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Life was far from normal for those who worked in the clandestine Camp X, Canada’s school for spies
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Camp THE SECRET LIFE AT
BY JUNE COXON
was 1942 and one evening 20-year-old Winnifred Davidson, known as Davey to her friends, was whisked away from Toronto in an unmarked maroon car and driven to an undisclosed location. When she arrived there, she was instructed, “Don’t tell anyone where you are or what you’re doing here.” That’s how Davidson began her career at a top-secret training school for spies known by many names but commonly called Camp X. She was part of the first contingent of women allowed into that men’s training facility. According to Davidson, the camp, located on a wooded 110-hectare site on the northwestern shores of Lake Ontario near Whitby, Ont., “looked much like any army base, but nicer and quieter. There were a number of barracks where we slept, a onestorey office building where we worked that included a canteen, and not much else.”
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What was different was that there were no stores, telephones or cars at Camp X, the area was enclosed by a fence, and all mail sent to staff went first to an address in Toronto. Also out of the ordinary were the subjects taught to the secret agents training there, such as how to interrogate prisoners, safe blowing, information gathering and how to kill with the thrust of a knife. Davidson worked in the communications section as a keyboard operator. “After arriving at Camp X, we had one week to learn Morse code and Murray code [which used punched tape ribbons to transmit messages] before pitching in to translate incoming and outgoing calls to and from Britain,” Davidson said. “We used a Kleinschmidt teletype machine and messages came in via high-speed Morse code and went out on punch tape. The office ran 24/7. We worked eight-hour shifts.”
JULY/AUGUST 2017 > legionmagazine.com
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2017-05-26 10:35 AM
