... notable events : Searching for WW2 Tunnels on Campus

We were college students.

We had come from all over the world, Canadians, Americans, Japanese, Malaysian, German... we were young, and not a little wild.

The world was ours.

The University of British Columbia campus is sited on Point Grey, a spar of outcropping rock that juts out into the sea. The twinkling lights of the city of Nanaimo across the straits can be seen on Vancouver Island far in the distance. Point Grey was the western most part of Vancouver city. It commanded all approaches to the Vancouver harbour as well as the entrance into the Fraser river which led deep into the British Columbia interior.

The Universtiy of British Columbia or UBC, first started in the early decades of the 20th century as a military college. During the 1st world war, UBC churned out military graduates who served in the Canadian army in the trenches of Europe. The war was a distant affair, fought in the newspapers and in the radio reports of the day. The ordinary Vancouver city-dweller knew only second hand news of the war. But by the 2nd world war, war had evolved. It had become more dangerous and the western pacific coast of continental North America was no longer immune to the dangers of war.

Point Grey was the natural place, with it's commanding presence and it's military college, for the emplacement of gun sites to defend the harbour and city from possible attacks from the Japanese. A series of pillboxes and military tunnels were constructed along the rocky beach known as Wreck beach at the bottom of Point Grey. These tunnels were all interconnected and stretched round the entire Point and would have led up the steep slope to the top of Point Grey where twin 12 pounder gun batteries and armouries had been installed.

We found the 12 pounder gun battery sites easily enough. The guns are long gone but the current Museum of Anthropology is straddled by two round raised platforms with sealed staircases and openings for what must have been storage areas or dumbwaiters around the sides. Everynight for an entire month, a group of us, ranging anywhere from 3 to 10 young punks would go out exploring. Armed with torches and good spirits, we would roam the campus by night and scour the beaches by day. We probably would have tried scouring the beaches by night too if not for the fact that even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP (Mounties for short), usually don't even attempt to go down to Wreck beach past sunset.

No many of us made our morning classes that whole month, but we didn't care. We were on a mission! We were looking for the secret tunnels that led from the gun emplacements and armouries at the top of Point Grey, to the string of pillboxes at the bottom of Wreck beach.

Our search turned up a small 600 x 600mm square hole in the ground, just within the bushes and trees shielding the cliff-face from the campus. It was ringed in rusty iron and had obviously once sported a hinged door. Called the Devil's pit by rather unimagintive students, we theorised that perhaps, this was one of the entrances into the underground bunkers and tunnel system. For many nights, we returned to the Devil's pit, dropping into the hole one at a time to explore. The floor of the room below must have been at least 3-4 metres down but the entire room had been filled with sand which reached up to just 1 metre or so below the opening. It was into this sandpit that we slipped and slid our way down from that opening in the room's ceiling into a corridor that opened just off to the side of the room. This corridor opened in two directions. One was a dead end which looked like it has been bricked up and seal, while the other led to yet another door to another room, one which was filled entirely with sand. Crouching on the sand with our heads just touching the ceiling, we attempted to dig our way into that room. Alas, kids being kids, we were too inconsistent and too impatient for such a massive undertaking. We never got more than 2 feet beyond the door. Sand kept slipping in to fill the pits we dug, and we all soon tired of working by torchlight in the pitch darkness of the underground corridor. We soon abandoned the Devil's pit.

Then we tried it from another direction. We started skipping classes in order to maximise daylight hours for searching the entrance from the Wreck beach end. It was loads of fun, climbing in and out of empty pillboxes, skiing down the slippery sand slopes as if it were snow, as well as looking over some of the strange stuff left over by beach "creatures" (the people who inhabit Wreck beach at night) the night before. We found tarot cards, half-burnt bird bones, girlie magazines, blood-splattered sand and not a few needles which we very wisely avoided stepping on for fear of contracting AIDS. But sightseeing asides, we did find a sloping tunnel that led from a sealed doorway upward into the cliff. This must have been the tunnel we were look for! We know knew from the position and direction of this tunnel that our efforts at the Devil's pit was in vain as it was on the other side of Point Grey from the Devil's pit.

It became very obvious to us that the twin gun emplacements at the Museum of Anthropology was where this tunnel ended. We redoubled our efforts. As students, we got into the Museum for free, so again classes were skipped to enter the Museum to search for lock room doors or corridors that led down into deeper levels. We were all very disappointed when, after two separate teams had made the survey, we concluded that the Museum was either separate from the tunnels, or the access into the tunners were not easily apparent. None of the round raised platforms offered access either as all the openings were sealed and no amount of enthusiatic checking by young university students would pry open their secrets. We were dejected.

Then a way out of our impasse appeared. Apparently the team which we had sent to search the old library records had turned up a complete map of the Point Grey World War 2 Military Installations! We were elated. We made copies of the relevant parts of the map and poured over them eagerly. The old Devil's pit was nothing but a coal room for storage and even if we had completely dug out all the sand from the second room, it would have been just an empty deadend room. The other door that was sealed didn't go anywhere either though we remained suspicious as to the need to seal an door that didn't go anywhere. We also realised that the Museum was separate from a large underground armoury stretching between the two gun emplacements. It was from this main corridor of the armoury that a branching tunnel stretched downward to connect with the sealed door we found at Wreck beach. A way in needed to be found!

Various points indicated in the old drawings as openings were explored over the next couple of nights. We could sense that the end of our search was in sight. We just needed to find one opening still accessible! Our nightwalks became casual strolls and bike rides into university parks, into restricted university maintenance areas, into closed off unversity gardens. But the more we ticked off the possible openings, the more dejected be became. They were either sealed, grilled over, missing/buried or completely surrounded by unpenetrable bramble bush. That however, became our way of identifying the openings well before we even came close. Apparently, bramble bushes were the favourite method of hiding the squat concrete structures which we tentatively began to identify as mainly grilled over exhaust vents.

This continued for awhile and we were all getting rather exhausted from a whole month of sleepless nights and exercise until someone noticed a huge bramble bush by the side of a little used service road leading to the museum. Could it be, we asked ourselves. Was this it? Back to the maps we went and true enough, it was a major double door accessway large enough for a jeep to enter through.

That next night we were ready. Everyone who'd ever taken part in our excursions turned up. We were dressed all in black with fresh batteries in our torches. This was it, we could feel it. It was the end either way. We would enter the tunnels or we would find the doorway sealed and thus conclude our mission on a rather disappointing note.

Everyone noticed the huge thorny grove at once. It was gigantic! We prodded the bush with sticks and completely circled it but we couldn't seem to entice it to reveal its secrets. Even attemping to peer through the thorns and leaves with torches proved futile. No wonder no had had ever noticed anything as exciting as a military bunker/tunner opening here before.

"Over here guys!" someone else on the other side hissed. He had found a narrow passage that curved through like a hedge-maze, to a central clearing within the grove! Yes! One by one, we curiously slipped in. It was obvious that no one had been through here recently. The concrete outcrop in the middle was a squat squarish block about 1 storey high and it was completely surrounded by the prickly bush which now towered menacingly overhead.

We stared at the corroded double doors and the old padlock at its centre. This was it. A way in that was neither sealed nor unaccessible. Interestingly enough, I hadn't noticed how but a crowbar emerged out of the dozen or so students that now clustered in the dark in front of the doorway. How that person ever hid and carried a 3 foot long crowbar on his person through the night I can't imagine but it was passed to the front quickly enough. "Oops." and the lock was opened. We grinned like the schoolboys we were and shrugged nervously. "How did that happen?" someone asked mischieviously. We all shook our heads. Who knows how that lock broke. If you asked any of us today, none of us know how that lock suddenly opened on its own accord.

After a brief period of shhhshing and pausing to listen for any signs of discovery by the campus cowboys (University security), we yanked the right hand door open. There were quite a few ooohs and ahhhs as one torch after another flickered in through the dark opening. This really was it! We crowded in eagerly, panning everything with our torches. Here were chambers after chambers of what were probably barracks, ammunition storage rooms, guardhouses, supply rooms and all the other possibilities that filled our young minds. We spent hours in that place identifying first the locations underneath the two gun emplacements and matching perfectly the locations of the dumbwaiters and access catladders that would have led up and out to the guns. Then well satiated and briming with confidence, we started exploring each and every darkened room for that illusive tunnel to that would connect us to the bottom of the cliff.

We couldn't find it. Rather, we couldn't positively identify the exact location of the tunnel but believe that one of 3 sealed door ways in the north facing direction should have been it. What laid behind those sealed doors? Which one would open to a sloping passage down to the pillbox-dotted-beach? These are questions that for us at least, must forever remain unanswered. Even our maps failed us at this point as the actual layout of the place did match the map in many places. I was also rather disappointed not to have found anything worth keeping as a keepsake like a old rifle or bayonet perhaps, but on hindsight that may have been for the best knowing what I might do in my spare time.

Satisfied with our handy work and thoroughly exhausted from a month long series of explorations, we dragged our sleep-deprived bodies back to our residence and into long underused beds. Tomorrow will be a new day, and we would be back at our various classes, eager to learn and be the perfect model student. That at least was what we all privately promised ourselves as we slipped off into slumber. What really happened the very next day was of course another story entirely. I doubt many of us even managed to make it to lunch let alone breakfast. I know I didn't.