The BSC's Senior Canadians

Director William Stephenson and Communications Section head Benjamin deForest “Pat” Bayly were the senior BSC Canadians.

Stephenson was a First World War flying ace and wealthy businessman from Winnipeg, Manitoba who covered many of the BSC's expenses out of his own pocket. He has been mythologized as the “man called Intrepid” (which may not have been his real wartime code name) and is the focus of a whole sub-genre of Second World War intelligence literature.

Bayly, a University of Toronto engineering professor and postwar mayor of Ajax, Ontario, has received less recognition. There is considerable scholarly and popular fascination with “offensive” aspects of wartime signals intelligence work, most notably the breaking of enemy codes and cyphers like Engima and Purple. Bayly led the development of the Allies’ own leading-edge “defensive” encryption and cypher technologies. His cypher machines protected Allied communications during the war and British agencies continued to use them for decades.