It's very important that people understand that our museum and the things that we're doing educationally in the shows is not to in any way glorify war or promote conflict. The whole purpose is so that people can have an understanding of what our veterans in the past and today served on what protects them, how the systems work. And it's more to honour their service and sacrifice. I'm Jeremy Blowers, I'm the executive director of the Canadian Tank Museum. It was founded in 1980, but in a different iteration, the Canadian Tank Museum we know today was actually founded only in 2024. It was known for many years as the Ontario Regiment Museum. But as the collection had grown, so had the scope and the stories that we were telling. Our collection has 163 pieces of actual military equipment. Over 150 of them are operational. That is one of the largest fleets of running military vehicles in the world.

We have pieces of equipment that cover the entire mechanisation of military hardware. So everything from jeeps to trucks to engineering vehicles to armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks from the Second World War to ones that are being used on battlefields today, advanced lab technology, sometimes even something simple, like a model T Ford. The technology advancements is incredible, not just within a span of 100 years, but even within a decade. Some of our older equipment is very mechanical. We're now starting to get machines into the museum that have digital technology, that have advanced sighting systems. The lessons learned that Canadians learned on the battlefield led to the lab three R, W s, or remote weapons systems. Nanook, where, you know, there was incredible advanced optics that were built into the vehicle. I had a veteran, a member of this museum tell me the story of, you know, using those Canadian optics at night in Afghanistan. And he was watching a spider cross the road with night vision three kilometres away. When things are retired out of militaries, they often go on auction. And private individuals, collectors around the world purchase them. And over time, we've been very lucky that people have donated them after they've restored them to the museum. Sometimes we get phone calls that there's an old ruined vehicle in a barn somewhere, and do we want it? We'll pick it up and over years we'll restore it. Also, we have benefactors, those who have served in the Canadian Armed Forces or support the Canadian Armed Forces, who see something in the world, and they have donated the funds so that our museum could, you know, purchase those vehicles and bring them here for Canadians to enjoy. We have the General Motors Fox Mark one built right here in Oshawa, Ontario, in 1943. As you can see, it's not a truck. It's an armoured reconnaissance vehicle proudly here with the the GM logo with the maple leaf. This is just one of seven that that remains of the over 1400 that were built during the war. What's more interesting is that this isn't just an example of a General Motors fox. This is a veteran that was produced in 43, sent overseas to serve in the Italian campaign. And exactly 80 years later, in 2023, it was repatriated to the Canadian Tank Museum. Thanks to a very generous donor from Toronto, it started primarily in the First World War. The Canadian Forces, at the beginning of mechanisation required simple things like trucks. We were replacing much of the horses and carriages that were pulling much of our equipment, so they went to civilian makers. So even here in Oshawa, like the McLaughlin Automotive company, they got contracts to sell some of their their vehicles to the Canadian Armed Forces. But in the Second World War, that's where Canada really punched above its weight and produced over 800,000 pieces of military equipment for both our forces and our allies. This has always been sort of a a military production corridor. So in Oshawa and Durham region, this really is a hub where we have rail, we have air infrastructure, we have ports, and we also have that industrial infrastructure and know how. This has been an auto town for over 100 years. And so not only do we have the workforce that's trained, we have the capacity, we have the industrial capacity to do exactly what we did in the 1940s and start building things for our military and for our allies. These are used by the Canadian Armed Forces. They are the basis of the United States Stryker fleet of vehicles.

The makeup of our visitors has been evolving over the last decade. When I was first involved here, we only had about 1200 visitors a year. Most of them were veterans or military families. We used to joke that we were Durham Region's best kept military secret. Nobody knew we were here. But that's been changing. We've seen our visitor numbers grow by up to 70% year over year. Last year, for the first time, we had over 20,000 visitors, which is not bad for a medium sized and growing museum. The collection and the museum itself is becoming more well known both within Canada and around the world, but also with the conflicts that we're seeing around the world, things that are on people's screens, on people's television screens, you know, people would like to to understand more about not only those conflicts, but have an interest in the technology and the equipment it touches home. When the vehicles in your collection are still being used in conflicts today. So, you know, our Belgian army leopard, one A5 and Soviet T-54. These machines are currently fighting in the Ukraine conflict. And so it's unfortunate people are coming here now. And something that was built in the 1950s is on the 21st century battlefield. Our museum is a place where people can connect not just with the history, but they can connect with soldiers. Thank you guys, for coming out to Oshawa and coming here to the Canadian Tank Museum. This is probably a record opener crowd. We only have a staff of four four full time staff. You know, we do have some part time retirees and students, obviously that supplement that. But this museum is run by volunteers. We have 208 volunteers on the books. About 50% of them are former serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces or our allied forces. The other 50%, most of them are military families with a connection both to to the history or to the Canadian Armed Forces directly through an ancestor or through a family member. Our oldest members are in their 80s, and our youngest members might be serving in a local cadet corps, and they're 16 years old, and they find here a home after their service and also got to still work with the equipment. It was sort of therapeutic to them. Our visitors say that to us all the time. Like our number one review is not so much about how great the tanks are, but about how their experience was. In speaking with the guide, the volunteer or the veteran who shared their experience with the visitor when they came.