CRA Ontario comes in out of the Cold War

April 25, 2014 – The Ontario Canadian Rental Association
held its meeting April 16 in Arnprior, Ont. Attendees made a day of it,
touring a local rental store and visiting the Diefenbunker in nearby
Carp, Ont. There were approx 35 people for dinner at the Arnprior
Quality Inn.
 
The speaker was James
Gillespie, an MTO enforcement officer. He spoke about CVORs
(Commercial Vehicle Operator's Registration), truck and trailer
safey requirments, load security, tie downs, log books and anything else an
MTO officer would be looking for at a roadside stop. He gave a short
talk, followed by quite a lengthy question and answer period (we all had questions).

Looks like Paul Everitt has his hands full.

Len
Stavenow owns Valley Rent Rite and hosted a tour for meeting attendees.
They have two locations
(Arnprior and Renfrew) – we toured the Arnprior location. The thing i
found interesting about his store was he owns a commercial plaza and the
businesses leasing there work well together. There is a flooring store
and a business that sells wood stoves and general heating supplies.
Valley Rent Rite doesn't do just rentals, in fact rentals is
the last thing i saw when i entered his store. Len sells tools and
equipment (including Milwaukee and King), and he carries a
complete line of industrial hardware and fastening supplies. It was a
very clean, well-kept store.

Valley Rent Rite impressed with its cleanliness and organization. Advertisement

The things that stick out in
my mind about the Diefenbunker are how shallow the bunker sits (just 15 feet below ground level),
then there is five feet of reinforced concrete. Even though it is built as a
bunker, it was only built to withstand an explosion of a five-kilotonne
warhead, 1.5 miles away. Because the prevailing wind blows to the east,
the bunker was built in Carp (west of Ottawa) to avoid the fallout of a
nuclear attack in Ottawa.

Dale Brinklow wonders if it works against zombies, too.

The bunker was designed and built in only 14
months. Because of the necessity for speed, it was both being designed
and built at the same time). There were only enough supplies kept on
hand for 30 days, but the facility would house not just federal
politicians, but a dentist, doctor and anything else they needed. Although
commissioned by Diefenbaker, he never visited.  He swore he would never
use it. He said he would hunker down at home with his wife in the event of a
nuclear attack (there would have been no spouses permitted in the
bunker). It was perhaps one of Canada's worst-kept secret. During
construction, a reporter flew over the Diefenbunker to take photographs.
 
Check out all the photos from the meeting on Facebook .

For more information
crarental.org