How could you and your family survive a nuclear war? From 1945 to 1963, the Canadian government developed civil defence plans to save lives in bombed cities, evacuate target areas, and encouraged the public to build basement fallout shelters. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was still vastly unprepared for nuclear war. Give Me Shelter features recently released documents detailing Canada’s nuclear survival plans. Andrew Burtch reveals how, through public appeals, the department urged citizens to assume responsibility for disaster preparation, a tactic that ultimately failed. An exposé of the challenges of educating the public on the threat of nuclear annihilation, this book illuminates Canada’s Cold War home front like never before.

Andrew Burtch is the Post-1945 Historian at the Canadian War Museum, and an adjunct research professor in Carleton University’s history department.

Andrew Burtch's profile page

• Commended, The Hill Times List of Top 100 Best Books
• Winner, C.P. Stacey Award for scholarly work in Canadian Military History

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.

The Ottawa Citizen