Canadian Museum of Nature

The Canadian Museum of Nature is Canada's national natural-history museum - and more. Located in downtown Ottawa, the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, our heritage castle, is Canada's first purpose build museum. It's a national historic site and the birthplace of Canada's national museums.  The Museum opened in 1914 and today houses six world class galleries that profile fossils, mammals, the water and oceanic environment, live creatures, birds of Canada and our Arctic.

 

Behind the scenes, the Museum is also a research institute with an active field research program focused on finding, and cataloging nature across Canada. From fish to minerals, fossils to Arctic plants, every year our researchers can be found in the field gathering and learning all about what lives across our land. Their reserach helps create the knowledge the provides evidence of how the earth, and our climate, at changing.