Canadian Intelligence During WWII
The Birth of Espionage
Compared to some of her allies Canada was lacking in the department of transcontinental information gathering and interpretation, but in the end was able to play an active role in intelligence war efforts.
Canada’s War Stance
To understand the situation of Canadian intelligence going into the second world war, one must look at Canadian views on the war itself. The apparent consensus was one that consisted of open hostility and minimal interest. One of the reasons that this may have been the case was because citizens had a vested interest in their current situations and did not initially accept the intrusion a war would be on their everyday lives. For example, university students from McGill protested against the government in hopes of obtaining more money for scholarships. The protesters were not met with a simple yes or no response, but rather asked to look at the current situation and consider what they could do to help. As these were young and health persons, it was seen as their “duty” do join the forces and help out in appropriate ways.
Citizen Surveillance
Though Canadian citizens may have had mixed feelings about a Canadian presence in the war, the government knew its role and began scrambling to get its intelligence sectors up and running. With the onset of the war, a different type of spying began within the Canadian border. The government now had an active agency that was engaged in intelligence outside the country, while the RCMP were doing their part on the inside. When the war started, they extended their surveillance of citizen’s. By 1945, the RCMP had subjected 2 million Canadians, which was about one in five, to security screening. This resulted in about eight hundred thousand citizens deemed subversives. Along with the surveillance that they were conducting on their own, the citizens of Canada were also helping aid the fight against spies. For example, Jean Watts from Lindsey Ontario was sold out by her neighbours to the RCMP for being closely involved with the Communist Party and then suspiciously joining the Canadian Women’s Army Corps.
The End of the War
Since wounds had not fully healed from the Great War, not much preparation was made for another one, but when the time came, the Canadian government knew the function intelligence would play this time around. They were able to open training camps, such as Camp X and successfully undergoing intelligence missions overseas. With the ending of the war, the government found out that their allies were indeed keeping a close eye on them, but in the end were content with their contributions and learned a great deal. Canada during World War II was undeveloped at the beginning in the area of espionage, but in the end was able to pull off what it needed to be on par with Britain and the U.S., emerging as a leading intelligence nation and carries that title into the present day.
Source:
Buse, Dieter K., Kinsman, Gary and Steedman, Mercedes. Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies. (Toronto: Between the Lines) 2000.
Six RCMP officers from Canada
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