Back in mid-late 2020, I woke up one day and decided to move to Canada, and at the beginning of this year, I said a temporary ‘au revoir’ to Scotland and successfully relocated. After an embarrassingly long time, I managed to visit the Canadian War Museum, in the beautiful capital city of Ottawa.
Once I’d walked several hundred miles through the museum’s very open entrance hall for my entry admission, I was met by a long hallway down to the armoured vehicles, lined with various war-related paintings and pieces of aircraft nose art.
Loving the style of this museum already. At the other end of the hallway, I was immediately spoilt for choice by the collection of tanks, field guns, and armoured cars.
A couple of misconceptions about these vehicles. Firstly, upon looking at the M3 Medium tank next to that stunning Panther, at first glance I assumed it was a ‘Grant’, on account of the lack of a 50. cal machine gun turret, which caused me to scratch my head on reading that it was in fact a ‘Lee’. However, after some research I discovered that the entire turret is different between to two vehicles, and despite my initial reasoning, this turret is indeed a US model, proving me completely wrong!
Secondly, I assumed the vehicle in the second-last picture was a variant of the famous BMP infantry fighting vehicle. But on closer inspection, this was listed as a BRM, which is based on the same chassis, but with lighter armament and more enhanced radio systems, intended for reconnaissance purposes.
Now lets have a look at some of those lighter vehicles,. Lets hope they have a Dingo.
Ok it’s technically a Lynx, but it’s essentially a Dingo armoured car!
This was certainly a very diverse collection of armour, which had me thinking it couldn’t get any bigger. But I was wrong.
Such a nice surprise to see these gems mixed in with the history tour. That Spitfire turned out to be a MkII, on loan from the Aviation and Space museum nearby! Halfway through the tour, I found a balcony looking down on the previously seen main collection of vehicles. Let’s have a look.
That Voodoo looks much better from the top. Now let’s get back to the tour.
What a brilliant way to end the tour. This was a great start to my experience of Canadian military vehicle displays. Always great to see more examples of familiar vehicles, but even better to see some new items, such as the F-101 and all of those unique Leopard variants. Overall, a great start to my experiences of Canadian military vehicles, and looking forward to future visits!
Great photos Charlie, looks to be huge great place to get lost in, how does it compare to Bovington??
p.s. – where were all the aircraft.