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Base Borden Military Museum

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Base Borden Military Museum

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Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Base Borden Military Museum - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024) - Tripadvisor

• Tue - Fri 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
• Tue - Fri 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
• Sat - Sun 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
• (10.32 km) Stevenson Inn & Spa
• (15.29 km) Nottawasaga Inn Resort
• (4.26 km) Angus Inn
• (12.93 km) Mountain Ash Farm
• (4.58 km) Motel 90
• (0.61 km) Ravi's Pizza & Donair - Borden
• (0.63 km) Tim Hortons
• (3.89 km) Stacked Pancake & Breakfast House
• (3.20 km) CW Coop's Angus
• (3.21 km) Sakana Sushi Japanese Cuisine
• (0.04 km) Canadian Forces Base Borden
• (1.36 km) Borden Golf Club
• (3.30 km) Pixel Paradise Arcade
• (14.78 km) Circle Theatre
• (4.88 km) Peacekeepers Park

Base Borden Military Museum

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

BASE BORDEN MILITARY MUSEUM: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos)

• Tue - Fri 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
• Tue - Fri 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
• Sat - Sun 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
• (10.32 km) Stevenson Inn & Spa
• (15.29 km) Nottawasaga Inn Resort
• (4.26 km) Angus Inn
• (12.93 km) Mountain Ash Farm
• (4.58 km) Motel 90
• (0.61 km) Ravi's Pizza & Donair - Borden
• (0.63 km) Tim Hortons
• (3.89 km) Stacked Pancake & Breakfast House
• (3.20 km) CW Coop's Angus
• (3.21 km) Sakana Sushi Japanese Cuisine
• (0.04 km) Canadian Forces Base Borden
• (1.36 km) Borden Golf Club
• (3.30 km) Pixel Paradise Arcade
• (14.78 km) Circle Theatre
• (4.88 km) Peacekeepers Park

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Base borden military museum, description, service details.

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Base Borden Military Museum

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Borden Military Museum becomes humble home to important collection

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Wandering around the Base Borden Military Museum’s main building is an exercise in time travel — every step takes you closer to the battlefields where Canadians fought and sometimes died.

Admittedly, that sounds a little gruesome, but at this time of year, it’s a keen reminder of the sacrifices thousands of Canadians made for freedom.

Go down one aisle and you’ll find a field kitchen that was used overseas by the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. A kitchen on wheels, it was essential to feeding the troops.

Head down another and you’ll come face to face with the behemoth Second World War-era Ram tank, a 32-ton beast that carried a crew of five and was outfitted with a six-pound (the weight of the explosive shell that was fired from it) main barrel and one machine gun.

A few steps farther and you’ll see exactly how cramped life in a tank could be. There’s a T-55 East German battle tank that had part of its shell removed so Canadian troops could learn what was inside and how best to disable one.

“The main focus of the museum is the history of Base Borden, the units that served here, for the time they were at Base Borden,” said Andrew Gregory, director of the museum. “The impact on the Canadian military is much greater than people realize.”

According the book,  Camp Borden: A Century of Service , Camp Borden has been a part of the Canadian military landscape since 1916, when Sir Sam Hughes, minister of defence and militia at the time, visited the area around Angus on May 7, 1916, and decided, on the spot, the best site for the camp would be in the Township of Essa. Four days later, on May 11, 1916, the Government of Canada approved the $174,183.32 it would cost to appropriate the land.

Construction began in earnest, and on July 11, 1916, Camp Borden officially opened.

By the end of the First World War, about 300,000 soldiers had been trained at Borden.

More than half of the soldiers who served in the First and Second World Wars received training at Camp Borden. The name was changed to Canadian Forces Base Borden to reflect the unification of the Royal Canadian Air Force with the Canadian Navy and Canadian Army on Feb. 1, 1968.

The museum, founded in 1970, is an amalgamation of many unit museums. It has two locations on base. The main museum is located at 27 Ram St. and features an impressive collection of military vehicles and military rifles and assault weapons. The Hangar 11 Air Annex, on Hangar Road, explores the birth of air training in Canada into the Cold War.

The hangar is closed for renovations in preparation for the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force on April 1, 2024.

Last year, more than 10,000 people visited the museum, down from pre-pandemic levels but rebounding quite well, Gregory said. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Gregory, who holds a PhD in modern British history with a focus on military history, said Borden’s history speaks to the larger contribution Canada made in the defence of peace and democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

“I think Canadians are unaware of Canada’s enormous contribution in the First World War, Second World War, Korean War and the Cold War,” he said. “One in 10 persons in Canada (was) in uniform in the First and Second World Wars. This is mind boggling, and most of this participation was voluntary.”

He said the 800,000 military pattern trucks (a wheeled vehicle built to military specifications) Canada built in the Second World War was a war-winning contribution. He also pointed out Canada’s outsized participation carried on into the Cold War.

“The size of our armed forces allowed us to maintain very significant forces in Europe, while at the same time contributing to peacekeeping missions,” he said.

Those missions included the United Nations Emergency Force I in the Suez Canal zone and the Gaza Strip in 1956, the Congo Crisis in 1960, and UNEF II at the Suez Canal and, later, the Sinai Peninsula in 1974.

Gregory considers the museum’s collection “one of the richest” in the country.

While he is talking about the intrinsic and historic value of the collection, it’s also worth a substantial sum of money to collectors, if they could get their hands on it.

For example, when you walk into the main display hall in the main museum, one of the first things you see are ancient Harley-Davidson and Triumph motorcycles — the transportation choice of the military police, or Provost Corps as it was known up to 1968.

Three of them are lined up — uniformly, of course — and they’re magnificent, if you’re into that sort of thing.

On display with the motorcycles is a wooden crate that’s never been opened. Inside it is a 1957 500-cc Triumph TRW motorcycle — untouched and perfectly preserved.

It’s a motorcycle collector’s dream.

One just like it, in its original crate, sold at a California auction in 2010 for US$34,500. Conservative estimates suggest it would fetch US$50,000 today — about C$70,000.

“There are many highlights in the museum’s collection,” he said. “We have a 504K (a biplane) in Hangar 11. The 504K was Canada’s training plane for the whole of the 1920s. Many of Canada’s fighter aces in the Battle of Britain trained at Borden.”

In fact, 58 per cent of all pilots trained in Canada in the First World War were trained at Borden.

Back at the main museum, Gregory makes special note of the Ram tank — Canada’s contribution to tank design in the Second World War.

“This tank was the principal training tool for most Royal Canadian Armoured Corps men. We have an M17 light tank used to train Canadian tankers before the arrival of the Ram. Both these tanks underpinned the armored corps’ success in the Italian campaign and the Northwest Europe campaign in the Second World War,” he said.

“I could go on for longer because, even though I have been here for three years, I am discovering little and big treasures all the time.”

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About the Author: Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Borden Military Museum becomes humble home to important collection

W andering around the Base Borden Military Museum’s main building is an exercise in time travel — every step takes you closer to the battlefields where Canadians fought and sometimes died.

Admittedly, that sounds a little gruesome, but at this time of year, it’s a keen reminder of the sacrifices thousands of Canadians made for freedom.

Go down one aisle and you’ll find a field kitchen that was used overseas by the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. A kitchen on wheels, it was essential to feeding the troops.

Head down another and you’ll come face to face with the behemoth Second World War-era Ram tank, a 32-ton beast that carried a crew of five and was outfitted with a six-pound (the weight of the explosive shell that was fired from it) main barrel and one machine gun.

A few steps farther and you’ll see exactly how cramped life in a tank could be. There’s a T-55 East German battle tank that had part of its shell removed so Canadian troops could learn what was inside and how best to disable one.

“The main focus of the museum is the history of Base Borden, the units that served here, for the time they were at Base Borden,” said Andrew Gregory, director of the museum. “The impact on the Canadian military is much greater than people realize.”

According to the book, Camp Borden: A Century of Service, Camp Borden has been a part of the Canadian military landscape since 1916, when Sir Sam Hughes, minister of defence and militia at the time, visited the area around Angus on May 7, 1916, and decided, on the spot, the best site for the camp would be in the Township of Essa. Four days later, on May 11, 1916, the Government of Canada approved the $174,183.32 it would cost to appropriate the land.

Construction began in earnest, and on July 11, 1916, Camp Borden officially opened.

By the end of the First World War, about 300,000 soldiers had been trained at Borden.

More than half of the soldiers who served in the First and Second World Wars received training at Camp Borden. The name was changed to Canadian Forces Base Borden to reflect the unification of the Royal Canadian Air Force with the Canadian Navy and Canadian Army on Feb. 1, 1968.

The museum, founded in 1970, is an amalgamation of many unit museums. It has two locations on base. The main museum is located at 27 Ram St. and features an impressive collection of military vehicles and military rifles and assault weapons. The Hangar 11 Air Annex, on Hangar Road, explores the birth of air training in Canada into the Cold War.

The hangar is closed for renovations in preparation for the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force on April 1, 2024.

Last year, more than 10,000 people visited the museum, down from pre-pandemic levels but rebounding quite well, Gregory said. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Gregory, who holds a PhD in modern British history with a focus on military history, said Borden’s history speaks to the larger contribution Canada made in the defence of peace and democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

“I think Canadians are unaware of Canada’s enormous contribution in the First World War, Second World War, Korean War and the Cold War,” he said. “One in 10 persons in Canada (was) in uniform in the First and Second World Wars. This is mind boggling, and most of this participation was voluntary.”

He said the 800,000 military pattern trucks (a wheeled vehicle built to military specifications) Canada built in the Second World War was a war-winning contribution. He also pointed out Canada’s outsized participation carried on into the Cold War.

“The size of our armed forces allowed us to maintain very significant forces in Europe, while at the same time contributing to peacekeeping missions,” he said.

Those missions included the United Nations Emergency Force I in the Suez Canal zone and the Gaza Strip in 1956, the Congo Crisis in 1960, and UNEF II at the Suez Canal and, later, the Sinai Peninsula in 1974.

Gregory considers the museum’s collection “one of the richest” in the country.

While he is talking about the intrinsic and historic value of the collection, it’s also worth a substantial sum of money to collectors, if they could get their hands on it.

For example, when you walk into the main display hall in the main museum, one of the first things you see are ancient Harley-Davidson and Triumph motorcycles — the transportation choice of the military police, or Provost Corps as it was known up to 1968.

Three of them are lined up — uniformly, of course — and they’re magnificent, if you’re into that sort of thing.

On display with the motorcycles is a wooden crate that’s never been opened. Inside it is a 1957 500-cc Triumph TRW motorcycle — untouched and perfectly preserved.

It’s a motorcycle collector’s dream.

One just like it, in its original crate, sold at a California auction in 2010 for US$34,500. Conservative estimates suggest it would fetch US$50,000 today — about C$70,000.

“There are many highlights in the museum’s collection,” he said. “We have a 504K (a biplane) in Hangar 11. The 504K was Canada’s training plane for the whole of the 1920s. Many of Canada’s fighter aces in the Battle of Britain trained at Borden.”

In fact, 58 per cent of all pilots trained in Canada in the First World War were trained at Borden.

Back at the main museum, Gregory makes special note of the Ram tank — Canada’s contribution to tank design in the Second World War.

“This tank was the principal training tool for most Royal Canadian Armoured Corps men. We have an M17 light tank used to train Canadian tankers before the arrival of the Ram. Both these tanks underpinned the armored corps’ success in the Italian campaign and the Northwest Europe campaign in the Second World War,” he said.

“I could go on for longer because, even though I have been here for three years, I am discovering little and big treasures all the time.”

Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, BarrieToday.com

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Base Borden Military Museum

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Base Borden Military Museum

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Base Borden Military Museum - Things You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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Tank ride & bazooka Moscow

Only in Russia!

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Starts at 9am

Duration: 1 day

Tour available in

Want to ride a tank? Of course you do.

Welcome to Russia, where everything and anything is possible—especially riding on a tank, shooting an AK-47 and a bazooka, all while drinking vodka.

At Put-in tours, we have put together the ultimate excursion for men (and their girlfriends). Join us in our Soviet van for an entire afternoon of all-inclusive Russian fun on the battlefield!

Start by visiting Park Patriot, the impressive Russian army exhibition center and museum. There, try your driving skills at the T-80 tank official simulator ,  before you ride on two iconic Soviet armored vehicles (BMP-1 and/or BTR-80) on an off-road training path. Along the way, hone your skills while a drill sergeant shouts commands at you. You may not understand, but impress him anyway with your grenade launching technique and AK-47 assembling speed. Or suffer the consequences.

After that, take another shot of vodka , enjoy the army field lunch provided, and move on to the next activity…

Honey, I shot a bazooka!

Phase two brings a variety of iconic Russian war weapons to the tip of your trigger finger. Learn about and test the Makarov PM, PPSH-41, Kalashnikov AK-47, RPK, DP28 machine gun, several semi-auto or auto carbines and more… Firing off a bazooka is the grand finale, sure to leave you breathless—just before you send the photos to your mom.

To prevent you from inadvertently blowing up your best friend or transforming your girlfriend into a strainer, we only use non-lethal (but real!) ammo.

And because you’ll want to keep the good times rolling, we also offer a 10% discount on pub-crawl tickets.

Hotel pick-up (when possible –  please contact us)

Transport in our classic Soviet van

Army field lunch, drinks and vodka

Visit Park Patriot & try the T-80 tank simulator

Ride on a iconic Soviet armoured vehicle: BMP-2

Shoot 10 Soviet rifle rounds and 1 bazooka shell

Adults : 28 100 RUB / passenger

Good to know

Please contact us before the tour to make an appointment

No minimum age

Shooting and bazooka are blank for security reasons

Let us know if you have any food allergies or special dietary needs

Don’t wear your best shoes

Join the experience, book your seat now!

* we run this excursion for groups > 5 persons. If you are less then 5 people, please contact us by email to know about availabilities.

Generally, hotel pick-up is possible . Contact us beforehand to make an appointment.

Otherwise, we will pick you up at 9:00 in front of St Basil’s Cathedral , on the red square.

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At Put-in tours, we put you in our classic Soviet vans to go explore Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Russian culture off the beaten path. Discover our Moscow city guided tour, visit Moscow by night, join our banya & Sergiyev Posad excursion, visit and dine in one of Moscow's oldest monastery or even Luzhniki stadium, before you party on our famous pubcrawl! Original and atypical tours : Shoot AK47 and a bazooka after riding on a tank with our tank & bazooka excursion ! Extreme tours: Fly a fighter jet in Moscow onboard a L-29 or L-39 aircraft!

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