Hi re unforgettable exhibits or artifacts,

I do not work in an ethnographic music or a natural history museum, I work
for the national military museum in Canada - the Canadian War Museum - as
such our artifacts and exhibits are a little different from some of you on
this list.

Two of the many outstanding artifacts in the collections are:
- a First World War steel helmet that has a rather large section of the
front that looks like it was peeled back - the fellow who was wearing it
during the First World War survived a direct his to the forehead of his
helmet by schrapnel and in the 1980's donated it to us.
- a First World War uniform jacket of a pilot that looks like it was badly
eaten by moths, the "moth holes" are actually the result of being shot down
by the germans - he safely crashed landed, had his wounds treated and
survived that war!

As for outstanding exhibits: a year ago january we look down a temporary
exhibit that we had up for 2 years titled "We'll meet again".

The exhibit featured 26 personal stories from our archives and material
loaned to us for the exhibit. The exhibit consisted primarily of letters and
photographs with a few artifacts, displayed in a very creative manner. We
had stories that had happy endings and some with not so happy endings. We
featured the letter from the Fiance of the first Canadian Nursing Sister
killed during the First World War to her mother after learning of her death
(I still cannot read this letter! without crying), the photos and outline of
service of 8 brothers who all joined various branches of military during the
Second Wrold War - they all came to the exhibit opening!, a young Canadian
Peacekeeper killed in Bosnia a few years ago, the story of a Male War Bride.
All the stories were very touching and personal, and sometimes funny.

I know that I had trouble controlling my emotions when working on the
cataloguing and was pleased to hear that many of our visitors also had a
very emotional response to it and were very pleased to see the rather
personal side of war, and life in the military. I personally think it was
one of our most Unforgettable exhibit because it was so personal.

Here in Canada we have a public affairs TV channel that usually broadcasts
the House of Parliament Debates etc, but they also go out looking for
"filler". they came to us and did a 50 minute "walk-through" the exhibit
with the Exhibit Planner and aired it on televison. In fact they are STILL
airing it a year after we took the exhibit down! - so we must have done
something right!

Carol Reid
Head, Archives
Canadian War Museum
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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