![]() ![]() ![]() But outrage over the exclusive bunker - reserved for 565 people, including the prime minister and his 12 most senior cabinet ministers - persisted. ![]() ![]() Diefenbaker acknowledged the bunker’s purpose after the aerial photograph appeared and vowed that he would never visit it and would stay home with his wife if the bombers and missiles came. Burtch said, to a civil defense system in which, “for the most part, the public was on its own.” In that scenario, planners assumed that radiation from Soviet bombers shot down over Canada would be the main threat. But he said that the military also assumed that the Soviets had reserved their then-limited number of warheads for the United States and would not “waste” them on Canadian targets. Unlike the United States, Canada did not establish an extensive network of stocked fallout shelters to protect civilians, said Andrew Burtch, a historian at the Canadian War Museum and the author of a book about the country’s limited civil defense system. Above the photograph, the headline read: “78 BATHROOMS - and the Army still won’t admit that … THIS IS THE DIEFENBUNKER.” The photograph showed that dozens of toilets were to be installed, a sign that the complex would be more than a small radio base. But it came to be known as the Diefenbunker after John Diefenbaker, the prime minister who commissioned it, more as a form of mockery than in his honor.įor almost two years, during its construction, the bunker and 10 other much smaller bunkers across the country were disguised as military communications centers, which, in fact, was part of their role.īut The Toronto Telegram newspaper exposed the Diefenbunker’s true nature in 1961 with a detailed aerial photograph of its construction site. Since its construction began in 1959, the bunker has carried a variety of official names: Emergency Army Signals Establishment, Central Emergency Government Headquarters and Canadian Forces Station Carp. ![]()
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