Canada suspected Soviets of stealing prime minister’s private diary
May 16, 2017 4 Comments
Canadian officials speculated that Soviet spies stole a missing volume from the private diary collection of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, who led the country in the run-up to the Cold War. A liberal anticommunist, Mackenzie King was Canada’s prime minister from 1925 to 1948, with a break from 1930 to 1935. He is known for having led the establishment of Canada’s welfare state along Western European standards.
When King died in 1950, he left behind instructions asking for his private diaries to be destroyed. However, the executioners of his will decided instead to turn over King’s private papers —including his diaries— to the Canadian state. In 1975, the Library and Archives of Canada began releasing King’s private diaries to the public. The diaries contain daily entries that span over half a century, up until King’s death. One crucial volume, however, is missing. It covers the last two months of 1945, when Canada was engaged in intensive deliberations with the Allies about the shape of postwar Europe and Asia. These deliberations also involved frank discussions between King and his British and American counterparts about the atom bomb, and possibly measures to uncover suspected infiltration of Western government institutions by communist sympathizers.
Now a new book, written by Trent University history professor Christopher Dummitt, reveals
that Soviet spies were suspected of stealing the missing volume. The book, Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life, claims that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was notified of the missing diary volume in 1969. Shortly afterwards, the CSIS launched an investigation into the missing memoir. In 1985, says Dr. Dummitt, a CSIS memo speculated that an agent of the Soviet KGB might have stolen the diary, because it contained information that was of interest to Moscow. Interestingly, however, the previous diary volume, which covers the case of Igor Gouzenko, is not missing. Gouzenko was a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, whose 1945 defection to Canada is sometimes credited with starting the Cold War. Why would a Soviet spy not steal that volume as well, the skeptics ask?
Professor Dummitt entertains a simpler idea in his book, which is that Jean-Louis Daviault, an employee of the Library and Archives of Canada, may have stolen the volume. Daviault, who had been tasked with photographing King’s diary collection, was caught trying to sell parts of the diary to a Canadian newspaper. It was probably he who stole the missing volume, in order to sell it to the press, or a rival intelligence agency, argues Dr. Dummitt.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 17 May 2017 | Permalink
intelNews.org 
Dr. J,
Questions, rather than comments:
Is there any way that it can be proven who actually stole the missing volume, the Russians or Daviault? Since it’s stated as “simpler idea” by Dr. Dummit, is interesting but confusing.
Perhaps it would lessen the confusion by reading Dr. Dummit’s book?
Very interesting article, thank you.
Liz Baalbaki
This interesting article says that Dr Dummit’s book “claims that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was notified of the missing diary volume in 1969.”
CSIS only came into existence on 21 June 1984, with the enacting of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. Perhaps the article’s author intended to refer to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service, the precursor to the CSIS organization.
The one MAJOR problem with Dummit’s assessment is that Daviault was a PHOTOGRAPHER at the Archives and it was his job to COPY documents to be put on micro-film. There was NO NEED for him to steal the actual diary pages. It was NOT a volume stolen, but a few pages in the December 1945 diary. The truth is, the diary likely points to the Soviet agents and sympathizers within King’s OWN government and Daviault was simply a scapegoat.BTW King was NOT an anti-Communist. He legalized and then REINSTATED the Soviet run Communist Party of Canada TWICE as Prime Minister. First as the Communist Party of Canada and second as the Labour Progressive Party. Both precursors to Canada’s modern Communist Party the NDP.
After further researching this and going through Dummit and RCMP records there is absolutely NO PROOF Daviault copied or took ANYTHING. If you scrutinize closely both the RCMP and Dummits sources none actually exist. This is all based on a claim made by a Canadian reporter that a friend of his was offered segments of material dated 1941. However there is ZERO evidence to prove that this ever happened. In fact, when the RCMP claimed to have found THAT copied material it turned out to be BS. They NEVER recovered it. It was only on the testimony of the head of the Archives Lamb that Daviault copied the material but that was all circumstantial evidence. Nothing was proven – NOTHING. The missing two or three pages of the King Diary simply does not follow even the RCMP’s outline of Daviault because he never had to actually steal the documents. He simply had to copy them. No, In my opinion the pages were removed by King’s executors like Pearson, Pickersgill, Robertson because they were implicated as traitors and working for the USSR. I believe Daviault did not commit suicide but was MURDERED to cover all this up. WHY? Because having copied the material for the Archives he was likely the only one outside of Kings circle to have actually READ what was there. After all, this was all re-sparked at the RCMP Security Section in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Daviault is found dead. He had all sorts of problems but there are key elements of this story missing. For example, he had a wife and a child. His psychiatric diagnosis both during the war and shortly after was questioned and those treating him in the 60s and 70s state that he was NOT suicidal. This has nothing to do with Hollis. Norman Robertson, for one, was a Communist and a traitor to Canada during the war along with many of those that should have been suspected but were not due to their stature and nothing more. NONE of the King executors were questioned as possible guilty participants. Remember that in the 1950s they called Pearson RED MIKE. Elizabeth Bentley claimed that if he was not working for the Soviets he was an idiot for passing secret material to Robert Bryce who then handed it to her. This goes much much deeper but Canadians prefer to live in an ignorant fantasy and believe the PUPPETS in Canadian MARXIST academia like the morons at U of T and the bigger traitors in the CBC and so-called professors like Dummit.