[URBAN NOTE] "The cold war siren system Toronto never used"
In May 2013, I posted a brief note about this Cold War-era nuclear alert siren at Dundas West and Shaw, near the northwesternmost corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park. Late last week, Chris Bateman at Spacing wrote about that siren's history.
At Dundas West and Shaw, near Trinity-Bellwoods Park, there’s a conspicuous piece of Canada’s Cold War history.
On top of a 15-metre pole sits a massive electric air raid siren. Disconnected long ago, it’s one of just a handful of relics left over from when Toronto and the rest of Canada was seriously concerned about being caught up in a nuclear war between the United States and the USSR.
The idea of a peacetime, nationwide air raid alert system started in earnest in 1951, when the federal government under prime minister Louis St. Laurent commissioned 200 of electric, two-tone sirens from Scarborough company Canadian Line Materials, Ltd..
Provincial secretary Arthur Welsh said a co-ordinated system of sirens within the larger Greater Toronto Area would help in the event of a nuclear attack. “A bomb is not a respecter of municipal boundaries,” he said in 1951, adding that there was no plan to evacuate towns and cities in advance of an attack.
“Many people think some welfare organization would evacuate them, where they would be fed and clothed. That is not the case. In the past two wars, when soldiers in the trenches were attacked by mortar, they stayed and fought it out. That’s what we will do.”