often framing views of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill; the museum will have stretches of inside and outside wall lined with copper flashing rescued from the refurbished Parliamentary Library, too.
Mr. Geurts says the museum has possession of the original headstone of Canada's Unknown Soldier, as well, and will place it so it will be in a beam of brilliant light every sunny Remembrance Day morning.
On the inside wall of the slanted ramp, low interior windows -- Mr. Geurts has to crouch to see through them -- will give visitors a glimpse of the warren of chambers beneath the museum holding the artifacts that there isn't room to display and the rooms in which museum staff will receive and tend them.
"We always get heck from people saying that we only have four or five per cent of our collection on display," Mr. Geurts says. "But the worldwide average for museums, you'll probably be surprised by this, is three per cent. A lot of artifacts can't be displayed because they're in poor shape. And think about, say, a sketchbook, graphite on paper. First of all, each sketch is a separate artifact. And second, an item like that can be out for about a week before it starts to deteriorate. The lights and the air, even if you've got a very good case, it starts to fade and the paper starts to yellow."
Some of those items will be available to approved researchers in the western part of the new building, where the access-by-appointment archives and the public library are being built. These are smaller spaces, with window-walls facing a bend in the Ottawa River to the west.
"This is going to be the best reading room in the city," Mr. Geurts says, striding into what will be the library. "Look at that view. It's going to be packed in here."
This part of the museum is to be open for free, and it includes a theatre (named for former soldier, defence minister and ardent museum supporter Barney Danson), a cafeteria and restaurant, and classrooms for visiting school groups, plus the museum's offices.
That's not quite the whole museum -- two of what are supposed to be the most impressive parts, the memorial hall for fallen soldiers and the regeneration hall for contemplation, are under construction too considerable to be safe during our recent tour.
The memorial hall will be fairly small (less than 10 metres by 10 metres), held within the central lobby, but walled off by granite. The plans say it will have a pool to diffract light from a skylight high above during the day, and from artificial lights below at night.
"It's going to be very quiet," Mr. Geurts says, "a place for contemplation, withdrawal, and reflection. But it'll be there in the free, public part of the museum, open to anyone."
Similar tricks with light and angled windows mark Regeneration Hall, a three-storey room in which architecture firms Moriyama & Teshima and Griffiths Rankin Cook were given free rein for architectural artistry.
"Visitors enter the dramatically vertical space of Regeneration Hall at its upper, mezzanine level," Raymond Moriyama wrote in his notes explaining the building. "Subdued lighting slows the pace, forcing visitors to pause as their eyes adjust. Straight ahead is a triangular window, soaring through the full height of the space and offering a tightly framed view of the Peace Tower, silhouetted against the sky."
As visitors descend a staircase, however, the Peace Tower disappears from view. Windows cause light to spell out "Lest we forget" and "N'oublions jamais" on the interior surfaces. Smooth walls contrast with open industrial-style surfaces. At the bottom level is to be a sculpture called Hope, by Walter Allward, the Toronto-born artist whose 15-year project on the Vimy Memorial in France was the source for Jane Urquhart's novel, The Stone Carvers. More of Mr. Allward's figures are to be nearby, Mr. Moriyama wrote, injecting "a sense of human strength and spirit into Regeneration Hall."
What about the big picture? Mr. Geurts is unequivocal:
The construction is right on schedule for an opening May 8 of next year, the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, he promises.
In fact, because that's Mother's Day and there will be other anniversary-related ceremonies keeping veterans and politicians busy, the museum's opening might come the day before, he says.
"They'll be giving me the keys in November and saying, 'Here you go, Joe, you can move in'." He and his staff will spend four months moving in and setting up the exhibits, he says, and then most of April fine-tuning. "We'll be playing around with efficiencies and trying things maybe a different way, but it'll be small stuff."
And so far, the project is coming in on its $136-million budget, Mr. Geurts says. That's up from the original estimate of $105 million -- a year ago, workers had major problems with polluted groundwater flooding into their excavation, and the early installation of a new sewer also serving other parts of LeBreton Flats ended up on the museum's tab -- but there have been no more nasty surprises to increase the target further, he says.
The museum itself is paying $7.2 million of the cost, fundraisers have yielded another $15.3 million, and the rest is being paid for by the federal government.
"The museum's message is that war is something humans have engaged in since the beginning of time," Mr. Geurts says. "We've always done it, we probably always will do it; it's brutal, painful and hard on both the people who go to war and the people who stay behind; and it affects all those people's lives long after it's over."
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