Camp X

My Dad was a Flight Instructor for the RCAF during the war. He was stationed at three different locations, Uplands in Ottawa, St Hubert near Montreal and Whitby east of Toronto; all part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). Dad didn't talk much about the war. It reminded him of the pilots he trained that were killed overseas. But he talked openly about flying and the aircraft he flew during instruction with the BCATP. He loved the Harvard. He  was fascinated by the history and the experience of flying the Tiger Moth, the older, ever forgiving biplane. And he was impressed by the manoeuvrability of the much larger twin engine Avro Anson.

My oldest brother was able to coax more information from him than I could. He admitted he was one of the the RCAF flying instructors at Whitby that was tasked with teaching some of the 'Camp X' crew how to fly single and multi engine aircraft for their spy missions in occupied Europe.  

From my oldest brother, Ken:

"A very interesting part of Canada’s WWII history. And my Dad was part of it while we were stationed at Whitby/Oshawa. He was an RCAF flying instructor teaching some of the pilots to fly single and multi engine aircraft who were part of the clandestine operations on spy missions. They flew one way missions into enemy territory with cadavers dressed as crew then put in place before the spy pilot and crew bailed out and allowed the plane to crash while the spy crew disappeared onto the country side to begin their important work. I recommend reading the book - A Man Called Intrepid - about William Stephenson. He worked with Winston Churchill and Canadian, Lord Beaverbrook to secretly dislodge the German efforts. Camp X was off limits until fairly recently when it was completely disassembled and a memorial erected. It was a secret operation during its existence."

My Dad in the cockpit of a Yale at RCAF Station Oshawa

From Wikipedia: Camp X was the unofficial name of the secret Special Training School No. 103, a Second World War British paramilitary installation for training covert agents in the methods required for success in clandestine operations. It was located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. The area is known today as Intrepid Park, after the code name for Canadian Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Co-ordination (BSC), who established the program to create the training facility.

If you want to know more abuot this unique chapter in Canadian history:

Visit these websites:

https://www.camp-x.com/ 

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-intrepid-life-of-sir-william-stephenson/ 

Visit this blog:

https://www.hagerty.com/media/opinion/the-elsinore-files/uncovering-canadas-forgotten-wwii-spy-school/ 

Search for the 1979 TV mini-series that starred David Niven:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078649/ 

Read these books:

Inside Camp X by Lynn-Phillip Hodgson 

http://www.camp-x.com/mehbooksicx.html 

A Man Called Intrepid by Canadian author William Stevenson

Available in print and e-book from Amazon, Kobo and Chapters-Indigo.