(Editor’s note: George Brimmell, veteran journalist and foreign correspondent, died in 2021 at 91. As a reporter with the Toronto Telegram in 1961 Brimmell uncovered one of the great secrets of the postwar era, the construction of the Emergency Arms Signal Establishment at Carp, Ont. It was a mammoth civil defence facility designed to house the federal cabinet in case of World War Three. Brimmell recalled those Cold War days in an October 30, 2009 interview with Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan. Following is a transcription of his remarks)
There was a good possibility in the event of nuclear war the enemy would bomb the nation’s capital. Where would you go? How far would you have to go to escape? Well, there would be no way of knowing where the fallout would land. Had there been a nuclear attack it would have been hell and there wouldn’t be very many survivors of any direct hit in a major city.
People were apprehensive, terrified as to what the future might hold. Lots of schoolchildren feared they would never grow up. It was that kind of climate.
I’d heard of this “Signals Establishment” at Carp. My editor said, “Get out to Carp and see what they’re doing out there.”
There was a big fence topped with barbed wire, “No Admittance.” Then I went around town and interviewed people. This project had been going on for a good long while. The people in town were very conscious of what was happening though all the work was supposed to be secret.
We wound up breaking the story. The headline read, “This Is The Diefenbunker.” Well, that just blew the thing wide open.
Prime Minister Diefenbaker tried to get me fired. He called me in. I remember Dief standing over the newspaper. “This is exactly what the Russians want to know,” he said. “You can be sure this is on its way to Moscow right now even as we’re speaking. This is going to cost me 100,000 votes in the next election.”
He was just infuriated. He was trembling with rage. He was just shaking. So he tried to get me fired at the Telegram. I remember thinking, this is really something. Can you imagine a reporter getting fired because of a story he’d written?
It reminded me of the man who’s ridden out of town on a rail and says, “If it wasn’t for the honour of the thing I’d just as soon walk!”
