[Herb Danter (RIP)]

On my first visit to the Canadian War Museum last June I regret to say that I wasn't too impressed with the overall scheme.
Now I say this as personal "constructive criticism" only and without prejudice as a WW II Veteran without any professional qualifications in architecture or interior design.
I did find,however, a few areas that were of great interest to me.
The outside architecture looked grim and foreboding, no aesthetics there.
On the inside I thought there was too much waste space on the main level; surely more artifacts could be found to fill this void.
Looking down onto the lower level we noted that there was much armour on display and squeezed so tightly together that it was impossible to walk completely around an exhibit for closer inspection and also relative descriptive signs were at a minimum.
Then we had trouble locating an exit from which we could descend to this level. At the time attendants were few and far between but one finally showed up and directed us to an elevator which had no large sign to indicate its location.
I did however, have an enjoyable few moments here because while I was inspecting the WW II Sexton exhibit ( a self propelled version of the famous 25 pdr field artillery gun - my Regiment was equipped with the Sexton and these mounts gave our Regiment exemplary service in Normandy, Belgium, Holland & Germany - on The Maple Leaf Up) a group of American visitors came around and of course I proceeded to extoll the virtues of the Sexton and they went away happy that they had actually met a Candian World War II Veteran who actually had some wartime experience on this particular gun.
I was also quite impressed during my tour of the Battle Of Normandy section when my friend showed me his photo taken in WW II and which was hanging on the wall of an exhibit beside the photo of General Crerar,the Canadian Commander of the Canadian Army overseas in WW II.
Now this friend of mine who was accompanying me was George G Blackburn MC, the author of the finest trilogy of books on a soldier's "birdseye" view of conditions on the Northwestern Front in WW II
I refer to The Guns Of Normandy, The Guns Of Victory and Where The Hell Are The Guns.
So, in my "patriotic quest" in promoting our National War Museum,
I would respectfully suggest that maybe we could get some military minds involved and have a professional make over done on a few areas within the Museum which would help to make Canadians more proud of Canada's glorious Military History.
WHY! DO WE STILL "SOFT PEDAL" this important part of our Heritage?
LEST WE FORGET.
Herb Danter