Berlin Wall

 This is a C2 105mm Howitzer, standard issue for Canadian military reserve units.

The path ahead features faces of the last decade of the Cold War- Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev.

Canadian officer uniforms by the 80s were looking much as they do today.

This Warsaw Pact tank, along with some of the side arms, stands along the path.

1989 was the year of momentous change, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. A section of the Wall stands here.

The Canadian government hosted a conference of foreign ministers to work out the process of German reunification. Germany presented this section of the wall to the Canadian people. Its place here makes sense. What has always surprised me is that it's not that thick. 

It was a time of optimism, the ending of tensions and of new possibilities. It didn't turn out that way.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein sent Iraqi forces into neighbouring Kuwait. President George H.W. Bush built a coalition of international forces to drive him out. Canada sent military forces into the Gulf, in what became known as Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

With the Canadian military was a commissioned war artist. Ted Zuber had fought as a young man in Korea. He painted Night Run in 1991.

The Stand Off

 Here we have a mock up of a command center of the Cold War, one done with monitor screens that play out scenarios in English and French as to how a potential World War Three might play out. As events proceed and casualties mount, a scroll tells the story on the bottom of the screens.

Weapons of the Warsaw Pact are found here. On its own is one of the things that the Soviets built well- the Kalashnikov, which is all over the world today.

Here we see a NATO tank.

It was a tense time, with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation.

Here we have the crest of NORAD- a joint agency of American and Canadian air forces which carries on today, vigilant about the possibility of a missile attack.

Here we have a UN Peacekeeper scout vehicle.

The concept dates to the Suez Crisis. Lester Pearson, who was our foreign minister at the time, proposed neutral soldiers be used to prevent the escalation of hostilities.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his concept, a replica of which is here. And he would later be one of our greatest prime ministers.

Canadians have taken part in numerous peacekeeping operations.

The era was, as noted, a time of worry about nuclear war, and a map of the continent is found here, with documents that get into things like fallout shelters.

In 1970, the country faced the October Crisis. FLQ terrorists, who had been active for years in bombings, kidnapped a Quebec provincial cabinet minister and a British diplomat. The former would die while the latter was freed. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, seen on screen speaking to a reporter about his decision to invoke the War Measures Act to bring the crisis to the end, was asked how far he would go. His answer was "just watch me."

Times change. Women were active in the military. A staff uniform and dress uniform stand in contrast to field utilities.

The Korean War

 Picking up where I left off yesterday, here are copies of some of the documents Igor Gouzenko took from the Soviet embassy as he defected.

For the rest of his life, whenever he made public appearances, he was masked.

And so began decades of hostilities that didn't break out into a full war, between what would become the Warsaw Pact and NATO.

When it did turn hot, it was regional in nature, such as what history remembers as the Korean War.

Canadians were part of that war, alongside British, American, and other UN forces, fighting North Korean and Chinese troops on the Korean peninsula. 

This vivid work is Day Break- Gulf of Korea, by Ted Zuber, depicting a Canadian destroyer firing on an enemy train on the coastal railway.

Zuber went to war as a soldier until being wounded in the line of duty. He later turned his sketches into a series of paintings, some of which are found here at the War Museum. Decades later he would go to war again, as a commissioned war artist during Desert Storm.

This is his painting First Kill- The Hook, depicting a sniper's nest.

While here we have Reverse Slope.

These are winter uniforms. A Canadian uniform is at left, while the quilted uniform at right is that of a Chinese soldier.

A three dimensional display of the terrain at Kap'yong, one of the fiercest battles of the war, is found here. Beyond it is a painting by Zuber, depicting that battle.

Armistice broke out in 1953, resulting in partition of the peninsula. North Korea remains a closed society, lorded over by a family of kleptocrats and despots.

The Iron Curtain

It was time to switch out my header for something of a winter sensibility. This one was taken on the Rideau Canal skateway last winter, near to where the skating route begins downtown. 

This map shows the movements of the majority of the Canadian military in the last stages of World War Two in Europe, sweeping through the Netherlands to free the country, as well as venturing into the fallen Germany.

One of the positive aspects of that war is the enduring friendship between Canada and the Netherlands. The Dutch have never forgotten what Canadian soldiers did for them.

When Canadian veterans have returned to visit the Netherlands, the Dutch citizens have come out to cheer them. Now there are so few veterans of that war left, and less by the year.

Canada had sheltered Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands during the war, as well as her daughters- one of whom was born here in Ottawa. Following the war, many Dutch families immigrated to begin new lives in Canada, mine included. 

Among the legacies of that friendship is the Tulip Festival.

Six years of war on an unimaginable scale in Europe were done. 

The next section of the Museum concerns itself with the Cold War and beyond. After the war, Canada stepped up its military presence in the northern reaches of the country.

But a new conflict was coming- the Cold War. Quotes from those early years of the standoff are found here.

The Cold War began right here in Ottawa- the Gouzenko Affair. Igor Gouzenko was a clerk in the Soviet embassy here who gathered evidence that the Soviets were spying on their Western allies, particularly about the atomic program. He brought that evidence to the Canadian authorities, and so decades of perpetual tension and proxy wars soon began.

He and his family were given a new life in Canada, as well as protection. Gouzenko took to writing, both his own story and fiction.