Where has Canada's Military Gone?

[FastEddy]

[/quote]

Usually when I read the various Threads here in Army.ca, there's the usual reactions to the various Topics or information, "Sadness" on learning of the Deaths of our Brothers and Sisters. "Humour" as to the various antics that some of our Members get up to (especially posts from "Wes" Down Under, or should I now say Over There).

And always a learning "Experience" from the many facts and information supplied by a Cadre of Experienced and qualified people.

"Reflection" from the quiet words of reason and wisdom, usually from Gentlemen like "Trinity".

But as I read these three pages, for the first time, a great feeling of "Depression" seeped  over me recalling all the now long gone CF Bases and Camps which I once knew and were.

Replaced with Holiday Inns, Parking Lots, Shopping Malls and the likes.

Yes indeed, where has all the Soldiers Gone.

 

[Neill McKay]

I was trying to remember McGivney NB (not far from fredericton) - thanx Fiddlehead. My father-in-law said he did his basic training there and Edmunston during the height of the war (WWII). From an old army buds said there use to be an old POW camp not far from there also just off the main road set in the woods a bit.

McGivney's a neat spot.  It used to be an ammunition storage facility.  Quite a few of the roads are still intact, and there are several buildings left (some all there, one or two with only the walls left, and a lot of empty foundations).  Down the road (towards Fredericton) the former PMQ patch is in rough shape but still in use by civilians.

Renous, near Miramichi used to be another such facility (for the navy) but was closed around the time of unification.  There's a prison there now so I've never been close enough to tell if anything is left of the station.

Another in New Brunswick is Scoudouc, near Moncton.  It's a former RCAF base turned industrial park, but it still looks like the text-book pattern air base with the hangars still standing.  One of the runways is used as a training ground for truck drivers; I think the other two are well on their way back to nature.

I don't know of a POW camp in New Brunswick but there was an internment camp at Ripples during the Second World War.  There's not much of anything on the site, but there's a museum about it in a nearby town.

 

[Donut]

Nanaimo had a regional command bunker, I haven't heard of it being demolished, anyone know?

Vernon Army Vadet Camp has a long and storied history as a tng base, mortar range, etc.  I spent a few summers there as staff, and bent an elbow with the current camp caretaker and his predecessor, who'd been around since the early '50s. 

There's all sorts of little holes, bunkers, tunnels, etc around there, and reportedly a couple of WWII tanks, complete, buried near the old Tpt building. 

One access was through the old guardhouse, right on the corner of the highway and that first residential street along the camps northern border, but still south of the armouries.

Neat place.

DF

 

[chrisf]

It's not fully closed we have a SAR Sqn there....they are a detachment of Greenwood.

There's more then just the SAR Sqn... not a lot more, but more...

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/9wing/about_us/index_e.asp

There's 103 Rescue Squadron, there's a detachment of Leitrim, there's a radar station, and there's a reserve unit, as well as all the requisite support people.

 

[Haggis]

There is a former base in Ontario, near the Quebec border, just south of the 417 that once had a population of over 30,000.  Now its' landing strips are hidden in the woods and covered by piles of manure.  A few concrete small arms butts are visible in the woods.  All its buildings are gone.  Totally forgotten in time.

I thought I knew Eastern Ontario pretty well.  Where is this??

 

[George Wallace]

I thought I knew Eastern Ontario pretty well.  Where is this??

Google Earth  45°28'55.02"N  74°28'14.14"W  Saint Eugene

 

[cplcaldwell]

Well, I'll be ...

I have a cousin who lives between that 'loc' and the 417, been there many times, never ever suspected such a spot.

I guess come spring I'll get me to Ottawa and do a little exploring out that way....

 

[211RadOp]

RCAF Station (later CFB) Rivers Manitoba. The Canadian Parachute Training Centre was established there in 1947. CFB Rivers was closed in 1971.

My father was an instructor there when I was born.

 

[Pea]

Nanaimo had a regional command bunker, I haven't heard of it being demolished, anyone know?

Vernon Army Cadet Camp has a long and storied history as a tng base, mortar range, etc.  I spent a few summers there as staff, and bent an elbow with the current camp caretaker and his predecessor, who'd been around since the early '50s. 

Neat place.

It really is a neat place. I spent 3 summers there and each year we'd learn something new about the camp, or see something new around the grounds. It really is showing it's age these days though.

 

[niner domestic]

You guys might find this document interesting reading...It's what we owed the US after WWII for installations in Canada that the US built. 

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/ca_us/en/cts.1944.19.en.html

 

[17thRecceSgt]

You guys might find this document interesting reading...It's what we owed the US after WWII for installations in Canada that the US built. 

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/ca_us/en/cts.1944.19.en.html

THATS why we are paying so much for friggin ATM withdrawls...now Jack Bin Laden has his answer!  Its to pay off things like Alaskan Highway Flight Strips!

 

[George Wallace]

I don't know of a POW camp in New Brunswick but there was an internment camp at Ripples during the Second World War.  There's not much of anything on the site, but there's a museum about it in a nearby town.

Ripples was originally built as a Refugee Camp for Jews escaping the Nazis.  As they were processed out, then the Camp (#70) became an Interment Camp for Canadian Nazi syphazisers, German and Italian POWs.  There were over 26 nationalities intered there during the war.  It was basically leveled after the war.  If I am correct, it is only down the road from McGivney's.  There was once a large Ammo compound out that way too.

Renous was also a large Aerial Bombing Range.

On the note of POW/Interment Camps, there was once one out at Center Lake in Petawawa.

 

[211RadOp]

I was just running through the places I've lived over my many years and have come up with this list of bases that are closed, or are so small, they may as well be:

CFB Rivers MB
CFB London ON
CFE Soest Germany
CFB Moncton NB
BFC St-Hubert QC
CFE Baden Germany
CFE Lahr Germany

and lets not forget everybody's favorite CFRS Cornwallis NS

 

[cplcaldwell]

WRT  Niner Domestic's post of 14:35:24:

Interesting in that the memo outlines the costs associated with the building of airfields and infrastructure improvements to build the NorthWest Staging route, The Hudson Bay air route and the Eastern Canada air route, along with important telecomm connections into YT and NT, and finally substantial improvements to airfields through the MacKenzie valley.

In effect Canada was buying installations that had been built by the Americans, that had value during the war, but after the war would essentially became Canadian property.

Essentially this represents a large portion of the cost of really opening up the NorthWest, the Hudson's Bay basins and getting into Labrador...

So running the numbers through the first inflation calculator I could find, means that in today's dollars,  (SWAG-arama here folks, I have a meeting in a few minutes so no time to check... :-*)

Adjusted from the 1943 amounts mentioned in 9D's citation to 2005 dollars...

• Canada agreed to pay the US  $870,665,846.60
• $157,240,595.72 would be written off as having no value after the war.
• Canada paid $335,518,245.75 for its part of the work
• Canada would spend another $58,500,399.69 to improve the route past the 1943 date of this memo

Interesting, somewhat less than $1.5 Billion of today's dollars and we got the Northwest and a lot of the Hudson basin and parts of NL opened up.

$1.5B.

Somewhat less than the Gun Registry.... hmmm....  ???

 

[George Wallace]

In Yorkton, Saskatchewan, there was several military installations over the years.

In the 1960's through the 1990's there was CFS Yorkton  51°17'42.41"N  102°36'30.44"W

In the Second World War there was an Air Training Base at the present Yorkton Municipal Airport  51°15'18.63"N 102°27'29.88"W

 

[AmmoTech90]

Ripples was originally built as a Refugee Camp for Jews escaping the Nazis.  As they were processed out, then the Camp (#70) became an Interment Camp for Canadian Nazi syphazisers, German and Italian POWs.  There were over 26 nationalities intered there during the war.  It was basically leveled after the war.  If I am correct, it is only down the road from McGivney's.  There was once a large Ammo compound out that way too.

Renous was also a large Aerial Bombing Range.

On the note of POW/Interment Camps, there was once one out at Center Lake in Petawawa.

About the only thing standing at Ripples is the water tower and some concrete pads.  McGivney was Gagetown's main ammo compound up until the 70s.  There were some guys when I first got to Gagetown that had also worked there.  I took a trip down there a once.  You turn off down a logging road from the Fredericton-Miramichi highway and it's only a couple of hundred metres in.  They were still logging at the time so access was restricted but we found what we thought was the vehicle maint area.  There was a couple of buildings and an what looked like an oil change bay.
Renous was actually a naval ammunition depot.  It was built there because it was far enough inland to be protected from naval bombardment, but Miramichi could be used as harbour to resupply the ships.  There is a CATP bombing range nearby, in fact the province is littered with them, most really far back in the woods.

 

[Cardstonkid]

I live in Southern Alberta and as you drive through the small towns in around my home you sometimes see old buildings of the WWII era. In Lethbridge, Claresholm and Ft. MacLeod you can see the buildings that were home to many a commonwealth pilot as they learned their trade.

I was on a flight from Lethbridge to Calgary and on the way I looked down and saw a diamond runway in disrepair and old run-down military buildings and a hangar beside it. There was a gravel road leading to it, but it was off the beaten path. I went to the Nanton Bomber Museum (They have a Lancaster bomber in the process of being put to flying condition) and asked if they knew anything about the airbase I saw from the air. One of the fellows gave me the name (of course I can't remember it now) and told me it is used by a few local pilots, but that it is now largely abandoned. It was one of the many air bases in the area.

It is sad that so much of the memory of this era is gone.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well let me see there are the 5 armouries, the Jericho base, the naval station, the recruiting office, CFS Aldergrove, Chilliwack has a small contingent left and their might be a AMU office at the Airport for Vancouver. There is also  the remains of the Point Grey gun battery, several searchlight towers and if you look carefully you can still see the outline of the buried gun position at third beach in Stanley Park.

 

[3rd Herd]

For those on this site from or still in the Victoria area. Besides the "Definbunker" in Nanimo which I had the pleasure to be in a couple of times on CPX's take a walk to the corner of Blandshard and Hillside. Look at the way S J Willis school is built back into/ on top of that hill. In 1941/42 a "huge cement bomb shelter" was constructed to protect the Provincial government and Western Defence HQ in case the Japanese flew over to bomb the city of Victoria. As well several private residences in the city dating from this time period had "bomb shelters" built underneath or in close proximity too them which have been forgotten over time.

Another couple of interesting points are the bunkers at the Long Beach golf course area which has part of the RCAF base there again during the Second world war. A couple of the bunkers are now used for storage. Giving up one of my trade secrets access your local archives under "defense construction", "civil defense" and "world war". Most contain costs, blue prints, locations, and companies involved in the constructions.

Also was not Neys Provincial Park on Lake Superior built on a old POW camp? I seem to remember as a kid finding some of the foundations of the guard towers and barb wire. Somewhere around I have a map giving the locations of all the POW, Foresty camps, Internment camps from both world wars. Yes there were internment camps in WW 1 too.

Back to the west coast we have the gun emplacements from Macaulay to Albert Head ranging in time wise 1877 to 1940ish. The university of Victoria is built on top of/adjacent to the old Gordon Head training complex.  For some reason they keep finding old shells every time they go to put a new building up. Ucluelet still has one of the seaplane hangers standing(or parts of) as well as some of the old foundations from it's time as a WW2 base. There is a trailer park on the site now. In a couple of very dated maps of Work Point Barracks that came into my hands we have a "Chinese laundry". Heaven forbid the troops wash their own uniforms when the are a number of the "yellow man" around to do it.

In the cold war era there are still a number of the DEW sites along the west of Vancouver island still standing. Some are still in use but in a civilian role and those not are still standing due to the cost of PCB cleanup. Radar Hill in the north end of the Pacific Rim National Park has a nice little "interpretive display" of the station that was there. It also has the Kapyong memorial marker just around the corner.

With the Alaskan highway if you can find it a book called "The Forgotten War" published in 1950 or so contains maps, photo's, surveys etc of both the highway construction and airfields along the coast built as part of the lend lease air bridge. Most of the basing in the Aleutians(?) is still there or was a year or two ago. Again PCB's and nuc testing clean up costs are to blame.

The Kimberley area of BC used to have an artillery range training area where the nature park now is. Clued into that one by walking down "Army Road". And I think but haven't looked more into it yet there was a RCAF training station somewhere in the area given the amount of aluminum found on mountain tops, sides in the area.

 

[3rd Herd]

Well let me see there are the 5 armouries, the Jericho base, the naval station, the recruiting office, CFS Aldergrove, Chilliwack has a small contingent left and their might be a AMU office at the Airport for Vancouver. There is also  the remains of the Point Grey gun battery, several searchlight towers and if you look carefully you can still see the outline of the buried gun position at third beach in Stanley Park.

ColinP,
there are quite a few more defence positions mostly from WW2 in the Vancouver/ Inner sound area. I have a couple of reference sources for them. One I think was called "West Coast Fortifications" and dealt mostly with the lower mainland area. Jericho Beach was also a RCAF base during the Second World War but I cannot remember off the top of my head if anything still remains. There was also the Armoured train that ran up and down the coast and some long range gun positions.