Maple Moments: Sir William Stephenson

Spies aren’t supposed to be well known, which may explain why William Stephenson, Canadian spy extraordinaire, was lost for so long in the fog of history.

The boy, born in Winnipeg in 1897, became a First World War hero. He flew a Sopwith Camel in the British Air Force, winning the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was shot down over France and imprisoned by the Germans. Then he escaped, but no one knows how.

In the years before the Second World War, Stephenson ran several businesses in England, became wealthy and got to know Winston Churchill. When war broke out and Churchill became prime minister, he sent Stephenson to the United States officially as the British passport control officer, but in reality, to coordinate all British espionage in the Western Hemisphere. His telegraphic address was Intrepid, and many years later, that was popularized incorrectly as his code name in a book titled A Man Called Intrepid.

Stephenson was in charge of censoring transatlantic mail, breaking codes, looking for Nazi spies and forging documents. He also set up Camp X in Whitby, Ontario, where hundreds of spies from Canada and Allied countries were taught how to disrupt Nazi operations behind the lines in Europe using high-tech gadgets, small arms and large explosives. Camp X trained so many American spies [that] Stephenson was the first foreigner to receive the highest US civilian presidential honour, the Medal for Merit. He was also knighted and eventually became a Companion of the Order of Canada.

There are also stories that a British naval intelligence officer named Ian Fleming visited Camp X, but in the murky spy world, there are no written records to prove it. Fleming later wrote 12 novels about perhaps the most famous fictional spy ever, James Bond. Fleming is reported to have said that Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is William Stephenson.