Further to Betsy's comments, it is the experience of the Canadian Museum of
Civilization that visits to this museum are, overwhelmingly and increasingly,
seen as "social outings". Typically, less than 20% of visitors over the last
few years came alone and, if I recall correctly, in October 95, only 9% were
solo visitors. Most came as couples or groups of between 3 and 5 persons. I
have not yet received the results of a study conducted over the December/New
Year holiday period, where we asked the visitors to tell us, inter alia,
whether their visit had become a family holiday tradition, as we had suspected
this was a growing trend.

Family visiting takes place even where you least expect it. At the Queen
Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum in New Zealand, for example, the great
majority of visitors, at least on the Sunday last April that I spent there,
were in obvious family groups. Now, the Army Museum is located on the edge of
the NZ Army's training base at Waiouru, in the central part of North Island. It
is MANY miles from any large centre of population, yet the place, on a Sunday
morning of no particular significance, was jammed with family groups. Clearly,
a visit to that museum was seen as a good family outing. People at the north
end of the region in which the museum is located might have chosen a visit to
Rotorua, a town with MANY and varied cultural attractions to suit all family
members; those at the south end could have gone to Palmerston North, with a
science centre, a very good multi-disciplinary museum and a small, but
interesting art gallery. Yet they picked an army museum - and there were not
that many obvious veterans in the groups. Mind you, the Army Museum is an
exceptional military museum with the best MODERN dioramas I've seen anywhere.

Harry Needham
Director, Programmes and Operations
Canadian War Museum