AES Op - Jr said:
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The bunker in Borden has had the main tunnel bulldozed with the remainder left virtually in tact. The bunker itself was totally self sufficient. Having enough food and water to sustain all inhabitants for a prolonged period of time. There was 2 very large electrical generators (the size of small locomotives) that I believe are still underground just needing a tune up and a boost to get going.
I worked in Borden for a couple of years. Pretty cool nonetheless....
An uncle of mine was posted to Borden twice in his military career. When I was a kid he told me once he had to go into the bunker a few times and stay there for a couple days as part of an exercise. It was chilling, though, to hear that my aunt and cousins would not be able to accompany him in the event of a real emergency. The impression I had at the time that was that my uncle's family would be more or less on their own if the balloon went up. Although I suspect now that that was not wholly true. Arrangements would likely have been made to evacuate military families to a safe place in an emergency - if time permitted.
I have heard rumours that there exists a bunker somewhere near or just outside of Capreol, Ontario buried deep in the Canadian Shield. It was supposedly built as a replacement for the bunker at CFS Carp. I've also heard that the Valcartier facility remains fully operational. Anyone got any info to confirm or refute the rumour?
When I served with 'C' Squadron 1st Hussars ('79 ~ '81), the armoury was located in the basement of the Sarnia, Ontario postal building. Interestingly enough, the entire basement/armoury seemed to be configured as a fallout shelter of sorts - but not a hardened one. Part of the basement was hived off from the armoury portion and had rooms that looked like they were intended for storage - of what, I'm not certain. I never went into any of these rooms, and no one else I knew did either. There was no clear indication that this part of the basement was in use by either Canada Post, the regiment, or any other government department located in the building.
The parade square alone was large enough to accommodate many cots to be set up - probably 50 to 60 at minimum.
When going down the stairwell that led into the armoury, you could see a very large generator set located to your left and below, walled in by a cage-like structure. This was interesting to see, considering that the postal building in Sarnia was not a sorting plant, and no critical government departments were located there, either.
My best guess, and a wild one at that, is that the armoury was set up during the days of the National Survival system to house the local Militia during a crisis. Because the armoury didn't offer any definite indication that it was in fact also a fallout shelter, it seemed somehow like a partly-finished project. Maybe further development of the basement-cum-fallout-shelter was abandoned after the National Survival project ended. Or all of the things I've surmised could just be an overactive imagination at work.
By the way, I have toured the Diefenbunker museum at Carp. Very interesting piece of Cold War arcana. I can see why it fell into disuse - not only because of the end of the Soviet nuclear threat, but also the reality that Russian ICBM's by the early 70s were accurate enough to score a direct hit, or come so close as to render the facility non-functional.
