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Canadian Automotive Museum

automobile museum in Ontario, Canada

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ5029747
Source-derived summary

The Canadian Automotive Museum is an automobile museum located in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. The museum notably features many Canadian-made cars. The automobile industry, specifically the Canadian division of the General Motors, known as General Motors Canada, has been based in Oshawa since the early 20th century.

History

The museum was founded in 1962 by a group of Oshawa businessmen through the Oshawa Chamber of Commerce. The venture was initiated mainly to preserve the automotive history of Canada and to present this history in an educational and entertaining manner. Canadian Automotive Museum, Inc. is a charitable corporation and has been in operation since 1963.

The museum is housed in a 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2) building in downtown Oshawa that was originally the location of Ontario Motor Sales, a local car dealership, in the 1920s. The building maintains its original period architecture right down to the original elevator used to move cars to the second floor.

Vehicles on display

The museum has two floors: the ground floors features foreign cars, while the upstairs features a "Made in Canada" exhibit.

Editorial summary

“Canadian Automotive Museum” enters the record as automobile museum in Ontario, Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Canadian, Automotive and Museum can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1962, 1963—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Canadian, Automotive and Museum.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Canadian Automotive Museum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Canadian, Automotive and Museum provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5029747. Authority coordinates are 43.895, -78.862. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962 and 1963.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Canadian Automotive Museum”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Canadian Automotive Museum primary sources, Canadian Automotive Museum archive and Canadian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Canadian Automotive Museum”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Canadian Automotive Museum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.