Document #1:
History of Emergency Preparedness in Canada
During the mid to late 1990s certain officials in Emergency Preparedness Canada (EPC) became concerned that the history of Canadian emergency planning in its many configurations was not being recorded for future generations to consider. To mark the 50th anniversary of such planning efforts David McConnell of Heritage Research Associates Inc., was engaged to review relevant documents and to compile such a history. This document appears never to have been formally published as a paper document but it is available in electronic form which is reproduced in this section of this website as the document “Plan for tomorrow …TODAY! The Story of Emergency Preparedness Canada 1948-1998”.
Document #2
You Will Survive Doomsday by Bruce Beach
Document # 3
A Cold War Museum in Sunny Climes (click to view)
A 27-year-old history buff in California has spent his $300,000 inheritance on creating one of the world’s leading collections of Cold War memorabilia. Why? He’s afraid communist culture — particularly East German culture — will die out before it is properly studied.
Document # 4
Epilogue: The Cost of the Cold War (an interesting read….)
By Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing
“The Cold War was a confrontation between military giants. A balance of terror preserved the world’s peace. But the balance was struck at a ludicrously high and costly level; both the United States and the Soviet Union equipped themselves with thousands more nuclear missiles than were needed for selfdefense, or to deter the other. Those weapons, added to conventional armaments, cost the superpowers trillions of dollars; much of this money was wasted, and could have been diverted to other social needs, though we do not know that it would have been. Each side could regard some crucial part of the cost as essential to containing the other.”
Document # 5
Briefing Note…Vital Points Program by Dave Peters (ca. 2001)
The VP Program described below ceased to exist in the latter 1990s. It was replaced by the Critical Infrastructure (Program?) * in the early 2000s (about which the author knows very little). The paper is based on his recollections as Chair of the VP Committee from 1983 to 1992, interviews with some of the former participants in the Program, and his knowledge of the files and associated documents.
The Aim of this briefing note (produced by the author in the lats 1990s) about the VP Program was to provide a background briefing (for those interested on the Vital Points Program as it operated until it demise), with emphasis on how it was organised and functioned during the eighties and early nineties.
The Objective of the Program as it was constituted until the latter 1990s was to ensure that in the event of peacetime or war emergencies, facilities and services vital to the country, province, territory, region or municipality had been identified and their security requirements determined.
The Definition of a Vital Point was “a facility, resource, or service considered essential to the security and continued efficient functioning of the country and/or a province or territory and which therefore warranted extra security precautions to protect it from disruption, destruction, or disclosure”. There were three categories of vital points with the highest 100- 150 or so warranting a detailed inspection and analysis by the RCMP. All told the total number of approved and catalogued points varied between 1500 and 2000. The list was of course classified and the ‘ledger’ held by the RCMP.
* https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/crtcl-nfrstrctr/cci-iec-en.aspx