Rendezvous: intrigue
Posted on October 26th, 2024 –
A while back I wrote (with a leaning toward espionage) about a couple of books I’d been reading that highlighted the porous and permissive nature of Canada. I’d hoped to make this a preamble to other stories I was aware of but, at the time, didn’t feel that I’d sufficiently plumbed their depths for proper discussion. In other words, I knew of them but not enough about them.
Having now completed “The Soviet Spies” by Richard Hirsch I can say that I’ve done at least a little work to correct this oversight.
Long story short, it’s the 1940s and a GRU cipher clerk named Igor Gouzenko working in the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa goes rogue, making off with a bunch of files exposing the breadth and width of Soviet infiltration within North American politics, military, academia, research, industry, etc. His family is endangered, a bunch of roadblocks and nail-biting encounters follow, and eventually scandalous exposés and international drama ensue — standard spy pulp fiction fodder, except it happens to be true.
While I understand that there may be some disputes surrounding the accuracy of the following statement, the Gouzenko Affair is considered by many historians to be the unofficial start of the Cold War. This is where people like McCarthy got their (not entirely incorrect) ideas about a Red invasion and where movies like Russell Rouse’s wordless classic “The Thief” got their (sometimes literal) inspiration.
Naturally much of the Gouzenko backstory happened in Toronto and enough thorough detail is included in “The Soviet Spies” that I’m considering taking a tour of some of the conspirators’ homes and places of work. This attention to detail can get a bit tedious but the book manages to weave together detailed facts and timelines in a way that reads like a modern day (albeit wordy), spy thriller. Combining this with the history of places like Camp X adds even more intrigue to Canada’s post-war narrative.
This may all seem like a bit of nostalgia but with the current Canada-India diplomatic row, Canada-Russia diplomatic row, Canada-China diplomatic row, and undoubtedly a few others, the same sensational stories that were making headlines nearly seventy years ago are no less apropos today. In fact, the cloak-and-dagger nature of international diplomacy along with a resurgence of human intelligence gathering (HUMINT) and other old-school techniques seem to be more relevant in the modern era than ever.
In any event, if you get a whiff of similar themes in /sectionb then at least you’ll know where I ripped ’em off from.
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