OTTAWA – Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Christine McGuire’s museum began receiving questions unlike anything she’d encountered before in her career.
“We’ve had people ask if we’re still operating as a fallout shelter,” said McGuire, executive director of Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum. “That fear is still very real for people. It seems to have returned to the public psyche.”
The Diefenbunker still has most of the forms and features of the nuclear fallout shelter it once housed important figures in the Canadian military and government. But the underground complex, decommissioned in 1994, has transformed from a working military property into a powerful symbol of a return to an era when the destruction of the world once again seemed to be the a real possibility with a Nuclear-armed Russia raise the specter of using weapons.
Diefenbunker’s history is not only about global tension but also Canada’s cautious approach to civil defense, doomsday optimism and Canadians’ aversion to whatever they consider a special deal for their political leaders. Now, the privately run museum is one of the few places in the world where visitors can tour a former Cold War bunker built to house a government under nuclear attack.
These factors have turned the four-story, 100,000 square foot property with approximately 350 rooms into an unexpectedly popular tourist attraction despite its prime location, in the village of Carp in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada.
Robert Bothwell, a history professor at the University of Toronto, was on the board of an Ontario cultural institution in the 1990s when a group of volunteers proposed turning the bunker into a museum. At the time, he said, several other volunteer-based museums failed to attract visitors even with a lot of funding.
“So I thought: ‘Diefenbunker? Give me a break,’” he said. “But I was completely wrong.”
Since construction began in 1959, the bunker has taken on many official names: Army Emergency Signal Facility, Central Emergency Government Headquarters, and Canadian Forces Station Carp. But it became known as the Diefenbunker after John Diefenbaker, the prime minister who commissioned it, as a form of mockery rather than in his honor.
For nearly two years, during construction, bunkers and 10 other much smaller bunkers around the country were disguised as military communication centers, which was, in fact, part of their role.
But The Toronto Telegram exposed the true nature of Diefenbunker in 1961 with a detailed aerial photograph of its construction site. The photo shows dozens of toilets that will be installed, an indication that the complex will be more than just a small radio facility. Above the photo is the caption: “78 BATHROOM – and the Army still won’t admit it… THIS IS A DIEFENBUNKER.”
Andrew Burtch, a historian at the Canadian War Museum and author of a book on the country’s limited civil defense system.
Part of it is simply the cost, he said. But he said the military also assumed the Soviet Union had stocked its then limited number of warheads with the United States and would not “waste” them on Canadian targets. In that scenario, the planners assumed that radiation from a Soviet bomber shot down over Canada would be the primary threat. That has led to a system of civil defense, in which, “for the most part, the public is its own,” Dr. Burtch said.
Mr Diefenbaker acknowledged the bunker’s purpose after an aerial photograph emerged and vowed he would never visit it and would stay home with his wife if bombers and missiles arrived. But resentment over the reserved bunker – reserved for 565 people, including the prime minister and 12 most senior ministers in his cabinet – persisted. Combined with outcry, the government refused to disclose the cost of the bunker, which was estimated at about $22 million Canadian dollars in 1958 money, or about $220 million today.
From the outside, the Diefenbunker looks like a grassy hillside with a few vents sticking out from behind the ground, along with several antennas, one quite tall. The entrance, added in the 1980s, is through a metal building with rolling garage doors that open into an explosion tunnel, an area designed to absorb the energy of a bomb dropped on the earth. downtown Ottawa. Stretching 387 feet, the blast tunnel connects to a set of doors, each weighing one ton and four tons, followed by a decontamination area that opens up to the rest of the bunker.
Much of the interior of the utilitarian and brightly lit space is a restoration of the original, which was dismantled after the complex was decommissioned and replaced with similar or identical items from smaller bunkers or military bases.
The prime minister’s office and suites are luxuriously designed, its only luxury feature being the turquoise washbasin.
The War Cabinet Room has a projector and four television sets. A military briefing room right next door has an aircraft tracking projector.
The bunker is surrounded by thick gravel layers on all sides to help mitigate the effects of any nearby nuclear explosions. Its plumbing fixtures are mounted on thick rubber sheets and are connected to hoses rather than conduits for the same reason.
The safest and best protected area of the bunker was a hatch behind a door so large that a second, smaller front door had to be opened to equalize the air pressure. It was intended as a place for Canada’s central bank, the Bank of Canada, to place gold if an attack was imminent. There is no record of the bank ever delivering gold there, and the vault became a gymnasium in the 1970s, a spokesman for the Bank of Canada said.
A small armory was raided in 1984 by a corporal stationed in the bunker. He stole a large number of weapons, including two submachine guns and 400 rounds of ammunition before driving to Quebec City, where he shot dead three people and wounded 13 others at the provincial legislative assembly.
The complex was designed to store enough food and generator fuel to support residents for 30 days after a nuclear attack, assuming that radiation levels on the ground would then be low enough. so everyone can show up.
But the need never arose, and the bunker remained scorned. In the end, the only prime minister to visit it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, father of Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister, who flew in a military helicopter in 1976. After the trip, his government cut back. budget.
Now, visitors from across Canada and abroad flock here to experience for themselves this window into the Cold War past — and perhaps for the sense of security that many people today crave.
This is also a rare opportunity to step inside the bunker built for endurance a Nuclear Armageddon.
While bunkers from different wars are scattered around the world and open to visitors, Cold War bunkers are much less common. A decommissioned bunker under Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia — intended to accommodate all members of Congress — offer toursbut ban phones and cameras.
Gilles Courtemanche, a volunteer tour guide at Diefenbunker, was a soldier stationed there in 1964, when he was 20 years old. He worked there for two years as a signalman, setting up and maintaining the communication and computer infrastructure. He was one of 540 civilian and military members who operated the bunker on three shifts before it was decommissioned.
Things have turned out perfect for him and for Canada. His youth Cold War turned into new types of threats, he said.
“It’s an important thing we have here,” said Mr Courtemanche, referring to the museum’s ability to remind visitors of past and present threats. “Now, the Chinese are starting to show their strength, what about the Russians? Well, I don’t understand what they’re doing. To me, that’s madness.”
