Chilling Memories of the Cold War: A Remembrance Day Special

Canada’s only Cold War museum recalls an era of menace

At first glance there appears to be nothing remarkable about the site: a gate-house at the entrance to a half-empty parking lot, a prefabricated building backed up against a grassy hillock, and a spindly transmission tower in the background. It’s the sort of place you’d drive past without a second thought.

Think again. Beneath the knoll, embedded to a depth of 90 feet, is a colossal structure: 100,000 square feet of specially reinforced steel and concrete encompassing four floors. It is Canada’s only Cold War museum, and along with a small group of intrigued visitors, I am about to walk through an era when the menace of a nuclear attack by the Soviets was terrifyingly real.

So real, in fact that the Treasury fast-tracked this 20-million-dollar (110 million in today’s dollars) project to serve as the nation’s Central Emergency Government Headquarters, with facilities to accommodate up to 500 staff and officers, including the Prime Minister, Governor General, key members of the Cabinet and military top brass. Although, fortunately, it was never used for this purpose, it was maintained for 33 years until 1994 (at the end of the Cold War) when budget constraints led to its closure. It opened its doors to the public as a National Historic Site in 1998.

Back in 1959, however, the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. Or so the Government fondly believed-even though the residents of Carp (about 25 miles west of Ottawa, Canada’s national capital), could hardly have failed to notice heavy equipment trailers roaring through the Village over a two year period from 1959 to 1961. In response to mounting public curiosity the Diefenbaker administration issued a terse announcement that the site was being developed as an “Experimental Army Signals Center” provoking a hoot of derision from the press. They nicknamed it The Diefenbunker and the moniker stuck.

Our tour guide, a clean-cut young man, fills us in on some statistics. “The bunker was designed to withstand a 5 megaton blast at a distance of 1.1 miles,” he says. “To cushion the shock of an explosion the structure is surrounded by a five foot thick layer of gravel, and as you’ll see, many of the pieces of furniture and fittings sit on top of thick rubber pads, while heavy equipment such as air-conditioning units and boilers are mounted on giant springs.” He leads the way into the blast tunnel, a long bleak corridor open at both ends, engineered to allow an explosion to hurtle through it without exerting excessive pressure on the rest of the building. Heavy steel double-doors right angled to the tunnel serve as an airlock sealing off the bunker from exposure to nuclear fallout. A Rad Sniffer radiation detector and de-contamination chambers abut the entrance. The chambers had lead lined bins for discarded clothing and, in the showers, receptacles held bars of pumice and carbolic soap guaranteed to scour away a generous amount of skin, and, it was hoped, radioactive dust as well.

We walk through a maze of rooms - a surgery, dentist’s office, and several dormitories with three-tiered bunk beds (they were occupied in rotation i.e, day shift staff took the place of night shift employees), a morgue and a lock-up for miscreants. We investigate a Bank of Canada vault, the doors of which reputedly cost a cool three million dollars, and take a peek at the Prime Minister’s suite of rooms with their austere original furnishings still in place. An exhibit in the cafeteria describes the contents of bunker’s larder: sufficient fresh produce to last a week, after which, meals would consist of canned provisions and ‘boil in a bag’ military field rations - ranging from ham omelets to Hungarian goulash.

Food supplies were the least of the problems facing the project team, as they grappled with the logistics of housing up to 500 people in a sealed unit for an entire month. Sewage had to be pumped out, and wells sunk to a depth of 120 feet to provide potable water. Down in the machine room we goggle at air purifiers hooked up to gigantic circulation pumps, fire-control equipment and electronic communications gear. The decibel level down there must have been ear shattering. Today, however, the machines loom in the shadows, silent testimony to a war which never materialized.

Nonetheless it is chilling to imagine what might have happened if it did. In an annex leading to the War Cabinet Room we pause in front of an animated diorama. A voice-over commentary tracks the inexorable progression of events following the launch of a Russian nuclear warhead. It makes my skin crawl. What would it have been like for those who were holed up here, agonizing over what sort of world they would emerge to after those thirty days. Would their loved ones be terribly mutilated? Would they even be alive?

A fully equipped CBC broadcasting studio forms the nucleus of the bunker’s communication centre. Our tour guide plays a recording made during the early 60s. A CBC broadcaster, his voice taut with urgency, reads a bulletin of emergency directives. We listen to it cushioned by the safety of hindsight.

Safety, even in hindsight, is of course, a relative term. Walking through these labyrinthine corridors of the Diefenbunker’s history, the psychological terror of those Cold War years comes alive in an eerie sense of deja vu. Although Russia no longer glowers at us across the divide, the sobering reality today is that the horror of war hasn’t disappeared. It merely wears a different guise.

If you go:

General: From Canada Day, every July 1st, to the Labour Day weekend, daily tours through the Diefenbunker run every hour on the hour from 11:00 am to 3 pm. From Labour Day to Canada Day - tours are offered Monday to Friday at 14:00, Saturday and Sunday 11:00, 13:00, 14:00. Admission: Adults ( 18 and over) $12; Seniors (65 and over) $10; Students $10; Children (6-17) $5.00; Children (under five accompanied by adult) free. Reservations are strongly recommended as space on tours is limited For further information on group (or school) tours and reservations phone: 613-839-0007 or (toll free) 1-800-409-1965; e-mail: tour@diefenbunker.ca

Getting There: The Diefenbunker, 3911 Carp Road, is about a 30-minute drive (about 25 miles), west of Ottawa.

Author: Margaret Deefholts