Canadian Museum of History

Douglas Cardinal, an architect of Blackfoot descent, designed the museum in curving forms meant to evoke landscape shaped by wind and water, opened in 1989 on the Gatineau bank facing Parliament Hill. The Grand Hall runs the length of the river front behind a glass wall, holding the largest indoor collection of totem poles in the world with six Pacific Northwest house facades beneath them. The Canadian History Hall, opened in 2017, covers fifteen thousand years and was developed with Indigenous advisers, including direct treatment of residential schools. It is the most visited museum in Canada.

Background

The museum grew from a collection that the Geological Survey of Canada began showing in Montreal in 1856. Its first ethnological exhibit, of stone implements and pottery fragments made by First Nations, ran from 1862 to 1863. The collection moved to Ottawa in 1881, and an anthropology division under Edward Sapir followed in 1910. Renamed the National Museum of Canada in 1927, the institution was divided in 1968, and its anthropology and human history departments became the National Museum of Man. The year after its 1989 move to Gatineau it became the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and it took its present name in 2013. The collection holds over three million artifacts and documents.

Source: Wikipedia, "Canadian Museum of History"

Highlights

• The Grand Hall - the largest indoor totem pole collection, behind river-facing glass.
• The Cardinal architecture - curving forms by an architect of Blackfoot descent.
• The Canadian History Hall - fifteen thousand years including residential schools.
• The Parliament view - Ottawa's Parliament Hill across the river.

When to go

Year-round; the museum closes Mondays outside summer. It is indoors, which suits Ottawa winters. Allow most of a day, and more with the children's museum.

Before you go

Special exhibitions cost extra. The building is large and a single visit covers a fraction. It is in Quebec, so signage and service default to French first.

Nearby

Gatineau Park lies north; Parliament Hill is across the bridge.

Key facts