The highlights will include life-sized figures, like this armoured general, that were meant to guard the First Emperor in the afterlife. (Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau/Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre)

Four museums across Canada are preparing for an invasion by China's famed terracotta warriors, with Victoria and Calgary slated as additional stops to the previously announced shows in Toronto and Montreal.

The Canadian tour of The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army, slated to run from 2010 through 2012, will exceed "the size and scope of all previous North American exhibitions" of the iconic Chinese artifacts, said Salvatore Badali, board of trustees chair for Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum.

Representatives from the Royal BC Museum, the Glenbow, the ROM — the lead institution for the exhibition — and Montreal's Musée des beaux-arts joined Ontario and Chinese government officials to unveil details of the touring show on Wednesday morning.

'The army is coming to us, and ROM is ready to be conquered.'—Chen Shen, senior curator

The exhibit, touted by organizers as bigger than even the British Museum's blockbuster display in 2007 and 2008, will mark the first time the more than 2,200-year-old Chinese artifacts will be exhibited in Canada.

"This year, the army is coming to us, and ROM is ready to be conquered," quipped Chen Shen, ROM's chair of east Asian archeology and the senior curator who assembled the exhibit.

The Canadian show "is completely different in content and context" than other recent exhibits of the warriors, including the show that has been touring the U.S., Shen emphasized.

"Our story starts 600 years before the birth of Emperor Qin," the ancient leader who commissioned the more than 8,000 terracotta warriors and figures to guard his vast underground tomb, "and ends 200 years after his death," Shen said.

The Canadian tour will include pieces dating from long before Emperor Qin, including this jade pendant used by a Duke of Qin, one of his ancestors. (Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau/Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre)

Highlights of the tour, which will feature more than 250 objects, include:

• The earliest prototypes of the terracotta warriors.
• The Qin royal family's collection of jade.
• The earliest war painting ever discovered in China.
• Eighteen life-sized sculptures comprising generals, warriors, horses and acrobat entertainers newly discovered by archeologists working at the still-in-operation dig site in Xi'an, in China's Shaanxi province.

According to Shen, many of the artifacts featured in the Canadian tour have never before been seen outside China. Some of the newer pieces have never even been displayed in Chinese museums, he pointed out.

"They are new archeological discoveries," said Shen, noting that new finds must be registered through an official published report before being authorized for lending by China.

"I'm very fortunate, I am able to read the reports, and I know [the new pieces] are available and I hand-picked from the assortment," said the Chinese-born curator.

'Different perspectives, different storylines'

While Shen and his international peers working on the recent shows in the U.K. and the U.S. were aware of what type of show each was pulling together, it wasn't a competition, he said.

Each has had "different perspectives, different storylines, views towards their visitors and audience, and the experience they wanted to share with their audience," Shen noted.

The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army will open at Toronto's ROM on June 26, and moves to the Musée des beaux-arts in February 2011.

Pending final approval from the Glenbow's board, expected in the next few weeks, the exhibit is tentatively slated to spend the summer and fall of 2011 in Calgary.

The Canadian tour will end in Victoria at the Royal BC Museum in late 2011 to early 2012.

Almost 2,000 full-sized warriors and horses have been unearthed (out of an estimated 8,000 buried) from three pits located in China's Shaanxi province. (Royal Ontario Museum)