I am the Manager for the city museum of the oldest city in Western Canada and have worked in the museum field for over 35 years.
Sadly, almost all museums have most of their collection in storage. I often compare a museum to an iceberg - only about 10% shows. The bigger the museum, the more items in storage and sometimes the % of stored items is even higher. The Smithsonian for example has MILLIONS of artifacts, including over 500 stuffed bears and a huge number of pianos. Except for fanatics like us, most people are not interested in a row of 30 slightly different military jeeps or CMPs (or washing machines, coins, typewriters, lamps etc. )
The Canadian War Museum downsized its vehicle collection when it moved into the new building from Vimy House (an old bus warehouse) and they lent out a lot of vehicles to other museums (e.g. Lincoln and Welland Regimental Museum received about half a dozen I believe - including an ex-British Ferret Mark 2 recently). As there is no public list that I am aware of of CWM owned vehicles and their present location (an idea there for CWM's web site! ;-) this makes it a bit difficult for researchers as the vehicle they want to check on may no longer be in Ottawa or may be in storage. The reality is though that museums cannot accomodate all requests to see items behind the scenes. I have been fortunate that the CWM staff have granted me some behind the scenes access to parts of the collection (some parts are highly controlled for security reasons).
I shall dig out my images taken behind the scenes in the new building of the Panther, V1 piloted model, UC 2 Pr Equipped (one of several survivors in Canada - bit this one has a 2 Pr gun fitted now), late 1930s Canadian Chevrolet Prototype 15 Cwt truck (which I helped them acquire) etc.
COLIN STEVENS