Canadian Museum of Civilization

Description:

• Canadian Native architect Douglas Cardinal designed this visually arresting museum rising from the banks of the Ottawa River as though its curvilinear forms had been sculpted by wind, water, and glacier. It's Canada's most popular museum (by attendance), and deservedly so. The exhibits within tell the entire history of Canada, beginning with the Grand Hall, the high windows of which provide fine views of the skyline. Devoted to the "First Nations" (in this case, Native Canadian peoples of the west coast), the hall features a collection of huge totem poles and facades representing lodges. Behind these are small galleries of utensils, tools, weavings, and other artifacts. From there, take escalators to the third floor and its Canada Hall. Laid out in chronological order is the history of a nation from the arrival of Vikings. There are highly effective tableaux of shipboard life through the whaling period, too, with human-size models, moving images, and recorded shrieks of gulls and creaks of hawsers.

  Replications of fortified settlements of 18th-century New France follow, on through the military past to the rise of cities, including a walk along an early-1900s street. The Museum also features outstanding international exhibitions and is home to the Canadian Children's Museum, the Canadian Postal Museum and an IMAX Theatre. There are a cafeteria and a restaurant, Café du Musée (tel. 819/776-7009) here, as well.

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Very Highly Recommended 2010