RCMP informant’s decades of spying on social reformers are chronicled in new book

OTTAWA — As a Communist Party member in Calgary in the early 1940s, Frank Hadesbeck performed clerical work at the party office, printed leaflets and sold books.

But he also had tasks his party comrades could know nothing about: snooping on mail, copying phone numbers from scratch pads and rummaging through waste baskets.

Hadesbeck, known to his RCMP handlers as agent 810, would pass along any information he could glean to the national police force.

His lengthy tenure as a paid informant for the Mounties’ security branch is chronicled in “A Communist for the RCMP” by Dennis Gruending, a former New Democrat MP who has worked as a journalist and authored several books.

Before the First World War, Hadesbeck’s family left what was then southern Hungary for Canada, settling in Saskatchewan. Frank had a difficult childhood. He was orphaned at age 11, worked on farms, spent time in the United States, and did a number of jobs in the Regina area in the 1930s.

He was among the Canadians who volunteered to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War against Gen. Francisco Franco.

Hadesbeck was alone, broke and looking for work in Alberta when the RCMP recruited him as an informant, on condition he join the Communist Party to establish a cover.

Several days later, he was fingerprinted, weighed and photographed at an RCMP office.

“My contact said I was not an informer or a stool pigeon or a snitch as other informers were classified,” Hadesbeck recorded in his notes. “I was part of a team on a monthly salary, plus expenses and was given a number.”

The RCMP has always jealously guarded information about its sources, even decades after events, Gruending writes. He formally requested Hadesbeck’s file through the Access to Information Act, but an official would neither confirm nor deny such records exist.

However, Hadesbeck thoroughly documented his efforts for the RCMP over the decades. Gruending acquired a box of his papers through an acquaintance, and managed to corroborate and flesh out many of Hadesbeck’s claims.

The files contain the names of hundreds of people on so-called Watch Out lists — individuals of interest to RCMP security officials who grew increasingly concerned about the perceived menace of Communism during the Cold War.

The records also describe in detail how Hadesbeck operated as an agent, his dealings with handlers, and his thoughts about the ethics and wisdom of his double life, Gruending notes.

RCMP security officials wanted information on people they considered subversive, but were not interested in understanding why those individuals were critical of the existing economic and political system, the book says.

Hadesbeck appeared to have a clear sense of his mission.

“I soon realized that I was being paid to collect information only, not to think about why they wanted all this information about people who I thought were honest Canadian citizens.”

Hadesbeck would meet a handler every couple of weeks, often in a hotel room. The officer typically provided names and photos of people of interest, and told him to make discreet inquiries.

The RCMP’s cash payments supplemented the salary from his steady job, from the early 1950s on, at a Regina company that salvaged old tractors.

Hadesbeck’s notes and Watch Out lists from the 1950s point to RCMP suspicions about Communist control of the peace movement.

Socialist trailblazer Tommy Douglas, who attended numerous peace-related events, turned up alongside dozens of others on Watch Out lists. A handwritten list labelled the Canadian Peace Conference and Voice of Women as Communist Party fronts.

Douglas was premier of Saskatchewan and went on to lead the federal New Democratic Party, but Gruending contends the RCMP did not bother much with distinctions between Communists and social democrats.

“The force continued to believe that Douglas was secretly a Communist, or at least was unduly influenced by them.”

Indeed, a multi-volume RCMP file on Douglas of more than 1,100 pages came to light through Access to Information in 2006.

Hadesbeck scribbled half a dozen notes about writer Farley Mowat, another subject of curiosity for the security service.

Many prominent Canadians appeared on his Watch Out lists, including author Pierre Berton, journalist June Callwood, musician Stompin’ Tom Connors, Liberal cabinet ministers Walter Gordon and Herb Gray, and broadcaster Adrienne Clarkson — who would later be governor general.

Gruending says Hadesbeck not only routinely betrayed Communist Party members, but was reckless in passing along information about many other people.

“Often, he implied that they might be party members when they were not,” he writes.

Sometimes such scrutiny could have serious consequences.

People deemed suspect by the RCMP were harassed, denied employment and promotions, or even fired from government, unions, the media and academia, Gruending notes. Gay and lesbian members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the public service were among those targeted.

“Careers were ruined and lives shattered.”

At a November gathering in Ottawa to promote the book, Gruending said he was left with mixed feelings about Hadesbeck, “and I think he was somewhat conflicted in the way he felt about the people that he was surveilling.”

“I have a good deal of sympathy towards him, but ultimately, he betrayed a lot of people.”

In September 1976, Hadesbeck was invited to a meeting at a Regina Holiday Inn with several RCMP officers.

He was told his career as an informant was over.

“I had to sign a paper, but got no copy for myself, that I would keep my connections with the security force secret and not contact them again in any way,” Hadesbeck’s notes say.

He was handed 15 $100 bills as a parting bonus.

Even so, Hadesbeck supplied information to the RCMP until 1977, and occasionally for a few more years.

“Hadesbeck’s behaviour is difficult to understand because he found his abrupt dismissal to be traumatic,” the book says. “He believed that he deserved, and had been promised, a pension when he retired.”

Hadesbeck seemed eager to tell his story in the 1980s, but plans for a book fell through.

He died in 2006, shortly after turning 100.

In his later jottings, Hadesbeck tried to portray himself as a patriot and anti-Communist, but the pronouncements seem half-hearted, Gruending writes.

“It is easy to see Hadesbeck as deceitful, cynical and self-serving. He did not become an informant for ideological reasons or as an act of patriotism. He did it for the money and perhaps a sense of power and excitement.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 22, 2024.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press