Good food was essential to keeping people happy.

In order to accommodate the 24-hour working schedule of the Bunker, the kitchen was constantly preparing or serving meals. John Publicover, who worked in the kitchen from 1966 to 1976, describes the schedule:

“...when you’re on shift work, and when I came here first, we were fed 24 hours a day. Like, you were fed breakfast, and then you have like a coffee break in the morning at ten o’clock, then you have lunch, then you have three o’clock break, then you have supper, then you have a nine o’clock lunch, then you have a twelve o’clock meal, a full meal, then you have a three o’clock lunch, in the morning, and then you have breakfast again. So you have a meal every three hours, or four hours.”

Fresh food was delivered every Monday from the Uplands military base in Ottawa, enough food to feed 150 people for seven days. But during a lockdown, the kitchen would have been supplied with enough fresh food to feed 500 for a week before the kitchen turned to rations known as Individual Meal Packs or Meal Replacement kits similar to rations in the field.

The kitchen had a walk-in freezer, a refrigerator and a cooler. A small elevator connected the kitchen to more storage areas on the floor below.

The spacious dining room could accommodate 150-200 people at a time. Many of them appreciated the fresh food options available to them. Here is teletype operator Janet Puddicombe:

“It was the best mess I had ever eaten in. The food was always good, it was always hot, and if you didn’t like what was on the menu, they’d make you something else. I think a lot of people got spoiled by their meals here. It was the best mess I had ever eaten in.”

CFS Carp was a military operation with a specific hierarchy. A small room to the right of the serving area was for Non-Commissioned Officers dining, and a closed room next to it was for Senior Officers. Everyone else ate in the main dining area.

Find the large photo mural in the dining area. Although installed to create a sense of spaciousness, it’s impossible not to imagine men and women staring at it during a nuclear war. The No Family rule meant your loved ones would have likely perished while you kept the government running down here. But the lovely mountain scene would have also been a reminder of what you were protecting, both in an imagined disaster that never happened, and for those hundreds of men and women who served here for 32 years.

Select the last track to hear how the Cold War came to a peaceful end.