Hi David. Library & Archives Canada gave me over 3,000 pages of the Canadian Armed Forces DDT program for the 1960s and CFB Cold Lake was using a Dakota for their spraying. The Surgeon General approved the bases for spraying by airplanes or vehicle spraying but some of the Air Force stations got around this policy by paying for the air operation out of base funds. Their were even back then concerns of using pesticides indoors (schools, mess halls, hospitals) but not much action, if any, went to monitoring this and certainly no follow up.
I only a couple of months ago found this site and as a 1950s PMQ Trenton Brat (born 52 thru 56) I have interest in this subject. I am not really sure however if the military was spraying DDTs or Agent Orange. With what is known about CFB Gagetown's past and now known that crown lands of Ontario and British Columbia also being hit with same Agent Orange I would suspect ALL military bases likewise contaminated by Agent Orange. Anybody else having thoughts on this? PS. love this site and all the comments.
Regarding my above posting under name RDK. It should have been "Ralph Daniel Killoran". Apologies, I use RDK on the occasional CBC comments but also I am not very good on computers and postings, its always a struggle.
DDT and Agent Orange serve two totally different purposes. DDT is an insecticide. Agent Orange is an herbicide. While DDT is not the best stuff to be breathing in it is far less toxic than the Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin in Agent Orange. If Agent Orange were used - both sprayed out of planes and trucks on the base I lived in - the surrounding vegetation would wither and die as that was its purpose as an herbicide - to destroy the food crops and remove the jungle cover that was hiding the Vietnamese. Not to mention the serious health and birth defects that would soon show up in the base population. I think the Agent Orange stories are just that - a bit of Cold War paranoia.
Thanks for the info. I will speak sternly to my brother for misleading me. Not by the way, some years ago I had to do some research for a small documentary on Canadians who flew in the Battle of Britain. The National Archives were and are a fantastic resource and more to the point, were very helpful. Cool that you got all that stuff from them. You were a Brat, I take it. What bases and when?
Hi David. My father was RCAF (Marine Section) and we were at Trenton right after the war until 1956 when we moved to Comox. I got interested in the military and DDT by way of other health issues. If your body's defenses are damaged in infancy then in later life you can expect harder than average damage if exposed to other sources of contamination. Yes Library and Archives Canada are great but I feel much of the national embarrassing records have been recently destroyed between 2006 and 2016.
I was born in Trenton and lived in Middleton Park from '53 to '59. I remember watching kids run behind the fogger truck on my street. It was DDT that was used at that time, thinking now how insane that was and what the physical ramifications were from breathing it.