Friday, January 19, 2018

RIP Carl Freeland

The last surviving original staff member of CSE, Carl Freeland, passed away on January 13th.

Freeland served in the Canadian Army during the Second World War and was assigned to the Army's No. 1 Discrimination Unit (DU). 1 DU, a number of other service units, and parts of the Examination Unit, Canada's original code-breaking bureau, were later combined to become the Joint Discrimination Unit, which went on to form the basis of Canada's post-war SIGINT agency, known as the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC) when it was created in 1946 and later renamed the Communications Security Establishment.

According to his obituary, Freeland's "proficiency in typing resulted in his assignment" to the DU.

He went on to spend his entire career at CBNRC/CSE, serving as the agency's liaison officer to GCHQ (CANSLO/L) in the mid-1970s, and finally retiring in 1985.

My condolences to his family and friends.


Update 6 July 2018:

Steven Freeland, "Carl Freeland: The spy who loved his family and his country," Globe and Mail, 5 July 2018.

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