Timothy Allan Johnston
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​​Published in the November 2015 issue of the Kerby News

Sirens’ Song Silenced

Driving the byroads in the hills southwest of Calgary is a calming and peaceful way to spend a few hours. No matter the season, the area offers constantly changing vistas, beautiful fields and forests and sweeping views of the Rocky Mountains. The sky provides a canopy of exquisite colors, and clouds dapple hillsides with sunlight and shadows. I drive the hills with my camera on the car seat beside me, ready to capture such views as the hills may reveal.
 

Near the end of one such trip this spring, two objects lying in a field beside the road grabbed my attention. As I was stopping the car, I mentally processed what they were. I knew I had seen similar objects long ago and then, I remembered.
 
The objects were steel poles, approximately 15 meters in length, atop each of which was a steel mesh platform measuring 3 meters per side and enclosed by guardrails. In the middle of the platforms were electrical circuit boxes and very large horn-shaped devises. What I had come across were two of Calgary’s air raid sirens from the cold war years lying forlorn and rusting before me.
 
In a speech in Fulton, Missouri on March 6, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill coined a term that stayed in everyone’s consciousness for a long time after. He was describing the closing off of central European countries by the Russians following defeat of Nazi Germany. Churchill said that “an iron curtain” had descended across Europe, a reference to the presence of Russian military and political power that resulted in the loss of national independence for many countries and the isolation of millions of their inhabitants from the western world. The Cold War between East and West was underway.
 
The silent sirens rusting in the field were vivid reminders of a time when people in North America and Europe (and the Soviet Union, presumably) believed that the end for all humanity could occur at anytime. The explosions of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki bode the future outcome of world conflict. The rapid development of ever more powerful hydrogen bombs by the United States and Russia and the fleets of bombers to deliver them, meant that very few populations would be immune to damage in a future war. International incidents between Russia and the West continued to drive the hands of the Doomsday Clock closer and closer to midnight.
 
Against such an “end of the world” backdrop, civil defense organizations were brought into being. Their purpose was to help ensure the survival of large numbers of populations by way of providing shelters or by organizing ways and means to evacuate people from likely target areas. To celebrate the success of civil defense planning across Canada, the first national Civil Defense Day took place on October 4, 1957. That same day, Russia launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Sputnik weighed only 63 kilograms and sent back to earth only simple radio signals. It circled Earth every 98 minutes. To Western observers, however, the real fear of this achievement was that Russia now had the ballistic capability to deliver nuclear warheads, which could reach the continental United States in less than 40 minutes from launching, and against which there was no defense.
 
The city of Calgary took the threat of nuclear war very seriously and civic leaders saw to the organization of the Calgary Target Area Civil Defense Committee. Calgary was deemed to be a likely target because of its importance in the oil and gas industry, its manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure and the importance of the Canadian Pacific Railroad mainline. In a pamphlet produced by the Committee entitled “If War Should Come,” it was noted that an attack could come within 15 minutes of a warning blast from the air raid sirens. Steady three-minute blasts meant an attack was probable, rising and falling notes meant take cover.
 
Options for trying to survive an attack were listed, those being to seek cover in a blast proof shelter; to evacuate to safe accommodation arranged for in advance; to leave the city and rely upon obtaining protection and supplies from reception communities; or to stay within properly stocked fall-out shelters and plan to improvise against the dangers from the explosion.
 
The director of the Calgary Target Area, Geoffrey Bell, believed that anyone left in the city would not survive a nuclear attack and that the promotion of shelters was a placebo meant to assuage public anxiety. Instead, the Calgary Committee developed elaborate plans for a general evacuation. The city was divided into eight zones or “drainage areas” and these were further divided into “drainage sectors”, each with its own evacuation routes and destination communities identified. For example, people living in the Blue Area, comprising what was then most of northeast Calgary, would drive their cars to the Edmonton Trail or the Trans Canada Highway and then north on Highway Two to 14 reception communities from Beiseker all the way to Trochu. Calgary’s civic government would evacuate to Olds.
 
Other information distributed to Calgarians outlined how to proceed once the sirens started to wail. Schools would close and children sent home. Someone at home would gather food and clothing for the evacuation. With everyone assembled, the car loaded and the house locked and safe, the family would set off for its predetermined destination. People were warned to follow the traffic stream out of their respective sectors to avoid chaos and the endangering of thousands of people. If on the road when the “take cover” sounded, drivers needed to keep going to avoid traffic pileups behind. If a brilliant flash of light occurred, drivers would duck their heads but keep going. Car windows would be left open to let any blast wave go through.
 
The Calgary Target Area Committee and provincial and federal civil defense leaders devised an elaborate test of civil defense preparedness. As well as exercising evacuation procedures the test would stand as proof that, by way of carefully planned evacuations, cities and towns in western nations could absorb atomic attacks and still have most of their populations survive. Operation “Life Saver” took place on September 28, 1955 and involved the voluntary participation of residents in Northeast Calgary. Approximately 6,000 people took part, evacuating on pre-determined exit routes to outlying communities. The Royal Canadian Air Force then staged a simulated attack on the partially evacuated area of the city. Representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were on hand to witness the exercise and all Calgary media as well as Time Magazine, Maclean’s and the Saturday Evening Post, among others, covered the events of the day. It is believed that “Operation Lifesaver” was the largest and most elaborate civil defense exercise ever held in Canada.
 
The two old sirens lying in the field were part of that exercise and stood erect on their poles for many years, ready to warn Calgarians of impending attack. The city had 13 sirens in total with additional single sirens located in Cochrane and Okotoks. I asked permission of the current owner to inspect the sirens up close and to make photographs. Then I walked amongst them on a warm spring morning, thinking of how much the world had changed since the sirens were first installed.
 
Enormous stocks of nuclear weapons still exist. The United States alone maintains operational missile fields in North Dakota, Montana and in the region where the states of Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado converge. Additional missiles and warheads are onboard US Navy Trident submarines and US Air Force strategic bombers. Since 1988, however, missile fields in South Dakota, Missouri and another field in North Dakota have been eliminated.
 
The world has certainly not had peace during or after the Cold War but neither has it had nuclear conflagration. The assured destruction of a nation that first launches missiles by the missiles of the nation on the receiving end of an attack is what has kept missiles in their silos and warning systems, like the old sirens in a rural Calgary field, silent.
Sources
 
City of Calgary, Corporate Records Archives
 
Operation “Lifesaver”: Canadian Atomic Culture and Cold War Civil Defense, Frances Reilly, University of Alberta
 
“If War Should Come” pamphlet, Calgary Target Area Civil Defense Committee, courtesy of Anne Gafiuk
 
Nukewatch Quarterly, Spring 2015