Up to date information on the comings and goings in The Diefenbunker: Canada's Cold War Museum. Also a behind the scenes look at how the museum operates and how the museum team is working after our capacity expansion project to which grew our capacity from 60 to 420 in July 2010!

The Busy Bunker Bees

Posted by Programs Manager On 11:41

This month marks a new beginning for many projects at the museum. Last week, the Diefenbunker staff was busy meeting with Sarah Freeman from CTV to film a segment that aired on Monday, November 21st. Interviews were conducted last Tuesday morning with our knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff members and volunteer on some of the most popularly showcased rooms in the bunker: the Emergency Government Situation Centre (EmGovSitCen), the CBC studio, and of course the blast tunnel. Dressed in military, nursing, and Nuclear Biological Chemical uniforms, the staff offered information regarding the history of the bunker; as it was used in the time of DND occupancy and, as it is used today as a museum. An overview of our youth programming highlighted the segment, as John, one of our supervisors, mentioned Spy Camp while Sarah tried our cipher wheel! Three snippets were aired throughout the day on Monday and are now available on You Tube on the Diefenbunker Facebook page!

http://on.fb.me/uidxR6

The busy bunker bees were also preparing for the 4th annual Cold War Memorial and Book Launch that took place on November 16th. The event commenced with a group tour of the bunker, followed by a beautiful reading from former E.D. and organizer of the event, Ioana Teodorescu, of the translated Romanian text, The Diary of Happiness by Nicolae Steinhardt. Professor David Monteyne of the University of Calgary, subsequently offered a lecture which posed as a synopsis of his book about fallout shelters in America, Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War. It shed light on the differences between blast and fallout shelters, geographic distributions of these shelters in urban and rural areas throughout the Cold War, and the shift in architectural design applied to the structures. The whole event ended with a wine and cheese during which David enthusiastically cut his book-themed cake.

We are also happy to announce that we are working on some family friendly holiday programming this year. On December 18th from 1pm to 3pm, families can partake in story time, arts and crafts, and indulge in our holiday goodies! Expect more specific information to come on the programming shortly. Save the date!

Lastly, during our preparations for these events, we took a pose to attend our museum’s military tour soft-launch two Saturdays ago. Volunteers and staff members a-like, gathered to hear Rob’s, a supervisor here at the museum, presentation on Civil Defense during the Cold War and how it applied to Canada and the Diefenbunker. We hope to officially launch this tour at the Annual General Meeting on December 7th.

To subscribe to our e-newsletter, please contact administration@diefenbunker.ca.

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