Over the past month and some of the upcoming ones, photographers are documenting the popular areas of the Bunker as well as some of the hidden ones. The photographers are donating their valuable skills and artistic visions to help us build an anthology of striking and visually stunning photographs.  The goal is to curate from these photos an exhibition of Bunker Photography and publish them in a coffee table book of bunker history juxtaposed with artistic imagery.

So far the Bunker has hosted: Rémi Theriault, Paul Galipeau, David Forcier, and Pierre Richardson

You may view some of the sample/recon photos on their Flickr pages, and here is a link to the slideshow that David put together, Amazing!

Of course we feel that this is the perfect gift, especially for that James Bond fan you know or that certain someone you just cannot buy for. We have attractively packaged our membership cards with some other items from our Cold War Store to create a truly unique and exclusive holiday package.

For a donation of $100 CAD you will receive along with this year long membership & classy package, the priceless  feeling that comes with knowing you have helped to preserve one of Canada's National Historic Sites.

Happy Holiday Shopping!

The Diefenbunker is very pleased to be able to offer FREE admission to a guided tour of the museum to Canadian Armed Forces personnel and Veterans. This program will run until February 1, 2010. Please follow this LINK to the downloadable coupon.

On Novemeber 9 we officially opened the cool new Exhibit/Interactive space in the Bunker devoted to Elementary-aged students. The space's design is taken from the pages of award wining author Tim Wynne-Jones' Rex Zero series of books. Rex Zero stories are set in Ottawa, Canada during the early 1960s and Tim's attention to detail in describing Rex's world made it easy for us to re-imagine his bedroom, his classroom, and key Ottawa landmarks from that time period.

We were happy to have Tim with us at the opening which (not so coincidentally) coincided with the launch of his brand new Rex Zero novel, Rex Zero, The Great Pretender. he read from both his first and new book to the inaugural class to workshop with us in the space - The grade 5ers from St Michael Corkery Catholic School.

Listen to Tim and host Alan Neal talk about the space and Tim read from his new book on CBC`s All In A Day: Best of All In A Day, Nov 9, 2009

Listen to CBC's Kate Porter as she tours the Bunker with Executive Director Alexandra Badzak and learns about the museum's capacity project.

A videographer named Craig Urquhart has been traveling across Canada and gathering footage for 2 separate projects - one for CBC and the other for Korean TV. Craig and his crew are came to Ottawa last week and they’re hoping to feature the Diefenbunker on their program. The purpose of the new online/television show is to rediscover Canada from a foreign and insider perspective, from the Atlantic to the Arctic to the Pacific. Canada is seen as a continent-sized country. The focus will be on very unusual destinations, remote areas, urban life and the people and culture. There will be lots of interviews and events. Outdoor and urban life will both be emphasized. The program will air online on the CBC website as well as on Korean television.

We were very happy to accommodate the road weary yet enthusiastic crew and Les gave them an exclusive late night tour of the Bunker.

The new Diefenbunker YouTube channel made its debut today with its "Cold War Music & Music Videos" playlist. Over time we will be compilling playlists of videos uploaded to YouTube relating to: pop music, protest, propaganda, news footage, film trailers, original educational films and more.


Stumbling into The Postal Service's "We Will Become Slhouettes" video was the inspiration for the creation of the: "Cold War Music & Music Videos" compilation which at the moment features a lopsided amount of electronic music produced in the 1980s. This is possibly due to the seemingly good fit of the era between new technologies in music and the technological advances in warfare which were threatening society. Those advances were too sophisticated to be fully understood by the general public (or at times, the musicians). However, there are also plenty of 1960s era protest songs yet to be mined from the youtube servers. When I get to that point I will divide the music into era specific groupings. Until then enjoy the danci-ness of the 80s outlook on Cold War!


"Cold War Music & Music Videos" Playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1181460E64EC2D13

Diefenbunker Channel:

CBC Radio's Darrell Dennis, the host of ReVision Quest. The First Nations celebrity comic, actor and writer entertained and enlightened the crowd as the Keynote Speaker of the conference.












Conference attendees and one of many round table discussions which took place in the Diefenbunker cafeteria.
"Conserving the Modern in a Disposable Age"  
Panel: Andrew Waldon - Canadian Registrar of Historic Places; Scott Williams - Senior Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute; Julian Smith - Executive Director, Willowbank School of Restoration Arts

 


Cultural Resource Management 101 presented by "Heritage Warrior" Dr. Paul Couture of Parks Canada.




 

The Diefenbunker Vice-President and star Volunteer Interpreter: Brian Jeffrey.

Part of what we had to get done to accomodate the beginning phase of the renovation was to relocate the Cold War Store into a new part of the building - The Allard Gallery. Fortunatley the new store looks great and the response has been very positive. From this we can determine that the New New store, which will be housed in a rejuvenated and redesigned original location, will be even better! As always we look forward to your suggestions as to what unique and interesting Cold War or Diefenbunker toys, books, posters, clothing, etc. that you may like to see us supply. The New New Store is scheduled to open by mid-December.


The expansion of the museum will also mean the expansion of our inventory to include more books and collectables. Our store inventory will also be heading online so people may shop for some of the Diefenbunker exclusive items from home and abroad.

The building capacity project will allow us to truly fulfill our mandate by producing more opportunities for the general public and stakeholders to connect to our museum. Once we can allow 500 people in the building at any given time, our ability to mount exhibitions, special events, performances, research activity and educational
programs will dramatically increase. Our collection and preservation activities will also be increased. Specifically and most importanly, once the Diefenbunker is up to full occupancy we will be able to open the museum for self-guided tours. Currently, the public can only access the museum through a guided tour once per day during the week and four times daily on the weekend. Guided tours are necessary, as it is the only way that the museum can restrict visitorship to 60 people at any given time. We are not able to add more guided tours because of limitation on volunteer hours and costs associated with hiring more student guides.

The occupancy issue severely restricts the growth and development of curatorial programming, in that it makes no sense to develop exhibitions and re-creations for an audience that can only access it through a time-burdened tour. Once this issue is resolved, we can change its public hours of operation, allowing visitors to spend as little or as much time on independent viewing as they choose, as well as having the option of taking one of our specialized tours. We would expect to see a dramatic increase in its general attendance figure as a consequence of this project,which will result in an increase of revenue. Public and event-based programming will also be enhanced by this project. The Diefenbunker will develop lectures, symposiums, theatrical andmusical performances, as well as corporate and community functions and fundraising dinners and dances for the general public.We will endeavour to increase financial independence by offering corporate and private rentals of space for a fee. Potentially, we could increase our visitor numbers by 800% as a result of this ability to house more people in the building. Realisitically, we are projecting more modest numbers—50% in the five years following project completion. Increased attendance will result in increased revenue, which will in turn increase budgets for marketing, exhibitions and public programming events which we will host and organize. Facility rentals are also expected to increase by at least 25%. All revenue from non-museumrelated activity will be directed back to exhibitions, conservation and programs. This retrofit project will allow the Diefenbunker to become a fully functioning museum.This relatively modest renovation project is necessary for any future growth in the organization.

After weeks of closing our doors to begin our capacity expansion project, we are back!

During those 2 weeks some exciting changes have begun around the bunker including:

• The opening of the new yet temporary location of our Cold War Store which will serve us will be build and install our "real" new one to be open by Christmas.
• The start of renovation and retrofit of our exit and fire safety system which will see our visitor capacity rise from the current 60 to a whopping 500 visitors by summer 2010!
• A much needed overhaul to the administration offices for the 2 new permanent staff members: Christine Mcguire (Education & Volunteer manager) and Eric Espig (Programs and Public Relations Manager)
• Wonderfully creative and exciting projects born from our brainstorming sessions on how we may accommodate all of the future new visitors to the Bunker!