Cold War ‘kid’ back in Carp.
Author Tim Wynne-Jones will bring the Cold War era alive again in his fourth Rex Zero book, entitled Rex Zero In Deep, due out in 2012. Wynne-Jones, shown here inside the Rex Zero room in the Diefenbunker, read from the book for the first time today.
Nevil Hunt
CARP - Remembrance Day is about honouring our fallen, our veterans
and Canadians who serve in uniform today.
It’s also a time worth thinking about the Cold War; the war
that never happened.
To the people who lived through the very real threat of
nuclear war, explaining what it was like is challenging. Canada’s Cold War
Museum – the Diefenbunker, in Carp – is a great place to start, with its
warrens of hallways deep below ground. But what does it mean to a youngster?
Enter Rex Zero.
Perth author Tim Wynne-Jones created the character for a
book that has spawned two sequels. Rex is now due for a fourth volume: Rex Zero
In Deep.
Wynne-Jones spent a few hours of his Remembrance Day inside
the Diefenbunker, in the small room that’s dedicated to the fictional boy Rex.
He shared the first public reading of a chapter from the next book, due out in
2012.
The event took place in a room the Diefenbunker has dressed
up as Rex’s bedroom and school classroom, circa 1960. The permanent display
opened last year and since then has been visited by more than 1,000
schoolchildren during tours.
“This is fabulous,” Wynne-Jones joked before his reading. “I’m
not even dead and I’m in a museum.”
The bedroom side of the room comes complete with his bed,
sci-fi posters and Hardy Boys books. The classroom area is frozen in 1960 too: it
has desks, cans of powdered milk, a 16-mm projector, portraits of the Queen and
Diefenbaker, as well as a roll-down map bearing a patch of land marked U.S.S.R.
This is where the Cold War connects with kids.
Instead of trying to imagine adults scurrying about,
worrying about war, visiting children can consider the era as a pre-teen who
was right there.
Wynne-Jones grew up in Ottawa’s west end at a time when
atomic war was a very real possibility. He recalled a day when the city’s air
raid sirens were tested and he thought his life was about to end at the bottom
of a mushroom cloud.
“You knew every detail of annihilation,” Wynne-Jones said,
While youngsters who read the Rex Zero books absorb the Cold
War atmosphere, Wynne-Jones said they often have questions about day-to-day
life as a child in the 1950s and 1960s.
“I talk to kids all over North America about the differences
between now and that age,” he said. “They’re interested, but at the level of
play, which is how it should be.
“Kids can’t believe the freedom we had. I was out on my bike
all day and my parents never knew where I was.”
He said today’s kids can’t imagine a world without video
games.
“They’ll ask, ‘Weren’t you bored?’ and I was sometimes,”
Wynne-Jones said. “But where do you think imagination comes from?”
He said he also gets letters from adult fans.
“They want to share stories that are like something in the (Rex
Zero) books,” he said.
NEXT REX
Wynne-Jones carried a thick dossier with him to the Diefenbunker,
the words Top Secret written on the front. Inside was a loose-leaf manuscript
of Rex Zero In Deep.
Fans of Rex can now know that the protagonist will visit the
United States while on vacation with his family in the fourth book, which is
based in 1964.
Diefenbunker manager of visitor services Amy Turner said children
who are part of school groups and parties invariably visit the Rex Zero room.
“It’s a nice alternative for families on the weekends,” she
said, adding Rex Zero connects with children in ways static displays can’t. “It’s
a much more personal experience.”
Admission to the Rex Zero room is included with all
Diefenbunker visits. See diefenbunker.ca or call 613-839-0007 for information.