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About

The Origins

The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum is located in the west wing of Wolseley Barracks, a designated national historic site. The story of the building offers insights to the early Canadian military, more precisely the period following the establishment of the Infantry School Corps.

In 1883, the Parliament approved amendments to the Militia Act with the addition of paid staff for militia training schools, to be known as Permanent Corps of Active Militia. Their role was to train the 40,000 infantry who had formed the backbone of the country's militia since 1868. Three infantry companies were created for the purpose, and by 1884, schools of instruction opened in Fredericton, NB, Saint-Jean, QC, and Toronto, ON; in 1886, a fourth company was approved in London, ON. These four units form the origins of the Canadian Infantry, more precisely what we know today as The Royal Canadian Regiment (The RCR).

The Infantry School Building, London, ON. Sepia photograph, ca. 1888, unkown photographer; archives collection, The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum.
The Infantry School Building, London, ON. Sepia photograph, ca. 1888, unkown photographer; archives collection, The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum.

The Building

The "London Infantry School" or "D" Company, enjoyed the advantage of operating in a newly raised building, later to be designated Wolseley Barracks. The 1886 floor plans show a room specially designated to become a museum, adjacent to a “reading room” and to an office for the “professor”; no other armouries or military buildings erected in Canada included such a designation before. There is no evidence that a museum was really installed in 1888 as the floor plan would suggest, but the building was destined to eventually become home to our museum in the late 1950s.

The construction of the barracks was approved in 1886, and the works were placed under the care of Henry James (1839 – 1893), the Chief Architect for the Militia Department. Following standard tender process by public notice, the contract was assigned to Messer’s Joseph Hook and Peter Toll. George F. Durand, a prodigious local architect famous for his institutional and residential projects in town, oversaw the works on behalf of the Engineering Branch until completion in 1888. The cost of the project is a topic that calls for more research, but the total amount may have reached a little over $200,000.00 at the time. 

West and South Façades at the Infantry School Building, drawing. 1886, Archives and Research Collection Centre, Western University, London, ON.
West and South Façades at the Infantry School Building, drawing. 1886, Archives and Research Collection Centre, Western University, London, ON.

The Museum

Early sources make little mention of a museum within the premises, yet the idea clearly sprung in the years following the demobilization after the First World War (1919 to 1924), when regimental sources recognize the importance of “assembling the regimental history." This history was eventually published in 1933, as a volume featuring the first 50 years of The RCR.

The efforts of organizing a regimental museum at Wolseley Barracks came to a full stop at the outbreak of the Second World War. Once the conflict was over, more exactly in fall 1947, the museum was coming to an “opening stage” , but only in 1953 a permanent location was assigned, nothing less than the 2nd floor of the Barracks’ west wing, above the archway entrance, which coincides  with the “museum room” from the 1886 floor plans.

However, it will not be until the early 1970s that the museum takes shape, with an important expansion project in 1983, on the ocasion of The RCR centenial. More recently, in 2010-2012, the museum expanded its footprint to occupy the entire west wing of Wolseley Barracks.

Museum's Main Entrance, ca. 2022. Photograph by The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum.
Museum's Main Entrance, ca. 2022. Photograph by The Royal Canadian Regiment Museum.