Canadian War Museum. The Canadian War Museum is a national museum on the country's military history in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The museum serves as both an educational facility on Canadian military history, in addition to serving as a place of remembrance. The 440,000 square metres museum building is situated south of the Ottawa River in LeBreton Flats. The museum houses a number of exhibitions and memorials, in addition to a cafeteria, theatre, curatorial and conservation spaces, as well as storage space. The building also houses the Military History Research Centre, the museum's library and archives. The Canadian War Museum was formally established in 1942, although portions of the museum's collections originate from a military museum that operated from 1880 to 1896. The museum was operated by the Public Archives of Canada until 1967, when the National Museums of Canada Corporation was formed to manage several national institutions, including the war museum. In the same year, the war museum was relocated from its original building to the former Public Archives of Canada building. Management of the museum was later assumed by the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation in 1990. Plans to expand the museum during the mid-1990s resulted in the construction of a new building at LeBreton Flats. Designed by Moriyama & Teshima Architects and Griffiths Rankin Cook Architects, the new Canadian War Museum building was opened to the public in 2005. The museum's collection contains over 500,000 pieces of materials related to military history, including over 13,000 pieces of military art. In addition to its permanent exhibition, the museum has hosted and organized a number of travelling exhibitions relating to Canadian military history. The collections of the Canadian War Museum originated from the collections of the Cartier Square Military Museum, established through a general order on 5 November 1880. Established with the intention to be a museum of national interest, the institution sought to preserve historical records and materials relating to the Canadian Militia, and any of its colonial predecessors. A proposal to establish a library operated by the museum was made in 1882, although these plans never came to fruition. As the museum continued to solicit donations for its collection the museum quickly outgrew its space in the drill hall, and appeals for a new facility were made by 1886. The museum was eventually closed in 1896, with militia units that used the drill hall requiring more space, and to make room to accommodate a new shipment of Lee-Enfield rifles. The militia office originally planned to relocate the museum, storing its collections in an old military warehouse below Parliament Hill. In July 1901, the Department of Militia and Defence negotiated a lease to house the museum in another building in Ottawa. However, little effort was put into re-establishing the museum, with the department opting to not renew the building's lease in 1905. On 26 January 1907, the Militia Council was informed by Eugene Fiset, the Quartermaster-General of the Canadian Militia, that there was no interest being taken by the officers of the garrison for a museum, and that he did not recommend reopening one. The collection from the Cartier Square Military Museum remained at the warehouse until Dominion Archivist, Arthur Doughty, requested the transference of the items to the archives for the purposes of displaying some of them. The militia approved the request, and transferred 105 items to the Dominion Archives between 1910 and 1919; although in doing so, the militia believed the archives had assumed responsibility for establishing any future military museum. By the 1910s, the militia began to redirect potential donors of military artifacts to the Dominion Archives. These artifacts, in addition to captured German weapons from the First World War, were exhibited for the first time in a travelling exhibition in 1916. In December 1918, the Commission on War Records and Trophies was established to distribute the materials to memorials across Canada. However, the Commission retained a number of pieces at the Dominion Archives with the hope they would eventually be exhibited in a national museum. In 1924, the War Trophy Building was built adjacent to the original Dominion Archives building to house the military collection. In 1935, Doughty struck a deal with General Andrew McNaughton, the Chief of General Staff, for the militia to support the establishment of the museum. A War Trophies Review Board was established between the archives and militia, charged with selecting the best items to preserve for a future museum.