Heritage Value

The remaining bunkers of the former Naval Ammunition Depot, constructed between 1944 and 1945, are historically significant as a rare surviving Canadian example of ordnance buildings from the Second World War era and as symbols of Canada’s wartime and military experience. The bunkers reflect a period of national and international investment in defence spending after the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941. In particular, they reflect Canadian and American strategic concerns that the long, mostly unpopulated Pacific coastline of Canada could provide a back door to the invasion of the North American continent, and that coastal installations were vulnerable to air attack. Planning for the depot began in 1943. It was intended to store bulk explosives for the western command of the Royal Canadian Navy plus stocks required for the British Fleet under the agreement reached at the Imperial Conference of 1911; to meet operational and practice requirements for the Pacific Fleet by maintaining stocks of ammunition for immediate issue; and to repair, manufacture, modify and inspect ammunition stores and components. Construction at the site was undertaken by one of the largest and most successful construction companies in western Canada, the Vancouver-based Dominion Construction Company Limited. 

The surviving bunkers, commonly known as magazines, are representative of the infrastructure of the eight advanced ordnance depots constructed across the country by the Royal Canadian Navy at strategically significant locations far enough away from the coast that they could not easily be attacked by carrier-borne aircraft. Kamloops was one of the sites selected, due to easy rail access to the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert and the west coast ports of the United States. At the base of the escarpment was the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway; a rail spur was constructed to facilitate the unloading of the ammunition, which was then transported up the hill through the use of a mile-long aerial tramway. 

The site originally contained the infrastructure typical of an advanced ordnance depot, including twenty-two bunkers, administration buildings, mess halls, and officers’ living quarters.Different magazines stored different materials such as filled shells, cartridges and small arms ammunition. The bunkers were placed at a safe distance from one another along a linear access road. Three primary types of bunkers have survived; an exposed above-ground bunker of board-formed concrete buried in a mound with extending angled entry walls; an underground bunker with a red-brick chimney vent; and an exposed above-ground bunker of concrete block with a projecting canopy, with surrounding blast mounds formed behind trapezoidal board-formed concrete walls. In the event of an explosion, the surrounding embankments would direct the blast upwards through a lightweight wooden roof that was designed to fragment.

By the time the depot opened, the threat of invasion was non-existent, however it continued to be used as back-up storage for the ammunition expended in fleet exercises. The depot was declared surplus and closed in December 1963, reflecting the onset of the Cold War and the perception that the conduct of war had moved beyond land-based confrontation

Character-Defining Elements

Key characteristics that define the heritage character of the Naval Ammunition Depot Bunkers include their:

• location on a hillside at the edge of an embankment, hidden amongst the topography but proximate to rail and road networks
• arrangement along a linear access road, set back from the main access road
• orientation, form, scale, spacing and massing of the various types of bunkers expressing their functional requirements
• construction materials of board-formed concrete, vertical concrete revetments, concrete blocks, red-brick internal vent, steel doors and wooden roofs
• earthen blast protection embankments shaped at the angle of repose
• deeply recessed entrances - internal arrangements of magazines including signs of shelving and painted signage