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Street to get spymaster's name

Proposal going before committee

By: Bartley Kives

Posted: 09/5/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Water Avenue will be renamed after Sir William Stephenson. (CP)

Portage Avenue East is not going to become the Street Named After The Man Called Intrepid, as the city is poised to rename another downtown street after Winnipeg-born spymaster Sir William Stephenson.

On Tuesday, city council's property and development committee will consider a plan to rename Water Avenue -- the one-way street that runs from Main Street to the Provencher Bridge -- either William Stephenson Avenue or William Stephenson Way. The Icelandic-Canadian Winnipegger wound up overseeing the U.K.'s intelligence network in North America in the 1930s and 1940s and is crediting for indirectly saving millions of lives by helping reduce the duration of the Second World War.

Earlier this year, Winnipeg's Intrepid Society asked the city to change the name of Portage Avenue East -- the short street that extends one block east from Portage and Main Street -- to William Stephenson Place.

But the cost of that switch could have exceeded $100,000, as no fewer than eight Portage Avenue East properties housing 64 separate businesses -- included MTS Allstream, the Fairmont Hotel, the Bank of Canada and the Winnipeg Goldeyes -- would have been forced to change their addresses, letterheads, databases, payroll systems and websites to accommodate the change.

As a result, the city looked into renaming two nearby arteries, Water Avenue and Westbrook Street. According to a city report, the latter was ruled out because it is named after a former mayor of Winnipeg, Henry Shaver Westbrook, who sat in office for a few months in 1886.

The name Water Avenue, however, merely reflects the fact the street leads to the Red River. One business owner, Shaw Printing, would be forced to change its address and materials to reflect the name, but it is entitled to compensation, said Coun. Scott Fielding, the property committee's chairman. The Intrepid Society supports the renaming of Water Avenue, the city report states.

"There are fewer businesses affected by the renaming of Water Avenue (and it) leads directly to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, reflecting the many human-rights aspects of (Sir William Stephenson's) exploits," reads the city report, which also states Stephenson "lacks a significant monument or recognition in his birthplace."

Born in Point Douglas in 1897, Stephenson belonged to a family too destitute to care for him and worked as a telegraph operator before serving as a decorated airman in the First World War. He then became a businessman, moved to the United Kingdom and suddenly amassed a small fortune.

According to biographies such as Bill Macdonald's The True Intrepid, Stephenson used his contacts as an industrialist to inform Britain about the Nazi arms buildup in 1930s Germany. He was tapped by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to covertly create and oversee British Security Co-ordination, an Allied intelligence-gathering network based in New York City during the Second World War.

Stephenson is credited with helping persuade the U.S. to create the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, training thousands of Allied spies and creating the counter-intelligence infrastructure that allowed the Allies to crack Nazi codes. Author Ian Fleming incorporated some aspects of Stephenson's personality into characters in his James Bond novels, most notably M, Q and even Bond himself.

Stephenson was knighted by the U.K., handed the U.S. Presidential Medal for Merit and named to the Order of Canada. But he kept his accomplishments from his friends and family and rarely visited Winnipeg during his postwar years.

Stephenson died in Bermuda in 1989, at the age of 93.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 5, 2009 B1

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