The memorial and grounds were designed by a WW1 amputee/vet who also oversaw the mosaic in the sepulchre of the tomb of the unknown soldier.
Australia designed the entire city of canberra around the war memorial and the ANZAC parade (think of the Washington mall). Canberra was selected as the site of the future capital in 1911, but most construction happened after 1918 and the layout thusly benefitted.
Here in Canada, Ottawa was built prior to WW1 and was laid out with a different philosophy. There was simply no opportunity to do something like align a WW1 monument with the peace tower.
As for the actual buildings, the Australian memorial was built using cut sandstone and looks majestic. The CWM is all poured concrete, ostensibly to resemble a bunker, but more probably because building in cut stone is prohibitively expensive in the modern era. Canada's museum is actually larger, more square footage, and more stuff on display by a significant margin. The CWM's biggest issue is their curator staff who seem to have no interest in celebrating the Canadian profession of arms and its rich history, nor in accurately describing the artifacts on display.
Every time I go to our CWM, I'm disappointed at how many errors I can point out without even lugging reference materials along. Or how floor space is given over to hosting cocktail parties at the expense of a sensible layout for display vehicles, or how they are more interested in apologizing for bombing the nazis than in pointing out the horror that was the third reich and why it needed to be topped by any means.
Then there's the $17/person fee to even get in the door. The AWM is packed all the time. The CWM, more often than not, is a ghost town.
[/RANT]
