By the time the Warsak Dam— the last of the Colombo Plan projects— was finished in 1961, the Canadian government had spent some $ 331 million. This image shows the view downstream from the dam during construction. Situated on the Kabul River 30 kilometres northwest of Peshawar, Pakistan, it has a total generating capacity of 240,000 KW.
DCL around the world Combatting the spread of communism drove many foreign policy decisions during the Cold War, including the one that led Commonwealth foreign ministers to establish the Colombo Plan when they met in January 1950 in Colombo, Ceylon( Sri Lanka). These projects weren’ t military in nature, but they certainly involved the need for significant construction experience— hence the call for DCL’ s assistance in supervising the contracts for 11 major projects, including the following:
• the Daudkhel cement plant and Warsak dam in Pakistan;
• the Mayurakshi hydro-electric plant and Umtru power project in India;
• the Ganges-Kobadak power project in East Pakistan( Bangladesh);
• a fish refrigeration plant and the Gal Oya transmission line in Ceylon( Sri Lanka).
Dick Johnson’ s memories of his 1957 project-visiting trip were clear:
The major project was the Warsak Dam, located near the famous Khyber Pass. Nick Cavell and I went to see the Prime Minister of Pakistan, a Mr. Suhrawardy. He told us he could give us only half an hour. Thirty minutes later, an alarm went off. It was in his wristwatch. It was my first and only experience with automated interviews.
These projects, often built by Canadian engineering and construction companies, marked the first time that DCL made its employees available for other government undertakings— for a time, DCL was even maintaining an office in Karachi, Pakistan. This overseas experience would later prove vital to DCL’ s fight to maintain a core group of skilled employees despite defence and staffing cutbacks.
Carrying on The original idea was to set up DCL for a three-year program to do its work and then disband it. But the work kept coming, and DCL continued to serve: in its second three-year period, it performed close to another $ 400 million worth of work. The value of this work in today’ s dollars is about $ 3 billion.
BREAKING NEW GROUND DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA
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