Topic: Technology

Selection of radios, record players, and televisions available through the Eaton's Christmas Catalogue, 1956, p. 183. Used with permission of Sears Canada Inc., Library and Archives Canada

The Schiefner farm near Milestone, Sask. The Schiefner family watches television, Dec. 1956.

Source: Library and Archives Canada

http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=3385747&rec_nbr_list=3385747

http://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012_09_01-Star-January17-1959a_640_1.jpg

Regency Acres bomb shelter diagram, Toronto Star (January 17, 1959).

TTC : Opening day of subway : People in stations, riding cars etc. : no. 1

Author: [Telegram staff]

Description: Image of two women with their daughter seated on a subway car

http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/7888

“We shall not... allow the extension of the nuclear family into Canada... We do not intend to allow the spread of nuclear arms beyond the nations which now have them.”Source: Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, in an election speech, Brockville, Ontario, 1962.

“Buying a Bomb Shelter”http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/cold-war/cold-war-culture-the-nuclear-fear-of-the-1950s-and-1960s/bomb-shelters-for-sale.html

Locomotive 4040 (A6354)Poster: Canadian Pacific Diesel Locomotive 4040Date: 1952Artist/Photographer: Peter EwartSource: Canadian Pacific Archives

“Communism and Christianity”, a 1955 ad from Canadair. 

Another Canadair from 1955 about Communism and education.

“This was in the early ‘60s and much of the anxiety I felt for my children was rooted in the pernicious mindset of the times: talk of our government accepting American nuclear warheads for Canadian-based missiles, school children being taught the duck-and-cover manoeuvre that was supposed to protect them in case bombs fell, talk of evil madmen (theirs and ours) pushing the button, a doomsday clock that kept ticking toward midnight—zero hour—that yellow sign with its ominous black logo and the words ‘Nuclear-Free Zone’ posted in public places. Overriding all these harbingers of doom was a male voice that spoke to me several times each day on CBC radio—between programs designed for ‘easy daytime listening.’

‘Radiation doesn’t seep. It settles,’ the voice said—words that still give me the shivers. After this reassuring tag line, the voice would continue with tips on ‘how to protect your family against potential danger of nuclear war.’ I must store tinned food, fresh water, and first aid supplies in a windowless room. I would also need a battery-operated radio and containers for waste. The voice was male, calm, sure.”

Source: Bernice Morgan, a Newfoundland writer, quoted in Marjorie Anderson, Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 206), p.222.

“The Canadian Train” Canadian Pacific Railway; National Geographic; May 1956

Source: Toronto Daily Star, Saturday, October 5, 1957.

“Some of us were shocked by the government’s decision to cancel the Arrow program. Most of the surprise and shock was on account of the way in which it was done, with no suggestion for an alternative project to take place. … It is difficult to understand how the threat from manned bombers could have diminished. … I am sure…that the present inventory of Russian bombers is greater today than any time in history. … If the alternative to meeting the threat to which the Prime Minister alluded is the Bomarc missile, some of us would have serious reservations about that. … The Bomarc has not yet, to common knowledge, been proven…. [O]ne wonders when one considers that there is today more unemployment than at any time since the thirties… if it would not have been better for the government to negotiate some future production sharing contracts with the United States before it cancelled this program that threw thousands of workers on the street. …It was not courageous but cruel. It was cruel, heartless, and incredibly short-sighted.”

Source: Liberal MP Paul Hellyer, House of Commons Debates, February 23, 1959, 1273-74.