Give Me Shelter

Based on evidence from recently opened document collections, Give Me Shelter uncovers the myriad reasons for the failure of Canada’s nuclear civil defence efforts during the Cold War.

Give Me Shelter is a revealing examination of Canada’s efforts to prepare its citizens to face nuclear war, from 1945-63.

Andrew Burtch is the historian for the post-1945 period at the Canadian War Museum.

Paul Gessell:
Luckily, the Soviets never did bomb us or we would not be around to read Give Me Shelter, an extremely detailed and shocking analysis of how a government and its people failed to connect and collaborate on one of the most important issues facing the world during the Cold War … the book is scarier than science fiction because it shows how unprepared we were to save our own skin had the Russians ever decided to attack.

Hector Mackenzie, Senior Departmental Historian, Policy Research Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade:
In this fascinating study, Burtch eloquently illuminates a fundamental failure of national policy. Canadians did not adjust their thinking about civil defence much beyond overseas newsreel images of the Second World War and never seemed to take into account the possibility that war would come suddenly, exacting an enormous price for the absence of advance preparation. This story is told with wit and clarity by an author in command of his sources and measured in his judgment.

P. Whitney Lackenbauer, co-author of Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North:
Civil defence in Cold War Canada is largely uncharted territory, and this rich, pioneering study reveals the political, psychological, and practical challenges of trying to generate popular preparedness for the unthinkable: a nuclear holocaust at home. Burtch’s complex yet lively narrative not only engages existing scholarly debates, but should launch new ones as well.