The Grand Hall of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., can make you feel small.
It’s a soaring, glass-walled space that stretches across the belly of the museum, facing the Ottawa River and Parliament Hill on the opposite shore.
The Grand Hall is set up like a Pacific Northwest coastal village from the 19th century, with the undulating shape of the massive space emulating a shoreline. A boardwalk runs along the “waterfront,” before the facades of houses from six different First Nations along the coast of British Columbia, from the Coast Salish in the south to the Haida and North Coast communities further up.
We lose.
