Did you know that colouring promotes mindfulness and can help relieve stress?
Simply download the colouring page (PDF & JPEG options), grab your coloured pencils, crayons, and/or markers. Then, have fun colouring the Bunker! You can even save to your tablet or phone and colour from your favourite colouring app!
We would love for you to share your finished work with us on social media tagging @diefenbunker #diefenbunker.
We’ll keep adding more colouring pages. So check back soon and enjoy!
The Blast Tunnel
The Blast Tunnel was designed to divert the force of an explosion away from the main part of the bunker.
- There is only one main entrance to the building, and there was concern that a major explosion could block, damage, or otherwise disable it. While there were contingencies for that possibility, it was to be avoided as much as possible.
- The tunnel is 387 feet long (approximately 150 meters).
ORIGINAL IMAGE
Nuclear Deer
The original artwork for Nuclear Deer was created by local Ottawa artist, Marc Adornato.
Adornato held an exhibition at the Diefenbunker in 2018 called “Ruined Landscapes” and he donated one of his finished works to our permanent collection. Ruined Landscapes is a painting series whereby Adornato ‘hijacks’ vintage, mass-produced, Bob Ross-style landscape paintings found in thrift stores and antique shops. Then, he paints in hazmat cleanup crews and man-made environmental disasters. Many of the painting titles are appropriated from actual news headlines from real accidents that have occurred in Canada. Train derailments, fuel truck rollovers, oil tankers running aground, and illegal chemical dumping are just some of the toxic disasters reflected in these truly Canadian landscape paintings.
You can message him on his website adornato.com to order one of his prints and to order one of these nuclear deer’s on a shirt (or even a onesie!).
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The Shirts
CBC Studio
Our CBC Studio was the lead station in the Emergency Broadcasting System during the Diefenbunker’s operations.
An alarm button would have alerted CBC radio stations across Canada that a national emergency was underway, and they were to switch their transmitters over to the emergency network. At that time, those radio stations would be under the control of the console in the Bunker.
Signals from the studio were sent via landlines (wires) to the CBC site at the Chateau Laurier as well as breakouts to every radio station in Canada.
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The Bank of Canada Vault
In the 1960s, Canada was on a version of the Gold Standard (the Bretton Woods) which tied our currency not only to the US Dollar but also to the price of gold. The Bank of Canada would have stored 800 tons of gold in this underground vault if they had reason to believe an attack was imminent. If that gold had been destroyed or irradiated, Canada would have no money with which to rebuild the country.
The door to the vault weighs just over 13 tons and is made of solid stainless steel. Including the mechanism and frame, the whole thing weighs about 30 tons. It requires four people to open and close because four separate combinations are required, and no one would have access to all four.
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Battery Room Door
Just one simple message: Wash Your Hands.
This is the warning sign on the outside of the Battery Room, down on the 100 level (bottom floor) of the Diefenbunker.
ORIGINAL IMAGE