Abandoned Military Installation

 abandoned / shut down  Add category

Royal Canadian Air Force No. 5 Communications Unit:

In the mid-1950s, the RCAF established a new communications network, with one of the stations being located at RCAF Station Lachine in Dorval, west of Montreal.

The No. 5 Communications Unit site was opened in late 1955 on Chemin du Ruisseau-des-Noyers, north of St.-Jacques-Le-Mineur, to act as a relay transmitter station for communications between RCAF Station Lachine and other parts of Canada. No. 5 CU was equipped with 15 FRT-501 transmitter units.

This location proved so ideal for radio communications as it was away from urban build-up that the Canadian Army opened the Delery Wireless Station within close proximity to the No. 5 CU site.

Each Communications Unit had separate transmitter and receiver stations, but the receiver station is unknown to the author.

No.5 CU was declared redundant after only 9 years and the station closed in December 1964. It’s unknown exactly why No. 5 CU was slated for closure, but it likely was a combination of the closure of RCAF Station Lachine in September 1959 and the amalgamation of the individual service branch communications systems into the Canadian Forces Communications System in the run-up to the Unification of the mid-1960s.

Both the No.5 CU and Delery Wireless Station properties were sold to a Mr. Bertrand of DeLery. a few years after the closure.

The former No. 5 CU transmitter building is still standing, but is sealed up and abandoned. One large transmitter tower remains standing behind the building, bot none of the other antennas remain.

For several decades the letters “Royal Canadian Air Force Transmitter Building” remained on the front of the building, but they were stolen by vandals sometime in the early 1990s.

An interesting side-note to the story of No. 5 CU is on 14 May 1963, the unit received orders to stock firearms for both their transmitter and receiver sites. It’s unknown why this order was issued.

Source Material: “Abandoned Military Installations in Canada Vol II: Quebec” by Paul Ozorak and the personal observations of the author (2016).