According to Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, the company obtained two licenses from the Alberta government in 1969—one for use of the caverns as a vault and the other for access—but it is believed that the tunneling began much earlier, although no firm date has yet been found. Rocky Mountain Vaults & Archives saw Mt. McGillivray as the perfect location for an underground fortress as it promised to provide “absolute security for vital records,” according to a brochure promoting its idea. It was a hefty promise but a logical one given its location 500 feet beneath the mountain’s western slope. “Here, deep inside a mountain, is the world’s near perfect archive. Physically perfect...functionally perfect, built for maximum protection from against any form of destructive vice, from mildew to hydrogen bomb. “The remarkable limestone vaults have no security limitations. They are: Fireproof... floodproof... windproof... rodentproof...mildewproof...cave-inproof...bombproof... theftproof,” RMVA bragged in its brochure. Along with the high-level of protection, the company also envisioned white-painted walls, fresh air piped in to provide ideal document-storage conditions, private vaults, an entrance portal, a lounge and a three-foot wide reinforced sliding concrete door along with 24-hour security personnel. The company’s long-term goal was to offer a facility that would allow businesses and government to start over after the world had erupted into chaos.
itself edges towards the ridiculous with a simple childlike cutaway drawing of the proposed vault system and a second diagram of men in cardigan sweaters sitting in an underground reception room smoking cigars and pipes. While the brochure provides much of the context, the only way to get a sense of the audaciousness of the plan is to walk through the cave opening and enter the tunnel carved into the gray limestone cliff. Once inside and out of the wind, the air grows warmer, while further into the tunnel, the light and the hum of traffic on the TransCanada Highway, as it curves around Lac des Arcs, begins to fade. Enough light, however, filters down the tunnel to reveal the end of the tunnel and where a new passage opens to the left. But turn and walk into the first chamber, and the light quickly vanishes becoming as dark as a mine shaft as only a cave can get. But with a strong flashlight it’s easy to pierce the darkness and discover the first of two 80-foot by 25-foot caverns, along with what might have been the reception lounge. The floor is flat but not smooth, and the sound of water dripping onto stone can be heard somewhere in the blackness. It’s big, it’s dark, but what does the cavern mean to us today?
“In the event of a catastrophic happening, whether localized or widespread, man-made or from natural perils, many of these data and documents must be protected and preserved in order for business in general to survive and successfully recover from any major disaster. “With this in mind, Rocky Mountain Vaults & Archives Ltd. has planned a vault storage area designed to eliminate many of the problems associated with safekeeping and industry and government in the event of a catastrophe.” It was an audacious and pessimistic plan that the brochure
When it was being constructed on the 127 acres of land leased from the Alberta government in what is believed the late-1950s, Bob Smith, a long-time local who now lives in Canmore, said that when locals heard what was going on 100 feet above Lac des Arcs, they laughed, shook their heads and carried on. “It was in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s when the Cold War was really fizzy. When everybody was panicking and building bomb shelters and so on down in the States, and this guy thought it would be a just great to have this for all the banks and the government and so on to put all their important papers in,” Smith said in an interview.
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