The Globe and Mail

There is no glory in war, no goodness, no triumph. But there are lessons and they have been rendered with audacity and excruciating honesty by Moriyama & Teshima Architects for the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The museum, which crawls out of the ground at LeBreton Flats, heralds a brave new expressionism in Canadian architecture. What do you say to all the Canadian mothers and fathers who lost their sons in war? How do you talk to the men who watched their best buddies die on the beaches and fields of some faraway place? You could lie to them with architecture, delivering the conventions of chest-beating war museums in which everybody emerges through white neo-classical columns feeling a little taller, a little more heroic. Or you could deliver the hard goods, which is what chief design consultant Raymond Moriyama, a survivor of the Japanese internment camps in Canada, has declared to the nation aided by his architect son, Jason.