Spy Wars: Espionage in Canada from Gouzenko to Glasnost

Sidney Allinson is the editor at the Royal Canadian Military Institute
and author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

What’s this? Husky-voiced frдuleins in smoky cabarets, and state
secrets murmured beneath satin sheets? In Canada? Yes, for one brief
moment in 1965, our dear, drab country had its very own sex-and-spies
scandal, the Gerda Munsinger Affair. It erupted into the news:
titillating allegations of a cabinet minister’s seduction by a German
adventuress, possibly a Soviet agent. Suitably enough, she was tracked
to her Munich cabaret by a Toronto Star reporter, not by a relentless
rcmp spy-catcher. Defence Minister Pierre Sevigny was eventually cleared
of any breach of security, but Mountie tape recordings of his Teutonic
trysts turfed him from office nonetheless.

Granatstein and Stafford are distinguished historians, each with
several excellent books on military affairs. This time, they mine
Canada’s surprisingly rich lode of espionage activity. Their chapter
“The Man Who Invented the Cold War” reminds us how it all began, in
Ottawa in September of 1945. The revelations of a defecting Soviet
cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko, first revealed the extent of Communist
spying here. The authors’ account of the desperate Russian’s
inability to get anyone to take his defection seriously adds another
faintly comical Canadian touch to what is, in fact, a deadly serious
business.

As well as foreign spies, we’ve had more than our share of home-grown
traitors. Oddly, few ever paid for their treason—not in terms of
execution or imprisonment, at least. One of the few to receive any
punishment was long-time nato spy Hugh Hambledon, and even he had to be
caught and imprisoned by the British.

The authors bring out much information about Canada’s involvement in
“sig-int” (long-distance electronic eavesdropping) in co-operation
with U.S. and British agencies. We also learn the circumstances that
unhorsed the rcmp from counterespionage duties, and set up the civilian
Security & Intelligence Service in their place.

Granatstein and Stafford are to be complimented for this unique and
interesting study, which places Canada—at last—in the labyrinth of
international spying.