Smokey and the Dangerous Negatives

In 1976, the National Library in Ottawa was confronted with a unique problem which required the specialized assistance of the police dog services.

A potentially dangerous situation had developed in the film storage areas of the Photo Control Section. This section stores the photography collection of the Public Archives and some of the negatives had a nitrocellulose base which, when deteriorating, created a harmful and highly explosive gas. A physical search for the damaged negatives would have been an insurmountable task - the collection consists of approximately five million items packed in ten thousand boxes! Finally, a request came to the Dorval Police Dog Service though the Canadian Bomb Data Centre for assistance on this dilemma.

A few samples of the deteriorating negatives were found and sent to Cst. Jean of Dorval, and for two weeks experiments were conducted to determine if police service dog Smokey could find the nitrocellulose. He could, having no more trouble with this than with ordinary explosives.

On December 16, Cst. Jean and Smokey arrived at the Photo Section and began their search through the rows of boxes, stacked from floor to ceiling. Smokey indicated between 20 - 25 boxes were suspect. These were brought down for further examination by Archives staff and were found to contain dangerous negatives.

The search, including Smokey's rest periods, lasted six to seven hours. His impressive performance had rid the Archives of a dangerous substance and also saved the staff considerable time and effort.