So I am coming up to the Hat the weekend after next to pick up a new 1944 Canadian Military Pattern truck and will be heading over to the Museum in Ottawa on Sunday.  Is there anything I should be aware of before I hit the museum?

Do they allow cameras in the museum?

Any good places to eat/booze it up close by the airport in Ottawa?

I think my friend who is from Alberta mentioned the Heart and Crown.  I am driving with him and we are trailering it back.  It only has a top speed of 50 MPH so no long drives.  

Have you been since they redid the WW1 portion?  I have heard that it is really good.  We had slotted a full day for CWM but need to try and get out to see a vehicle collection that is west of Ottawa about an hour.  I need to collect some parts and gather guidance from a jedi master of CMP's!

I really need to make a stop at the Communications Museum in Kingston too.  They have one of the few restored examples of the truck and I need to research it since I have to fabricate everything aft of the cab from the frame up.

So how are Canadian breakfasts?  Are they that same gut churning pile of slop that British breakfast is?

Do they really have a Tim Horton's on every corner?  

It is a 1500 wt Chevy. It was built as a Wire3 truck but as with most CMP's the bed was stripped off and is long gone. I already have a start on the 19 set for the back but the rest has to be researched. Only like 4 of those trucks are still around in the Wire3 configuration.

Already a member of the Ontario Military Vehicle Association.

Yes that is a GS bed.  They are about 10 different varieties of them but most are just like that one.  The Wire bed on my truck would have had desks, cabinets and battery racks and seats fitted.  Along with antennae mounts and antennas off the top of the bed through holes in a modified tarp.

The other variety of 15wt wireless truck you see used an aluminum box commonly called gin palaces.

Got it back home after a few hiccups!

Had to unload it twice to get it out of the pasture it was stored in because we kept getting stuck and then lost 5th gear just south of Watertown, NY.

Now to get it running again and track down a bed and tool box before i do a frame swap.  too much rot for my liking.

Yeah the original restorer did an excellent job on the cab and rejoining the frame.  At some point someone had cut the frame in half.  But alas where the transfer case attaches to the frame rail it is flexing about 1/2 in inch which is not good.  So since I have access to another frame it is going to be swapped.  Just have to put up a rail in the barn to run a hoist on.

On a side note we went to the CWM and let's just say I was less than impressed.  The two Canadian veterans I was with that served in Cyprus, the Golan and the Sinai were also less than pleased and were writing letters to the museum they were so ticked off.

Biggest thing they were ticked about was the treatment of the UN Peacekeeping Missions Canada has been part of.  For being a big part of Canada's late 20th century overseas military ventures they felt that is was extremely poorly put together and really only touched on Cyprus and the Sinai as an afterthought.  They also didn't like the political themes put forth in the displays about the FLQ troubles.

In our discussion at dinner that night they felt it was almost like the curator(S) tried to present the history of Canada interspersed with some military history. We found no mention at all about the regimental system in Canada.  Very little mention of the VC winners throughout the museum. A lot of the exhibits were poorly explained like the Chieftain tank which had a three word description...Main battle tank and all lack of any explanation of the CF-5 fighter hanging from the ceiling, which we didn't really notice till we sat down on a bench and looked up.

Essentially the Sinai and Cyprus peace keeping missions were both failures. We still have people in Cyprus after what, 50+ years.

Liberals like to tout our peacekeeping missions as the only role for our military but we don't need to celebrating failed political peacekeeping missions at our war museum.