From left to right: Board Member, Patricia
den Boer; volunteer, J.J. Gariepy; and,
Education & Volunteer Manager, Heather
Montgomery. 2011

The Diefenbunker's Annual General Meeting for 2010 took place on December 7, 2011 in our cafeteria space. We were proud to present our Volunteer Recognition awards for 2010. Volunteers are nominated by staff and Board Members, and were presented at the AGM by Board Member Patricia den Boer. The Professional Development Award is given each year to a volunteer who uses his or her professional services to maintain and enhance the operations of the Diefenbunker.

Jean-Jacques Gariepy, better known to us as J.J., has been a volunteer at the Diefenbunker since early 2010. He began as a Library and Archives volunteer, bringing his years of experience in document and information management to our collection. He has since worked tirelessly to properly identify and label our non-historic display and exhibit items.

It wasn’t long before we took him up on another of his many skills – translation. J.J. has successfully and professionally translated dozens of documents for us, everything from lesson plans and educational programming to website text and registration forms. In 2010, he worked closely with Christine McGuire to provide the French text necessary for Project Rustic. J.J. is also the man behind the French version of our Audio Guide, our French Visitor’s Guide and countless other French texts for brochures and signs.

It’s not only J.J.’s long list of contributions that make him the winner of 2010’s Professional Contribution Award. J.J.’s attitude and endless willingness to help the Diefenbunker in any capacity make him a joy to work with. He consistently provides us with professional quality services within very short deadlines, and always does so happily.

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 21^st. 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 4^th annual Cold War Memorial and Book Launch that took place on November 16^th. 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 18^th 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 7^th.

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

Over the weekend of September 22^nd to the 25^th, the Diefenbunker attended the 148^th Carp Fair that took place at the Carp Fairgrounds, just a stone’s throw away from bunker! A celebration of Canadian agriculture this fair brought fun rides, scrumptious food, antiques displays, the Strongman competition, as well as some great country headliners!

Five volunteers and three staff members manned the Diefenbunker booth throughout the weekend. Those who stopped by received 2 for 1 admission coupons. All together, we greeted an amazing number of over 700 visitors to the booth and collected great feedback from people who had toured our museum before. So thank you all for stopping by!

Photograph courtesy of Brian Jeffrey, 2011. From Left to Right: Mike Braham, Emily Walsh, Brian Jeffrey.

This past Monday, our volunteers Mike and Les participated in Colonel By Day, alongside other local museum workers and volunteers. The event took place at the Bytown Museum. With a booth set up in a prime location and some Cold War artefacts on-hand, our dedicated volunteers stood (or basked) in the hot sun from 9:30am to 4pm informing (and I’m sure amusing with their great sense of humour) the passers-by. Mike and Les were able to share with people information about our ever improving and varying programs, our volunteer opportunities, as well as the possibility to rent storage space…after all, we are a 100,000 square foot building. They even received a warm visit from our former Director, Alex Badzak. All in all, Colonel By day proved to be a success. We would like to say thank you to Mike and Les for their efforts and we hope to see more people next year!

Photograph courtesy of Mike Braham (Colonel By Day, 2011)

DR STRANGELOVE : ARE YOU ADDICTED? WANT TO JOIN THE CULT?

Or, as Alfred E. Neuman might say “What Me Worry?”

How could a nuclear war start?

One would like to believe that no sane decision could lead to such a war. That would leave only accident or madness.

If you subscribe to the madness theory, come to the Diefenbunker on 16 Aug to watch Dr Strangelove. If you have already seen the movie, it may be time for your periodic fix. Bring some friends - it is often said that madness is better when shared. If you have not already seen the movie, come out and join the cult.

Dr Strangelove was not Stanley Kubrick’s first, or last, war movie, but it was perhaps his most enduring one – capturing new fans at each viewing. This iconic 1964 Cold War movie, a dark satirical comedy, is a leader in the genre of apocalyptic threat movies that sprang up in the 1950s as science, as the military-industrial complex, and as global political instability caused widespread psychological malaise in people’s minds. For the West the Cold War was a period of sustained alert against Communism.

Can one watch a great movie too many times? If a movie is great each time you view it you will appreciate more fully the creative camera styles, the careful writing, the insightful balancing of emotions, the artistic attention to detail, and the skillful acting that goes well beyond script. Dr Strangelove does not, even upon repeated viewings, disappoint. However, does one really watch Dr Strangelove for its artistic merit?

If you are of a certain age, and of a certain musical persuasion, you may recall that one of Johnny Cash's songs featured a man who had to grow up being called “Sue”. Unreal as this may be, I’ll bet that this man would have liked "Sue" a lot better than being called “Merkin” or “Muffley”. The latter two names are only a few of the unique appellations used by the clever and satirical, and perhaps puerile, writers of Dr Strangelove.

Does the movie depict Playboy Magazine like images because one of the writers had worked for Esquire Magazine? Foreign Affaires, really!

One can praise and condemn Dr Strangelove on so many levels. Why go on a roller coaster? Is it the thrill of the fear? Why watch a movie with characters that are clearly over the top? Is it the only way to portray a fatalistic approach to Armageddon without going mad oneself? Why watch a movie with so many sexual innuendoes? Indeed, most scenes have sexual connotations are blunt to the extreme. Is the purpose of the bomber re-fueling, the large phallic cigars, or the orgasmic atomic bomb that Kong rides between his legs to establish a connection between war, sexual obsession and the male sex drive? Why watch a movie that treats such a serious subject as human annihilation as humorous? Is it because nervous laugher eases the pain? Why add distinctive colours to props in a movie that is to be shown in black and white? Is it because a green war table depicts the poker game of war? As in one of Chris De Burg’s songs, one should not play poker with the Devil.

By the time Dr Strangelove was released in 1964 the Doomsday Clock had been extremely close to midnight several times. The nuclear bomb threat was the prism through which the world looked into the future.

The terror of WWII, with its inhumanity and devastation, was still fresh in many minds. Now, looking into the atomic abyss it was even more frightening. The Suez Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall Crisis, the unsettling malaise associated with the assassination of US President Kennedy, the worries of an escalating war in Vietnam, and almost constant announcements of an expanding arms race to counter Soviet achievements in weaponry, in space, in science, and in expanding global reach would not let the world’s population relax. Civil Defence and survival were on the minds of many people. Dr Strangelove would not let the viewers relax either. This first commercially-successful political satire about nuclear war was a cynical, humorous, biting response to the fears of the era.

Kubrick had read a book entitled “Red Alert” (originally “Two Hours to Doom”) by RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter George, published in 1958 under the pseudonym Peter Bryant. George was a pessimistic Englishman deeply committed to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s. The thesis for his book was the almost absurd ease with which a nuclear war could be triggered. Kubrick was introduced to the book through contacts at the London Institute for Strategic Studies when he expressed an interest, because of growing fears in society at large, in the issue of nuclear war. Kubrick then acquired the screen rights to the story and developed a cautionary tale, against the backdrop of an almost blasé attitude towards life, of the unthinkable - the destruction of mankind through nuclear war. As it was being developed the movie evolved from a suspense drama, initially titled “Edge of Doom”, into the almost silly satirical movie we enjoy today.

Apparently the B-52 bomber scenes in Dr Strangelove were so real that the US Air Force investigated to ensure that there had been no security breaches in access to technical information on its weapons systems. And yet, there was no correction on the estimated number of US deaths to be expected in a nuclear attack on the US. In this 1964 movie the estimate was for “only” 10 – 20 million US deaths in a nuclear war of that era. US President Eisenhower had a study done in 1956 and at that time the estimate was about 65% of the 168 million US citizens would perish.

When you tour the Diefenbunker prior to the movie you may be pleased, or disappointed, based upon your gender, to learn that Canadian Civil Defence and Continuity of Government Programmes did not consider Canada to have a “mine shaft gap” and therefore had no plans for a ratio of 10 women for every man in the bunker!

I must admit, I’ve not read Herman Kahn’s “On Thermonuclear War”. I understand that his book popularized the term ‘megadeath’ (1953) in discussing calmly the strategic doctrines of nuclear war, the lack of credibility of a purely thermonuclear deterrent and what “winning” such a war could entail. The term Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)” would shortly follow.

If the movie was to be written against today’s threat backdrop its title could well read something like “My Fellow Citizen – Please Don’t or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Live With The Terrorist Amongst Us”

PS

Come out to the Diefenbunker and share your ideas on this movie with other viewers. You can also go on-line and DiefenBlog your comments on this movie, or on the above comments. How many times have you seen this movie? Why? How many times have you seen this movie at the Diefenbunker? Why?

PPS

If you subscribe to the accident theory of how a nuclear war could start, I would suggest another great Cold War movie, "Fail Safe". It was last shown at the Diefenbunker about a year ago. The same studio that released Dr Strangelove (Columbia Pictures) released the original version of Fail Safe in 1964, shortly after Dr Strangelove. Peter George sued on the charge of plagiarism and made an out-of-court settlement. Fail-Safe was, for its day, an ultra-realistic melodrama that became a commercial hit only long after release. It was re-made and released again in 2000. Want to see this movie (either version) at the Diefenbunker? Let us know. To get a real world feeling for how a nuclear war might start by accident look up NATO ABLE WARRIOR 83 on the Internet.

Perhaps you want to go even further back in time and see / see again, Nevil Shute’s “On The Beach” (1959). This may well have been the start of the apocalyptic post-nuclear war movie. Again, let us know if you want to see / see again this movie at the Diefenbunker.

Dear Diefenbunker enthusiasts and future visitors, please note that our elevator is unfortunately out of order for the time being. You may access the lower levels of the bunker by stair only. We apologize for the inconvenience that this may bring.

The Spy Who Loved Me-Cold War Cinema -June 21nd, 2011. Guided tour a 6:00 pm and movie showing at 7:00 pm. Call for reservations 613-839-0007.

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME - The Bond Saga Continues With Gadgets, Guns & Girls

Ian Fleming aficionados were probably upset in 1977. Not only had they to wait two and one half years for the next new movie to come out, but for the first time a Bond movie did not follow the same story-line as the book of the same title. The book told a story from a heroine's point of view and only introduced Bond well into the tale.

Agent 007 devotees were pleased however in 1977. When this movie was released, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventy-seventh year of the last century (7,7,77), it clearly followed the Bond film formula - beautiful women, gadget laden cars, megalomaniac villains, exotic locales, extreme explosions, dangerous henchmen, violent fights on trains, witty double-entendres to titillate and amuse, and more beautiful women. With a budget twice the size of any of the previous nine Bond movies this one really delivered. In this, the third Roger Moore Bond, there was a return to the more gentlemanly and witty secret agent.

Fleming allowed his 1962 book title to be used for the movie, but not his story. Based upon a script developed by fifteen writers who started work in 1976, the Director and Production Designer crafted a film to thrill Bond movie watchers, even those of today.

The movie reflects the 1970's era of "detente". The Cold War's strained relations between the super-powers had relaxed a little. After all, there was parity in nuclear weapons and Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was the anticipated result of using the weapons. When I first heard use of the word "detente" during the Cold War I was reminded of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (yes, I had to look up the date and name). This treaty divided the globe into two hemispheres, one for the Spanish and one for the Portuguese. This treaty allowed each nation to pursue their aspirations for empire in the New World without fighting each other.

I interpreted the 1970's detente to be a thaw in the Cold War between the East (Soviet Union and allies) and the West (US and allies) so that leaders could focus on domestic requirements, leaving the "empires" of the other alone. The U.S. was financially and emotionally drained by the Vietnam War. The Soviet Union could no longer bear the financial burden of the arms race and feared improved relations between the U.S. and China. By 1975 Space Race tensions were eased with the joint U.S. Soviet Apollo-Soyuz space project. The project consisted of the first ever docking of the space craft from different nations. Indeed, it was the last manned U.S. space flight until the launch of the Space Shuttle in 1981.

Detente is reflected in this movie through cooperation between the best British spy, who we know is James Bond 007, and the best Soviet spy, who we learn is agent Triple X, as their nations fight a common threat - someone is stealing their nuclear weapons laden submarines.

The symbol XXX has many meanings. Don't get excited, this movie intends the symbol to be a warning sign of danger. In radio communications XXX is an indication of urgency, just under an SOS. In computer programming XXX warns programmers of a problematic or misleading code. From the very beginning there are strong indications that Bond should be very careful as his former adversary becomes his partner. Reflecting the 1970's women's liberation movement, James Bond must now share the stage with a female spy, a spy who is his equal. She is just as intelligent, just as lethal and just as resourceful as Bond. She is - "Triple X".

Come to the Diefenbunker to enjoy a movie and slip back to a time when the bunker was still in use. Perhaps not as impressive as the villain's lair in the movie, the bunker remains an engineering marvel nevertheless. Not just Bond fans and engineers, but Cold War buffs and troglodytes will enjoy the Diefenbunker movie night experience.

Watch the movie closely, which of the six host country's construction capabilities are insulted? Which host country provided a great mountain from which to Base Jump? Which country allows smoking in its submarines? Which spy used to advertise for a popular alcoholic beverage manufacturer and now has their character use the same product in this movie? What is a "Wetbike"? Did they really play "Lawrence of Arabia" theme music at some time during this movie? Does James Bond's gun ever miss fire? Did I mention the beautiful girls?