Lynn Hodgson - Inside Camp-X

Lynn has dedicated half of his life to uncovering the most detailed secrets of Camp- X. There is very little documentation about what went on at Camp-X during the war as it was destroyed at the end of the war. Lynn has accumulated forty hours of taped interviews with the men and women of Camp-X as well as the neighbours of the Camp. He has spent hundreds of hours investigating and researching in order to produce Inside Camp-X. It will be books such as this that will be relied on to tell the real story of what went on behind those barbed wire fences.

Camp-X was established in Dec. 1941, on the Whitby/Oshawa border through co-operative efforts of the British Security Co-Ordination (BSC) and the Government of Canada. The BSC’s chief, Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian, was a close confidant of the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, who instructed him to create “the clenched fist that would provide the knockout blow” to the Axis powers. One of Stephenson’s successes was Camp-X!

The Camp was designed for the sole purpose of linking Britain and the United States. It was very timely that Camp-X opened the day before the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese. The Camp’s location was remote yet only thirty miles across Lake Ontario from the United States.

Once established, the Commanding officers of the camp soon realized the impact of Camp-X. Requests for more agents and different training programs came in daily from London and New York. Not only were they training agents to go behind enemy lines on specialized missions, but also training agents’ instructors.

The agents trained at Camp-X had no idea about their future mission behind enemy lines. Camp-X’s sole purpose was to develop and train all agents in every aspect of silent killing, sabotage, Partisan work, recruitment methods for the resistance movement, demolition, map reading, weaponry, and Morse Code.

It was not until the agents completed their tenweek course that the instructors and commanding officers would assess each individual for his particular expertise and subsequently advise London of their recommendations for individuals.

Another key objective was to establish a major communications link between North and South America and European operations. Code named ‘Hydra’, the resulting short-wave radio and telecommunications centre was the most powerful of its type. Largely “hand-made” by a few gifted Canadian radio amateurs, Hydra played a magnificent role in the tactical and strategic Allied radio networks.

Lynn has an excellent website www.campx.com where you can find lots more information about this interesting part of Canadian history.