'Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.'
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 concentrated the Government of Canada’s official mind on how it would govern in the event of a nuclear attack on Ottawa.
By the time of the crisis, Canada had already built the “Diefenbunker” and developed procedures and plans for “continuity of government” and “national survival operations.”
But some details had escaped planning.
In the final week of October, Robert Bryce, the Clerk of the Privy Council Office, began wondering just what would happen if The Great Seal of Canada was destroyed in a war.
Jus what is the Seal? According to the website of The Governor General of Canada,
The Great Seal of Canada is one of the oldest and most venerated instruments of our government. Since the earliest days of our nation, Canada’s most important documents have been made official through its imprint. The Great Seal signifies the power and authority of the Crown flowing from the sovereign to our parliamentary government.
The Governor General is charged with custody of the Seal, but the quotidian “keeper of the seal” is the Registrar General of Canada. The Seal is used to make a five inch impression on “all State documents,” including Royal proclamations.
When, during the Cuban crisis, the prospect of nuclear war seemed very real, Bryce wanted to know if it was possible to have a copy of the Seal available in case the original was destroyed.
He set his staff to work on the matter. A perusal of legislation suggested the law did not allow for the existence of a copy or duplicate of the Seal.
Perhaps the War Measures Act could be used to abolish any need to seal documents?
The problem with this idea was that the Seal must be available to bring the War Measure Act into force via a Proclamation. If the Seal were to be destroyed before the Act was brought into force, the Proclamation could not be sealed.
Bryce got in touch with Jean Miquelon, who, as Deputy Registrar General of Canada, was the senior civil servant responsible for the Seal. Bryce was still grappling with the legality of a second Seal. Miquelon seems to have misunderstood Bryce’s question, and contacted the Royal Canadian Mint to determine the costs of making a second great Seal.
A new Seal would cost $1,200 and would take two months to make, or perhaps one month in a pinch.
Bryce did not think it was necessary to have an exact replica on hand:
“Moreover, in the circumstances we have in mind,” [read: nuclear conflagration] “a duplicate in all artistic detail would not be required so much as something that would meet the immediate needs for legality in an emergency.”
A. M. Hill, Assistant Clerk of the Privy Council, observed that “we could get along without it”— a Seal — because legislation did not require sealing.
It is not clear to me whether this issue was ever resolved. Bryce planned to speak again with Miquelon. But as the mind-concentrating effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis receded, it is possible this issue faded, too. It may have been reconsidered again in the early 1980s with the drafting of a new Seals Act and other legislation.
Several decades letter, a coin featuring The Great Seal of Canada was available for sale on Walmart’s website. (It is no longer on the Walmart website, but you can order the coin from the Royal Mint of Canada.)
The coin is much smaller than the Seal. Still, in today’s world of increased geopolitical tensions, it might not hurt for the Clerk of the Privy Council and a few others to always keep such a coin in their pockets.
Pembroke: upwind.
These records about The Great Seal of Canada were found in a small file folder regarding “Preservation of Essential Records.”
In 1963, a concerned Canadian wrote a letter to the government asking how the government stored essential records to survive a nuclear attack.
A response letter signed by Bryce noted that essential records would be stored “upwind from Ottawa” but he could not say where.
Another document in the file reveals that this safe hiding place was a “fire proof” building in Pembroke that stored a small number of paper records and a much larger amount of microfilmed records.
I wonder if they remembered to safely store a microfilm reader, too.
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The documents above are from “DEFENCE - Civil Defence - Continuity of Government - Preservation of Essential Records,” RG2-B-2, Box number: 26, File number: D-1-8(c)-5, Library and Archives Canada. They are now all available online at Canada Declassified.