- Every November 11, at 11 am, and only on this day and at this hour, the sun shines through the window of the Museum’s Memorial Hall and illuminates the only artifact in this space: the headstone of Canada’s Unknown Soldier. The window illuminating the headstone of Canada's Unknown Soldier The Museum is very large and its total collection has about 500,000 artifacts. The total artifacts on display in the Canadian Experience Galleries is 2,167 and there are 135 featured audiovisual productions. 2,000 graphic images reside inside the Museum.

The layout of the Museum is complex and interwoven, creating a rich, multi-sensory, multi-media visitor experience. It houses 4 Permanent Exhibitions:

This exhibition explores warfare from pre-contact Canada to the Battle of Batoche in 1885. This section looks at the technology and equipment of early First Peoples. A major highlight in this section is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of 1759 where New France was conquered and Quebec became a part of Canada. Amazingly this battle only lasted half an hour, 30 minutes that changed Canada.

Another section in this area illustrates the War of 1812, when Canada was attacked by the United States and government buildings in the City of York (now Toronto) were burnt down by the Americans. In retaliation British Canadian militia marched all the way to Washington and burned the American's official buildings which had to be whitewashed, therefore the term “White House”.

Different outcomes of two consecutive rebellions in 1870 and 1885 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan illustrate the key difference of new technologies: while the first rebellion was successful, the second uprising was quelled easily due to the introduction of the railroads, which allowed for rapid troop deployment, better training of the government troops and the introduction of the telegraph which allowed for rapid communication. Other technological innovations of this era included the Gatlin gun which was capable of 800 shots a minute, the first automatic weapon. This gallery explores Canada’s military involvements overseas. It looks at the South African War (also known as the Boer War, from 1899 to 1902), and the Second World War from 1914 to 1918.

A significant technological development during the South African War include rifles that could fire accurately at a distance of up to 800 m. British soldiers, who had earlier been wearing red tunics, had to switch to camouflage uniforms due to the increased reach of modern weapons. The time of traditional British formation battles was over.