Welcome to Cold War Canada, a museum and discussion site about Canada’s preparedness during the First Cold War 1945-1991.  The fundamental message of this site is that Canada has, in fact, been quite prepared to weather the worst of times, and can very well be once again.

This site was founded by Dave Peters, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Canadian Army, who served in the Royal Canadian Engineers in West Germany, with United Nations peacekeeping in Pakistan, and latterly in the Central Emergency Government Headquarters (CEGHQ).  CEGHQ is more popularly known as the “Diefenbunker”, a highly secure nuclear blast shelter for senior federal officials outside Canada’s national capital, Ottawa.  

Under Dave’s leadership, the Diefenbunker was turned into a museum after its closure in 1994.  Seeing an opportunity for additional documents and colour commentary on that museum’s subject matter, Dave for many years also maintained davescoldwarcanada.com, from which much of the content of this site is derived.

The diverse content of this site includes photographs, sound files, pamphlets, articles and full books or papers relating to Canada’s military and civil defence preparedness for a general thermonuclear war.  

You can enjoy it through a random selection of the posts; a curated journey for public servants and other professionals; or alternatively by category or topic.

There is a lot of misinformation extant to this day about what nuclear war would entail.  Therefore we recommend that you read the following posts in advance of an exploration of this site. You may be very surprised at what you find out!

• What a general thermonuclear war might have looked like in 1984: timing, results, damage, casualties.
• The myth of nuclear winter versus the severe environmental damage that would actually have resulted from an exchange.
• A summary of Canada’s preparations to weather a nuclear exchange and continue as a nation-state.