'Bunker' actually a vegetable cellar, says daughter of previous home owner
Sara Fraser | CBC News | Posted: August 30, 2017 10:00 AM | Last Updated: August 30, 2017
Current owners were looking to figure out what mysterious room was before selling house
The mystery of a strange room beneath the garage of a Charlottetown home may be solved.
Jackalina Van Kampen and Bart Van Eyk bought the house nine years ago. They have since put it up for sale, and spoke to CBC hoping to figure out what the room was intended for.
"We've heard when we moved into this house, from the realtor, and from neighbours and various other Islanders that it was possibly a bomb shelter or a bunker of some sort," said Van Kampen.
The room, with concrete cinder block walls, is tall and wide enough for an adult to stand in with arms outstretched, and a few metres in length.
"Having stuck my head in the hole and looked … I think it is a bomb shelter," said Van Eyk.
Meant as storage for vegetables says former resident
But Gwen MacKinnon, who grew up in the house, said it wasn't intended as a shelter, but as a cold storage area.
She contacted CBC to set the record straight, and to provide some answers for the current homeowners.
"It was designed to be a vegetable storage area where my mother would store potatoes, carrots, and vegetables and put her preserves in," she said.
MacKinnon's father, Keith MacKinnon had the "dream home" built for his wife Gladys and four children, said MacKinnon.
She explained workers forgot to put a door on the room, but her parents were so enthusiastic about the house in general they didn't worry much about the mistake.
"It was just one of those quirks that happens, that it didn't get the proper access from the basement," she said. "We were generally cautioned to stay away from it, it was just empty."
A 'very solid' house
MacKinnon said she understood why the current owners thought it could be a bomb shelter, especially because the house was built in the midst of the Cold War.
"It makes sense … with the Cold War and the bomb scares, that makes sense," she said.
Van Kampen and Van Eyk had also heard that at one time a local senator lived there, although MacKinnon said while the senator and her father were friends, the senator never lived there — although he visited the home on occasion.
Van Kampen did say the house seems to have been built to withstand just about anything.
"It's very solid. The floor of the house is poured concrete over metal trusses and pans, and the walls are very solid," she said.
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