We do a great deal of programming in open spaces, both adjacent to our
buildings and elsewhere. Some samples from the coming year:

From May through August, our costumed interpreters will be doing a variety of
demonstrations on the courtyard, of which our Seven Years War female camp
follower's, who bakes bannock over a small open fire is the tastiest! People
also like our grenadier from the same period and we will introduce a new
character - a Civil War soldier (a bandsman, actually) of the 4th Rhode Island,
badly wounded at Antietam. (He - Calixa Lavalée - recovered and returned to
Canada where he subsequently wrote the music for our national anthem, "O
Canada".) There were as many as 40,000 Canadians who served in the US Civil War
- something most of us do NOT know. Nothing like shock tactics, I always say. A
little fake blood goes a looonnnnggggg way.

We do most of our big openings on our courtyard. For the weekend of 13-15 June,
we will cover half the courtyard with a sort of tent, the interior of which
will look like a WWII small town community centre, to celebrate the opening of
a new major exhibition "We'll Meet Again", which will explore the effects of
war on relationships between people, based on 26 stories from 1914 to a young
Canadian peacekeeper killed in Bosnia in 1994 - some happy, some sad, with
people from 6 of the stories actually present, including a real live WWII male
war bride. We'll have a band playing wartime music, a dance, concerts
throughout the weekend, big eats, a bar, etc., etc. AND - if you're one of the
lucky 100 people attending the Canadian Museums Assn conference on in Ottawa
that week who opt for our part of the programme, you'll be there for the best
part!

From late June through the end of October, the Canadian Forces will stage
displays and demonstrations representing aspects of all three services on the
courtyard. It will be very exciting, but we're still wondering just how we're
going to get the helicopter in (landing it on the courtyard is a tad dicey);
the big tank for the naval diving demonstrations is a much easier proposition.

We'll be involved in a series of re-enactments - at Fort Ticonderoga in NY, in
Montreal, at the highland games in Maxville and elsewhere
.
On Labour Day weekend, we'll have a big rally of antique military vehicles on
the courtyard, with a family BBQ for all the visitors.

On November 11, we'll stage our "We Will Remember Them" ceremony, with military
and veterans guards, the Band of the Governor General's Foot Guards, pipers,
dramatic lighting, etc., followed by more big eats, etc.

If the weather were a bit more clement on 25 April, we would have our Anzac Day
gunfire breakfast, where we entertain the Australian and New Zealand
communities living in the area (following a dawn ceremony at the National War
Memorial, where we provide sentries in the uniform of Gallipoli), on the
courtyard. However, it's usually a bit too chilly for that, the issue rum
notwithstanding.

There's a LOT you can do outside; I only wish we had more space, better
weather, and, of course, more money!

Harry Needham
Director, Programmes & Operations
Canadian War Museum