The forgotten story of the EMO, Roy Margetts, and the city’s nuclear fallout shelter

“Most people in Guelph never knew it existed. But deep inside the city’s infrastructure, a small room waited for a day everyone hoped would never come.”

During the height of the Cold War, when nuclear anxiety shaped everything from school drills to government budgets, Guelph quietly built something extraordinary — a fully equipped Emergency Municipal Government Shelter, a nuclear-era command centre designed to keep the city functioning after an attack.

At the heart of that hidden world was one man: Roy Margetts, the EMO Co‑ordinator for Guelph and Wellington County.

This is the story of the bunker, the organization behind it, and the people who kept watch while the rest of the city slept.

1. The Cold War Comes to Guelph

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the threat of nuclear war felt real. Canada, as a NATO member and close U.S. ally, was considered a potential target. The federal government responded by creating the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO) in 1959 — a national civil‑defence network tasked with preparing Canadians for nuclear attack, fallout, and post‑disaster survival.

Across the country, cities and counties were instructed to:

Build emergency plans
Train radiological monitoring teams
Establish communication networks
Prepare shelters for government continuity

Guelph took this seriously.

2. The Birth of the Guelph–Wellington EMO

By 1957, Guelph and Wellington County had formed a joint EMO unit — one of many across Ontario. Their mandate was broad:

Coordinate emergency planning
Train volunteers
Maintain radiological equipment
Prepare for everything from floods to nuclear war

But as the Cold War intensified, the focus shifted heavily toward nuclear preparedness.

This led to the creation of one of Guelph’s most unusual Cold War artifacts:
the Emergency Municipal Government Shelter.

3. The Fallout Shelter: Guelph’s Hidden Command Centre

This wasn’t a public shelter for thousands of residents.
It was a government continuity bunker — a place where a small group of officials could operate the city if the world above was in chaos.

What we know from the archival record

Two surviving photographs from the Guelph Public Library Archives confirm its existence:

“Roy Margetts (left) and Alderman Mel Cochrane inside the control room of the Emergency Municipal Government Shelter, May 30, 1975.”
Source: Guelph Public Library Archives

The photo shows a compact but fully equipped control room — maps, communication equipment, status boards, and radiological instruments. This was the nerve centre where Guelph’s emergency government would have operated during a nuclear crisis.

The shelter would have included:

Reinforced walls
Independent power
Communication lines
Fallout monitoring equipment
Emergency supplies
Maps and planning boards

It was part of a nationwide network of municipal bunkers built quietly during the Cold War.

4. Roy Margetts: The Man Behind the Plan

By the 1970s, the EMO Co‑ordinator for Guelph and Wellington County was Roy Margetts — a man whose job was to think about disaster so others didn’t have to.

His responsibilities included:

Maintaining the fallout shelter
Training radiological monitoring teams
Running emergency simulations
Coordinating with provincial and federal EMO offices
Managing equipment and communication systems

He was the quiet backbone of Guelph’s Cold War readiness.

“Roy Margetts packing radiological survey equipment on the final day of the EMO, December 31, 1975.”
Source: Guelph Public Library Archives

This second photo is symbolic — the end of an era.
The equipment he’s packing up was used to measure radiation levels after a nuclear blast. Sending it back to the province marked the shutdown of Guelph’s EMO program.

5. Inside the Bunker: What It Was Like

While detailed blueprints aren’t publicly available, we can infer its layout from similar municipal bunkers across Ontario:

Typical features included:

A control room with maps, phones, radios, and status boards
A communications room linked to provincial networks
A radiological monitoring station
Emergency rations and water
Ventilation systems with fallout filtration
Thick concrete walls for blast and radiation protection

These bunkers weren’t luxurious.
They were functional, cramped, and built for survival — not comfort.

6. The End of the EMO Era

By the mid‑1970s, several factors led to the dismantling of local EMO units:

Public belief that nuclear war was “unsurvivable”
Budget cuts
Shifting political priorities
Declining volunteer participation

On December 31, 1975, the Guelph EMO officially shut down.
The bunker remained, but its purpose faded into history.

Roy Margetts’ final archival photo — returning the radiological equipment — captures the quiet end of Guelph’s Cold War civil‑defence chapter.

7. What Remains Today

The physical shelter may still exist within Guelph’s municipal infrastructure, though its current condition and accessibility are unknown.

What does remain is:

The archival photographs
The documented existence of the bunker
The memory of the EMO staff
The story of a city preparing for the unthinkable

Most residents never knew this hidden world existed beneath their feet.

8. Why This Story Matters

This chapter of Guelph’s history reveals:

How global tensions shaped local planning
How ordinary people like Roy Margetts carried extraordinary responsibilities
How the city prepared for a future that, thankfully, never arrived
How much of Guelph’s history lies hidden beneath the surface

For Historic Guelph, this story is a perfect example of the city’s forgotten layers — the things built in silence, maintained in secrecy, and remembered only through a few surviving photographs.