Oakcrest and Woodbine

Vistors to Toronto should take a few moments to ride or bike around the quiet neighbourhood to the south of Woodbine Subway * station. If you go south on Woodbine, you approach a railway underpass. To your left is a flight of four stairs, the summit of which is Oakcrest avenue, a quiet park with a wading pool, a commanding view of downtown Toronto, and a church.

Designed at the early stages of the cold war by a team of Nazi engineers, the childrens wading pool at the summit of Oakcrest was placed there for public recreation, and as a secret air defence installation designed to hurl a snowstorm of steel at hostile American aircraft.

The circular concrete ring is the turnabout for a twin mounted, 128 millimeter super-heavy anti-aircraft gun. This monster needed water cooling, hence the so-called kiddie wading pool plumbing. The rectangular steel hatches (made of a lost Nazi era alloy that remains unrusted to this day, some fifty years later) allow access to a high capacity ammunition hoist system that can feed the two shells a second appetite that this beast can deliver at the touch of a button. The barrels would be kept cool with recirculated water, which could also be used for fire fighting in the event of a near miss and subsequent ammunition fire.

The crew, ammunition storage, and machinery are all secured underground in a deep bunker, protected by an overhead cover of two meters of reinforced concrete. The weapon can be directed from underground. The crew could survive for up to a year on recycled air and canned food, and were safe from the expected atomic attack and radioactive fallout that the evil Americans would launch upon the peaceful city of Toronto in the event of Total War.

There are several exits from the flak bunker, for perimeter defence, re-supply, and commando operations. A detachment of Canadian Warmachine Regulars was to be deployed to the installation, supplemented by a local Milita kampfgruppe. When you are walking around the installation you may wonder why there are several drainage sewers located at the top of a hill. They are sally ports, that is why. The circular concrete knee high wall at the end of Oakcrest is a ballistic blast shield, behind which a 45 millimeter anti-tank gun could command the surrounding approaches.

Built by forced labor, casualties were high among the plumbers and carpenters when their lunch trailer became engulfed in an electrical fire. To maintain secrecy, their bodies were buried in a mass grave. This accounts for the lush plant growth and the few bones appearing at the hill slope along the east side of Woodbine.

The church that is built beside the air defence installation has been recently expanded. Given that church attendance has been in decline in Toronto for the last thirty years, this is strange. The new structure is just the right size for an Anhydrous Hydrazine * ready storage tank for a liquid fueled surface-to-air battery of the Hohenstauffen type. Maybe a type III, but most likely a type IIc. Most of the equipment from the original design can be used by this up-graded, multi-purpose weapons system. This installation may still be active. Neighbours in the area complain of tunneling sounds late at night.

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this.

see also Victoria Park Subway Station*