[Ed Storey]

Unfortunately, it seems that many museums treat vehicles like a doormat. Park it outside, let the kids climb on it, the birds nest in it, the weather deteriorate it and then slap on a new coat of paint to hold it all together. Fortunately this trend is starting to change in Canada, but at an agonizingly slow pace.

There also seems to be a hierarchy of artefacts with military vehicles being at the low end of the scale. Since military vehicles are big, dirty and heavy, the tendency is to park them outside and not really pay much attention to their preservation and provenance. The consequences of this are the loss of our automotive history and the vehicles that represented it.

If this trend is to be slowed down or stopped, now is the time to do it. There has been a thread on this forum discussing how the M113 series of vehicles is being disposed of and sold for scrap. The CF used over 1000 of these vehicles, and only a fraction of them are being upgraded for future use. With only a small percentage being saved by museums this means that in the very near future any Canadian used example of this vehicle type will be a rare commodity. It is a given that collectors will no longer be allowed to privately own many types of military vehicles but were the enthusiast/collector can still make a big difference is to assist/support/pressure those museums that do display vehicles to take a scholarly and planned approach to acquiring and preserving this equipment.

The chance to save the Cold War era Canadian M Series equipment may have passed, but that does not mean that all is lost. Some of the latest Afghanistan equipment may be released and this would be the time to not only save this material, but to make sure what is preserved is not parked outside to become the latest doormat.