Ontario: Diefenbunker

Diefenbunker (pronounced DEE-fen-bun-ker), Canada's Cold War museum, is a time capsule of what could-have-been, but did not become. Thank God!

When I looked at the website there were lots of tickets available for tours. Unsure of our exact plans, I did not buy them in advance. For $19.50 CAD ($15 USD) we could enter, or for a few dollars more we could enter and have a one-hour tour. It was a thirty-second no brainer to upgrade to the tour. 

The line to buy the ticket in person was a little slow. People were giving up and buying tickets online. I was about to do so, too, when the man behind us, Alex, said the tours were sold out for the day. 

There goes that plan.

When it was our time to buy tickets I innocently asked about a tour. Braden, the ticket seller, asked how many in our party. I answered, two, plus our new friend behind us. Braden was also the 1:30 pm tour guide. He agreed to add us to his group. 

We had a little time to wander around the first floor of the museum. It was eerie walking through the hallways. The rooms had 1960s furniture and technology. In some ways the furniture reminded me of working for a non-profit in the 1990s. 

One of the rooms described the Cold War as a war of propaganda. Wow! That hit home! The Cold War lasted from the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall (1945-1991).

I saw a quote that also hit home: As Canadians we like to think of ourselves as peaceful rule followers, often in contrast to our neighbors to the South. The Cold War frequently highlighted our distances. 

As do current events, one could add.

We saw the medical and psych wards. They look like something out of a horror movie.

Around the bend we met Chuck, and 80-year-old Navy veteran who was stationed here for a while. When he is not volunteering at Diefenbunker, he swims three kilometer races. I could have spent hours interviewing him, but our tour was coming up in ten minutes.

The bunker is also home to an exhibit educating the public about the DEW line. The Distant Early Warning line, or DEW for short, was carved out as a way to be able to communicate threats quicker. That sounds innocuous. The arctic RADAR stations designed to detect enemy ballistic missiles were built on Indigenous lands forcing people to relocate, and making the water toxic. It destroyed people and cultures. It was only in use from 1955 to 1957.

~~~

It was time for our tour. We were supposed to be 24, but Braden let another ten people (including us) join. True to his word, he was an excellent tour guide. His voice carried. He kept us engaged and together. He later said he is going to school to be an elementary school teacher. His skills shone.

Diefenbunker was built to maintain 530 workers for thirty days in the event of a nuclear blast. There was a strict list that included government officials, military personnel, and civilians needed to help them survive (secretaries, doctors, nurses, chefs, etc.). No exceptions were made to that list, not even to include the wife of the Prime Minster as we learned later on the tour.

In the late 1950s Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker realized there was a growing concern of nuclear war. If that happened, life would be obliterated. Many countries were creating these bunkers to be able to sustain life. The official name was the Central Emergency Government Headquarters (CEGGQ), later it became the Canadian Forces Station Carp (CFS Carp). Diefenbunker was the derogatory name the liberals, his political enemies, gave it when it was being built. Of the names, it is the one the most fun to say and became the name of the museum. 

It was commissioned in 1959 in the height of the Cold War for $22 million CAD ($200 million CAD in today's dollars). The closest they ever came to needing it was during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which was (thankfully) averted. Decommissioned in 1994, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and reopened in 1998 as a museum.

At its lowest, it is 75 feet below ground. Most everything in it still works, though Braden pointed out the water fountains and most bathrooms are no longer functional.

We entered the one-ton steel entrance door. In the case of a nuclear blast, the first stop would be to take a decontamination shower before joining everyone else. Those words spoken so soon after the freeing of Auschwitz must have given some the shivers. They would shuck everything they were wearing and toss it down a chute into an underground lead-lined box where it would be burnt. Everything. Wedding rings, included. The only exception was eyewear since contact lenses were not a thing, and seeing was key. After the shower, your level of radiation was checked using a Geiger counter.

The facility had confinement rooms, and a morgue that was never used.

The medical center gives off horror movie vibes.

The facility had enough oil to run for six months, but only enough food for thirty days. Unlike some other countries, they did not have the ability to grow food. They knew their bunker was less than every other country, but figured 30 days would be enough since 24 days after the blast in Hiroshima the toxic levels had lowered enough.

The facility was designed using earthquake measures, such as not having flat surfaces on the tops of their cabinets, and putting cages around lightbulbs. They figured the blast from a missile would be akin to that of an earthquake.

There were 78 toilets.

Of the 535 people, only 110 were women. Diefenbaker only had one woman in his cabinet. Trudeau had a 50/50 split.

The bunker relied on underground well water, which in 2002 was deemed to have too much lead in it to be drinkable.

Throughout the museum, you can see how technology evolved from the late 1950s through to the early 1990s when it was decommissioned. From teletype to desktop computers. Throughout its history it housed 20-100 military personnel, but was never used in an emergency.

The bunker was able to be built so quickly because it was built at sea level, with an artificial manmade hill built on top of it. They chose the site in Carp because it is an hour outside Ottawa (the capital of Canada), and because it was the site of a quarry that had been excavated. Instead of digging down, they filled in what was missing. It only took 18 months to build the 100,000 square foot facility. It was not a well-kept secret.

When there are 535 people living in tight quarters, you learn to live in shifts. There was no life outside of the bunker. You worked for eight hours, slept for eight hours, and had eight hours a day for leisure. You only had one meal a day, an MRE (Meals, Ready-to-Eat) each.

Unlike in the United States, the Prime Minister is not also in charge of the military. In Canada, that role belongs to the second in command, the Governor General.

The museum starts on the ground floor where most people would have slept.
Down one floor is the war room where the government personnel did their job. Note the ash trays ... smoking was very much allowed in these rooms. Cigarettes would become currency.

The Prime Minister would sit at one end of the table. The Governor General at the other. Real decisions would have been made at this table. On one wall is a clock identifying seven time zones--6 for Canada (including Newfoundland's half hour time zone), and Universal Central Time, which we refer to as GMT. Life was on GMT in the bunker. In reality, it would not have mattered since the world outside the bunker would have ceased to exist.

The giant TVs on the walls brought many of us back to our youth. They were how people communicated between rooms inside the bunker, not to watch what was on TV outside the bunker.

The Minister of National Defense wanted their own bunker at NORAD in North Bay. They had phone lines to connect the two bunkers.

We saw the Prime Minister's suite with his one-person cot. His wife did not make the cut. Diefenbaker swore he would never go underground and leave his wife behind. Deputy Prime Minister Donald offered to leave his wife behind and take his place in the event of a blast. At the time he was the Finance Minister. Diefenbaker famously did not get along with President John F. Kennedy, so that might have been part of his decision.

In 1962 there were 15 cabinet members on the list, plus five people per cabinet member. 

Oddly there is a tiny room with a telephone people could use to call their loved ones outside the bunker. It was mostly used by military personnel who maintained the space, never after a nuclear blast.

As we waited for the tour I met a man from the former Soviet Union. I wonder what he thought of the museum. He did way he never went to something similar in Russia. Then again, I never went to anything like it in the United States. It would have been interesting to hear his take afterwards. Canadian and American propaganda was anti USSR, and I'm sure he grew up with anti-American and Canadian propaganda. 

In addition to the bunker, there was a series of transmitter sites from Carp to Pennsylvania to be able to communicate with the President of the United States. There was red phone, now in storage, for the Prime Minister to use.

In 1977 the current Prime Minster, Pierre Trudeau, visited Diefenbunker to see where the military spending was going. He cut their budget in half. At the time there was a detente, and relations were being normalized. 

The cafeteria has not changed much. There is a recreation room with pool tables, and darts to keep entertained. You ate your one meal a day during your recreation time. When it was a military base they had a chef visiting daily from Carp. The food was so good it was rated the second best military base food, the top ratings going to the one in Quebec that also served poutine.

Alcohol was prohibited, but they have found dozens of beer and rum bottles hidden in the walls and ceiling. They had "thrills gum" to mask the smell of alcohol.

We saw the vault where they would have moved the gold into for safe keeping, and the cold storage that could have doubled as a morgue.  

They figured they were three hours away if Russia sent a missile. Three hours of mass chaos as plans were put into place.

Diefenbunker was busier than usual that day. They cap at 500 visitors for safety. I can't imagine that many people inside at once, especially not to live with for thirty solid days!