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


As a member of the Communist Party in Calgary in the early 1940s, Frank Hadesbeck did clerical work in the party office, printing pamphlets and selling books.

But he also had tasks that his party comrades knew nothing about: spying on mail, copying phone numbers from notepads and rummaging through trash cans.

Hadesbeck, known to his RCMP handlers as Constable 810, would pass on any information he could obtain to the national police.

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

Before the First World War, Hadesbeck’s family left what was then southern Hungary for Canada and settled in Saskatchewan. Frank had a difficult childhood. Orphaned at age 11, he worked on farms, spent time in the United States and worked various 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 General Francisco Franco.

Hadesbeck was alone, penniless and looking for work in Alberta when the RCMP recruited him as an informant, on the condition that 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 informant or a snitch or a snitch as other informants were classified,” Hadesbeck recorded in his notes. “I was part of a team with a monthly salary, plus expenses and they gave me a number.”

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

However, Hadesbeck carefully documented his efforts for the RCMP over the decades. Gruending acquired a box of his documents through an acquaintance and was able to corroborate and develop many of Hadesbeck’s claims.

The files contain the names of hundreds of people on so-called Watch lists: individuals of interest to RCMP security officials who were increasingly concerned about the perceived threat of communism during the Cold War.

The records also describe in detail how Hadesbeck acted as an agent, his dealings with those in charge, and his thoughts on the ethics and wisdom of his double life, Gruending notes.

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

Hadesbeck seemed to have a clear sense of his mission.

“I soon realized that they were paying me only to gather information, not to think about why they wanted all this information on people who I thought were honest Canadian citizens.”

Hadesbeck met with a manager every two weeks, often in a hotel room. The officer typically provided names and photographs of persons of interest and asked him to make discreet inquiries.

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

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

Socialist pioneer Tommy Douglas, who attended numerous peace-related events, appeared along with dozens of others on Watch lists. A handwritten list labeled the Canadian Peace Conference and Women’s Voice as fronts for the Communist Party.

Douglas was premier of Saskatchewan and later led the federal New Democratic Party, but Gruending maintains that the RCMP did not care much about distinctions between communists and social democrats.

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

In fact, 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 the writer Farley Mowat, another subject of curiosity for the security service.

Many prominent Canadians appeared on their 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 become governor general.

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

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

Sometimes that scrutiny could have serious consequences.

People deemed suspicious by the RCMP were harassed, denied employment and promotions, or even fired from government, unions, the media and academia, Gruending notes. Among the targets were gay and lesbian members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the public service.

“Careers were ruined and lives shattered.”

At a November meeting in Ottawa to promote the book, Gruending said he had mixed feelings about Hadesbeck, “and I think he was somewhat conflicted in the way he felt about the people he was watching.”

“I have a lot of sympathy for him, but in the end 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 document, but did not receive a copy, in which I said that I would keep my connections with the security forces secret and would not contact them again in any way,” Hadesbeck’s notes say.

They gave him 15 $100 bills as a parting bonus.

Still, Hadesbeck provided information to the RCMP until 1977, and occasionally for a few more years.

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

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

He died in 2006, shortly after turning 100.

In his later notes, Hadesbeck attempted to present himself as a patriot and anti-communist, but the statements seemed half-hearted, Gruending writes.

“It’s easy to see Hadesbeck as deceitful, cynical and selfish. He didn’t become an informant for ideological reasons or as an act of patriotism. He did it for money and perhaps a sense of power and excitement.”

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



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