Post by Rick (Admin) on Jun 28, 2014 18:14:14 GMT -5
Memories: Cold war ghosts
My teenage son and his friends have taken to climbing Sage Hill as a pastime.
I did that too, I told him. I’m not sure he believes me. But, we did – climbing up the hill by the hydro path.
A left turn would take you toward the old Widdifield reservoir. It was still full of water back then, and I remember people actually swimming in it. Apparently, only one concrete wall is still visible.
If you walk straight up, you end up on Tower Drive. The television show The Forest Rangers used to film scenes at the Widdifield Fire Tower up there.
We thought of ourselves as rangers; in fact, we were only air force brats.
One place that we did not venture was the south entrance of the Sage hole. Our fathers warned us that it was a restricted area, which seemed curiously at odds with our own carefree lives.
The Sixties, however, were a perfect example of that dichotomy: Times were good and Canada seemed idyllic, yet there was this thing called The Cold War.
Just north of the city, BOMARC surface-to-air missiles with nuclear warheads waited to be launched. Meanwhile, we would walk to the coffee shop (now Average Joe’s) on Trout Lake and sit and discuss the weather – as armed sentries stood on patrol a few hundred yards above us.
My son and his friends walked around the now abandoned guardhouse, and he told me about their adventure. It seemed astonishing to me that I had never been there; so, we got in my car and visited the past.
The Cold War may be over, but its remnants are still evident – one merely needs to take a drive down Ski Club Road to witness it. There’s a beautiful neighbourhood with stunning scenery, pretty homes, and then: A gated sentinel that looks like something out of an old James Bond movie.
It is strangely surreal. Two huge, yet very empty, parking lots attest to a busier time.
I imagined my father parking his Corvair there among hundreds of other vehicles, and then boarding a bus for his daily trip 60 storeys into the earth.
The barbed-wire fence, the sentry posts and the warning signs are now all rusting away in disuse. And there, in the side of the mountain, is the gateway to the “hole.”
A beam of light still blinks out from beyond – as if in nostalgic reminiscence.
Dan Hokstad is a teacher and author of The Sacred Ash. www.danhokstad.com