The opening ceremony was cancelled because of the death of King George VI. Work was completed by February 1952, with the project coming in $5,000 over budget. However, a petition against rezoning proved ill-matched against Cold War hysteria, and for $60,000, the Poole Construction Company received the contract to begin construction. Locals “claim the district is a residential area, and as such a large civil defence office should not be built there,” notes a newspaper clipping from July 26, 1951.
Instead, they were preoccupied about what the provincial government had decided was the logical thing to do in the circumstances: plan a reinforced concrete bunker at 10320 146 Street, so the premier and his senior advisors would have somewhere safe to go in the event of war. They’d be battered and bruised, perhaps turned into hideous mutants, but at least they’d be alive. People in the neighbourhood could have interpreted that news as at least a bit reassuring. The answer they came up with was Grovenor. How far west, upwind of the blast, would you have to go before you started to find survivors? Say an atomic bomb exploded at the intersection of Jasper Avenue and 100 Street.
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