期刊名称：Cercles : Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
电子版ISSN：1292-8968
出版年度：2012
期号：24
页码：118-131
出版社：Université de Rouen
摘要：The Canadian War Museum (CWM) was established to showcase Canadian military history, focusing its attention on conflicts that occurred on Canadian soil, or that involved the Canadian forces. The museum can be traced back to 1880 when a collection of military artifacts was placed under the authority of the federal government. However, the CWM in its present form and with its current mandate is much more recent. In 1990, it was officially incorporated as a component of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, one of the crown corporations1set up by the Museums Act of 1990. In 2005, the museum took on new prominence when it was installed in a newly constructed building designed by the internationally acclaimed architect Raymond Moriyama.2The CWM now finds itself in the institutional heart of the nation's capital, at one end of a symbolic stretch of road that begins with the War Memorial, and then goes past the Parliament Buildings, the Bank of Canada, the Supreme Court, and the National Library and Archives, before reaching the CWM. These two changes—crown corporation status and the prominent new building in a symbolic location—have greatly increased the museum's visibility, but they have also created new difficulties. The new symbolic location overlooking the Ottawa River, astone'+s throw from the provincial border, has put implicit pressure on the museum to become a symbol of national unity, and to present a normalizing discourse on national identity. This new role has required the museum to attempt a delicate balancing act between its objective and neutral preservation function and its patriotic promotional function. This paper will argue that, in spite of its government mandated objective to aim for historical objectivity, the Canadian War Museum has in fact become a vehicle for pan- Canadian nationalism
