Ric Hall – Adieu Carlton Place Training 

Many a pair of boots have graced the halls of Carleton Place Training Centre. Members took their Emergency Response Team and V.I.P. training.

Included was the training for the Papal Visit of 1984 and other specialized types of training….remember all those cans of paint stored there for learning how to poke holes in walls and cover them up. And of course it was the home of the Special Emergency Response team formed in 1986 until the opening of Dwyer Hill Training Centre in 1989.

Photograph of the Carleton Place Training Centre in its better days (Source of photo – Ric Hall’s Photo Collection).

Below story slightly modified from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper:

A raging fire destroyed a boarded-up building outside of Carleton Place on Monday, May 09, that was once one of the region’s few remaining Cold War installations, built to keep government running after a Soviet nuclear attack.

A not so glorious ending!

The Mississippi Mills Fire Department was called to what’s now known as the Olde Barracks on County Road 29 at about 16:30 p.m. and found about a quarter of the building engulfed in flames.

Firefighters attacked the blaze from outside with hoses and an aerial truck because the interior of the old building, built without fire separations, wasn’t safe.

Help from surrounding fire departments, including Ottawa, Smiths Falls and Carleton Place were called in but the building was soon engulfed in flames and ultimately torn down using a back hoe.

Damage was estimated at more than $500,000. The Ontario Fire Marshal and the OPP will investigate;  the building has been repeatedly vandalized in the past.

Everyone knows about the Diefenbunker in Carp, which opened in 1962 and is now a museum, but research from what’s now the Canada Science and Technology Museum explains the origins of the region’s forgotten “little bunkers.”

The two near-identical buildings — the other was built in Kemptville — resembled military barracks. They were known as Federal Readiness Units, with 12,000 square feet above ground and 6,000 below. They were to be used to stockpile supplies and house about 80 emergency personnel who would sleep in shifts so two could use a bed.

The locations were chosen because they were west of Ottawa — upwind of the presumed target — and believed to be far enough to escape a nuclear blast while being close enough that basic operations could be up and running within three hours.

By the 1970s, the building was used as a government training centre, with later occupants including the RCMP and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services.