Since the original release of Inside Camp-X in 1999, a local society club questioned the authenticity of my book which makes the statement that Ian Fleming was trained at Camp-X. In fact, this was the case and I offer the following article published in the Oshawa Times newspaper on November 5th 1966 as proof of my claim.  It appears reproduced in larger print below the clipping. The original copy is available at the Oshawa archives.

007 Creator Couldn’t Kill in Oshawa Spy Camp Test

(Toronto – CP)

Author Ian Fleming’s failure in a wartime espionage test, described in a recently published biography as at variance with the deeds of his fictional character, James Bond, didn’t happen exactly as described in the biography, a former security chief says.

The Life of Ian Fleming, the biography by British author John Pearson, says Fleming was unable to carry out an order to kill a man, described as a dangerous enemy agent, in a Toronto hotel room during the Second World War when Fleming was taking intelligence training near Oshawa, Ontario.

A statement by T.G. Drew-Brook of Toronto, wartime Canadian representative of British Security Co-ordination, says the test took place in a mocked-up hotel corridor in one of the buildings at the training centre about 30 miles east of Toronto, and not at a hotel in the city.

“Live ammunition was occasionally used for training purposes in these quarters,” the statement says, “but at no time and in no circumstances was live ammunition permitted outside the confines of the school property in connection with the school’s training and exercises.”

Created 007

Fleming, whose fictional accounts of the cold-blooded exploits of secret agent Bond were best sellers from 1952 until Fleming’s death last year, was sent to the Oshawa school while serving with British naval intelligence during the war.

The school was headed by Sir William Stephenson the celebrated “Quiet Canadian” chief of the British intelligence network in North and South America.

The Pearson biography says Fleming was sent to a cheap hotel in downtown Toronto, armed with a loaded police revolver and instructed to kill “ a dangerous enemy agent” he would find in a certain room.  Unknown to Fleming, the “agent” was a school instructor skilled in evading point blank shots, but the exercise was made as realistic as possible.

The book quotes Stephenson as saying “it was a test of nerve, a test to decide whether he really was ruthless enough to kill a man when it came down to it.”  But, according the account, Fleming waited outside the room for a time, and then went away.

“He apologized about it afterward,” the book quotes Stephenson further. “You know,” he said, ‘I couldn’t kill a man that way.’”

Knew Background

The Drew-Brook statement says Stephenson, who now lives in Bermuda, asked Drew-Brook, who had first-hand knowledge of the administration of the Oshawa school, to clarify the account of the incident, based on conversations Pearson had with Stephenson in preparing the biography.

“There was evidently confusion in these conversations,” the statement says, “perhaps due to the fact that in one of the school buildings, for training purposes, quarters were set up to resemble an ordinary hotel corridor and bedroom.