In this week’s look at Timmins history, we wrap up our examination of a Cold War era plan to use underground mines as nuclear fallout shelters.
Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann has told us how as many as 50,000 people could have come here for that purpose in 1961.
The national defence department plan included establishing hospitals down there, and having at least five police officers at every site.
“And they also wanted to block off areas so people couldn’t run into – and this is what I found really interesting – into the working sections of the mine,” Bachmann observes, “because we would still be mining, even though we had all these people living underground.”
She says there was also a big discussion on preventing underground dwellers from high-grading gold ore.
“There was a huge section as well that dealt with morale and how we were going to make sure that people were kept in a happy, happy state, because God only knows what they were looking at in terms of long term for this kind of thing.”
Obviously, the plan was never necessary, but did conclude it was feasible.