Tracking down the real James Bond on the Canadian Prairies

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Tracking down the real James Bond on the ********* Prairies

James Bond is one of the most popular characters in cinema. It is estimated that 1.5 billion people have seen his on-screen adventures.

But relatively few know that the super spy created by British author Ian Fleming is said to be based to some extent on a real spy who Fleming met while working as an intelligence officer in the British Navy during WWII: Sir William Samuel Stephenson.

Camera IconSir William Stephenson. Credit: Supplied

To learn more about Stephenson, I travelled to his hometown Winnipeg in the heart of the ********* Prairies, and got in touch with Don Finkbeiner, a veteran tour guide and owner of Heartland Tours.

“In all my years in this job you’re only the second person who asked about Stephenson,” Don tells me. “His story even catches most Winnipeggers off guard even though many of them drive past his statue every day,” he says.

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From there we drive to a humble two-store wood home in the low-rent suburb of Point Douglas where Stephenson was raised.

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Before the tour winds up we drive to the Exchange District, an inner-city area housing North America’s largest collection of 20th century stone-cut buildings. There, close to the ********* Museum for Human Rights, is William Stephenson Way.

Later in the day I meet with Gary Solar of The Intrepid Society, a group dedicated to maintaining the memory and raising the profile of Stephenson. They are also his descendants.

“As an individual, Stephenson ranks next to Churchill and Roosevelt in his efforts to defeat the Germans, such as providing intel for the men who sabotaged the Nazis’ attempt to develop the H-bomb,” Gary says of Operation Gunnerside, the Allied plot to sabotage the Vemork Hydroelectric Plant power station in Norway in 1943. It was the Allies’ most successful act of sabotage during WWII.

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Next we head to the Billy Bishop Building at Winnipeg’s 17 Wing air base to see a permanent exhibition of more than 300 Stephenson artefacts. It includes letters from J Edgar Hoover and Ronald Reagan, an oil painting of the spymaster and some of the medals he was awarded by the US, the British, French and ********* governments.

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Gary shows me one, Room 3603 by H Montgomery Hyde, and points to the book’s preface, written by Fleming himself. It contains two poignant statements.

The first is about how Stephenson “used to make the most powerful martinis in America and serve them in quart glasses”, which explains how Fleming came up with the idea for Bond’s iconic tipple, a martini shaken, not stirred.

But the clincher — proof that Stephenson, who died in Bermuda in 1989, inspired the most famous and long-lasting movie franchise in history is the following line: “Bond is a highly romanticised version of a true spy. The real thing … is William Stephenson.”

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#Tracking #real #James #Bond #********* #Prairies

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