Article content continued

Project EASE was so secret that it is not commonly known the Carp Diefenbunker is not the original bunker site, but a backup after a first bunker was compromised. This original bunker was excavated at a remote location in the solid rock of Lanark County in what is now Mississippi Mills before it was abandoned in favour of the Carp site.

Little is known about the original bunker. Construction began a year before the start of the Carp project. An Internet search provided information that the location was abandoned after groundwater flooded the operation 10 kilometres west of Almonte. Using co-ordinates and a radius projection mapped on satellite images, we studied the area for the possible remains of a flooded abandoned bunker site. Noting that the dimensions of the completed Carp bunker are 160 feet by 160 feet, an oddly square shape of those same dimensions was found near Pakenham. The dimensions of the Diefenbunker were overlaid on the shape. It was an exact match.

Located deep within the rugged terrain of Lanark County, this seemed like a logical place for a nuclear bomb-proof bunker. Using the natural protection of the solid igneous rock of the Canadian Shield, this site would also be remote enough to be away from prying eyes and allow construction to proceed in secrecy.

After traversing bug-filled swamps, cliffs and woods of the target area, we came across what looked to be the original bunker site. Carved out of solid rock, a flooded hole four storeys deep lay before us in the woods. A long-abandoned overgrown construction road was probably used to access this secret site in 1958. Many telltale signs of construction still remain — huge piles of crushed, blasted rock lie in piles surrounding the pit that would later be used as back-fill to cover the four-storey concrete bunker box and help to absorb a nuclear blast. Standing at this rugged location, it’s easy to imagine the sights and sounds of a large scale secret military operation underway in this remote wilderness during the height of the Cold War.

Photo by Google / The Ottawa Citizen

Unfortunately, after construction hit groundwater, the site flooded, submerging the lost bunker. With the site now compromised, a secondary site had to be found. That was in Carp, where the new bunker was built and remained in operation until 1994.

The original 1958 site remains a hidden relic of our Cold War past left to succumb to nature and the surroundings from which it was created.