Canadian War Museum

We had a trip to Ottawa once as part of CFLRS recruits to visit the Canadian War Museum. It was not such a pleasant trip but it was mandatory. So I tagged along! It was not pleasant because at the end I realized we had to answer a number of stupid questions in a format! Questions such as " How many tanks were available to Canadian Armed Forces at the end of WWII? " (One thousand exclamation marks). How is that going to help me in my military career?! You know what the answer is: This shows whether you were paying attention to detail or not! It means that even in a trip which is planned for relaxation and enjoyment, supposedly, they still want to torture people! Of course I didn't spend even one single minute on the question and got them all from other guys when we returned!

As per the museum I have to say that it was not bad. Quite similar to The Military Museums in Calgary only bigger and newer because it's only a few hundred meters away from Parliament Hill and gets good funds from the Government! 

I tried to see as many things as possible but it takes more time than it seems specially if you plan to read all of the signs and stories because the museum covers everywhere that Canada has been involved as a military force except for Afghanistan which will be soon added. 

The museum, as usual, has a gift shop and cafe. Gift shop, obviously, has good items but all expensive, which is not a surprise. The cafe has a same story. I guess I paid more than $2 for a cup of coffee which surprisingly was not bad. The other items as expensive as usual, which is made of course for Canadians who mostly, or generally spend $1.6 for every $1 they make! 

Our lunch was the disgusting military lunch box which comprises of a damn sandwich is probably made 2 years and half ago(!), a number of sugary, filled-with-preservatives snacks, disgusting Genetically Modified(!) small carrots and a few more disgusting things that I don't even remember. 

I'm not sure what the admission is but it's free for military persons with a limited number of family members but honestly who wants to see a military museum rather a military person! Most of the visitors at the time we were there looked like they were had something with military. The admission is around $17. You can spend the whole day there if you're interested in Canadian military history. At the end I would like to add this that they have a bookstore too. It is located at the back somewhere and that was a little surprise to me because Canadians are good readers but I guess that wasn't not the case there because they located the bookshop in the back with barely anyone going there while people were all in the cafe stuffing themselves with healthy(!) usual Western style food. Perhaps no one needed to feed his or brain at the time!

(Photo: V1 and V2 missiles had significant destruction to London in the last year of WWII. This one is a preliminary model of V1 which was supposed to be manned. You can see the cockpit at the left side of the picture. The navigator was supposed to jump out shortly before the missile reaches its target, which minimum chance of survival. The Germans later corrected their design and made the unmanned one and targeted London and Antwerp as much as I know. There's a whole history of rocket development in Germany and the US if someone is interested)