A Soviet cipher-clerk based at the USSR’s Ottawa embassy walked out of that building on this date in 1945 with a briefcase containing more than 100 documents. They would prove to be earth-shattering as they revealed the extent of Soviet spying against the west, despite the fact the USSR was supposed to be a friend and ally.
The man who left the embassy with the document was Igor Gouzenko. Fed up with the lack of freedom for him and most Soviet citizens in the totalitarian state, he feared a return to his home country after experiencing life in the West.
But, defecting to Canadian authorities proved far from easy, despite the value of the information Gouzenko had in hand. He was turned away by the RCMP and various members of the Ottawa media. At one point, he even visited the offices of Justice Minister Louis St.-Laurent to try to interest Canadian officials in the spying that was going on all around them.
Soviet officials at the embassy soon set off looking for their youthful cipher clerk and raided Gouzenko’ s Somerset Street apartment – now a historic site complete with a plaque honouring the defector. He and his wife evaded capture by hiding in another apartment in the building.
Eventually, Gouzenko was taken seriously and Canadian security services, joined by their American and British colleagues from their own spying agencies, hustled Gouzenko off to the secret base near Oshawa called Camp X for debriefing. The young Soviet was granted asylum and was able to reveal crucial details surrounding the spying activities of the Soviets.
The Cold War had truly begun.
Gouzenko lived on until 1982 under an assumed name and he became famous for his appearances in public while wearing a paper bag over his head to conceal his identity.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.