2 Intelligence Company
2 Intelligence Company is a Canadian Armed Forces Primary Reserve Intelligence Branch unit based in Toronto, headquartered at Denison Armoury. It is part of the 4th Canadian Division. Its activities were confidential until the 1980s.
The Intelligence Officers and Operators of the unit reside in the Greater Toronto Area, work as professionals in the business community and are also active in numerous community service organizations. They deploy on domestic and foreign operations, and are primarily responsible for tactical, or combat intelligence. Recent deployments include to Cyprus, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Canada.
Lineage
| Unit Name | From | To |
| 2 Intelligence Company | October 29, 1993 | Present |
| Intelligence Section, Military Police Platoon | February 1, 1970 | October 28, 1993 |
| No. 2 Intelligence Company | September 4, 1947 | January 31, 1970 |
| Disbanded | February 28, 1946 | September 3, 1947 |
| No. 2 Field Security Section | April 1, 1942 | February 27, 1946 |
| Disbanded | April 1, 1929 | March 31, 1942 |
| No. 2 Cyclist Company | December 15, 1921 | March 31, 1929 |
| No. 2 Guides Company | April 1, 1903 | December 14, 1921 |
2 Intelligence Company perpetuates the presence of a military intelligence unit in Toronto that can be traced back to the original No. 2 Guides Company that was formed April 1, 1903. As mounted units, Guides Companies were tasked to survey their respective regions as well as to collect information of potential military intelligence value. Upon mobilization for World War I, Guides personnel were reassigned to other duties. This was due to the fact that there was no establishment for intelligence units in the British divisional structure on which the Canadian Expeditionary Force was based. Guides personnel however did serve in intelligence capacities at corps, division and brigade level throughout the war. Following the end of World War I, units of the Corps of Guides were restructured as Cyclists and a company assigned to each Military District. On December 15, 1921, the company in Toronto was re-designated No. 2 Cyclist Company. As Divisional troops, these units were tasked to conduct reconnaissance and force protection.
On March 31, 1929, the Corps of Guides was disbanded. As a result, the Canadian Army had no officers or men trained in "field intelligence" at the beginning of World War II. The Canadian Intelligence Corps was formed on October 29, 1942. Overseas, the Corps grouped together several specialist units as well as all personnel employed in intelligence duties at various headquarters, but did not include senior staff officers or intelligence officers at Brigade and Battalion level. Within Canada, Canadian Intelligence Corps units were responsible for the training of specialist personnel, performing signals intelligence and censorship duties as well as conducting counter-intelligence. One of these units was No. 2 Field Security Section, which operated in Toronto from April 1, 1942, until February 27, 1946.
The need to train officers and men without wartime experience was recognized quickly after the end of World War II and militia intelligence companies were formed across Canada. No. 2 Intelligence Company was formed in Toronto on September 4, 1947. Training was provided in combat intelligence, air imagery analysis, field security and languages.
With Unification, the amalgamation of the Regular Force Intelligence component with the Provost Corps led to the amalgamation of their militia counterparts. On February 1, 1970, No. 2 Intelligence Company was reduced to a section within the Military Police Platoon of the Toronto Service Battalion.
2 Intelligence Company returned to the Canadian Army's Order of Battle on October 29, 1993, as Land Force Central Intelligence Company. It regained its historic designation on May 19, 1995.
World War I (1914–1918)
4th Divisional Cyclist Company of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was organized in Toronto in March 1916 under the command of Captain G. L. Berkley, with a strength of 8 officers and 191 other ranks. They deployed from Halifax aboard HMT Olympic 1 May 1916, arriving in England 6 May, and were attached to Canadian Reserve Cyclist Company near Swindon at Chisledon Camp. The unit was disbanded by General Order 208 of 15 November 1920.In addition to the training the Cyclists had received under the direction of the Corps of Guides in Canada, a much more intensive course was started in England which consisted of musketry, bombing, and bayonet fighting coupled with the specialized training in signalling and topography techniques, range-finding, tactics and the use of Lewis guns.
World War II (1939–1945)
The Canadian Virtual War Memorial lists six fallen soldiers as members either of "2 Intelligence Company", or "2 Field Security Sec.". The unit was known as 2 Field Security Section before 1947 when it was designated No. 2 Intelligence Company. Other fallen soldiers from Toronto, listed only as members of the Canadian Intelligence Corps, who were likely members of the unit include:- Captain Olaf Morris Hertzberg,. Enlisted: September 2, 1939 Toronto, Ontario. Mentioned in Dispatches, "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the combined attack on Dieppe."
- Sergeant William Allan McCarthy,. Son of Mrs. M. E. McCarthy, of Toronto, Ontario.
Captain Frank Pickersgill
Captain Frank Pickersgill spoke English, French, German, Spanish and Greek. After receiving his MA in classics at U of T in 1938, he went to study in London, England. While travelling in Europe he was interned as an enemy alien by the Germans and put to hard labour. After using a metal file smuggled to him in a loaf of bread to saw his way out of his cell and escape, he returned to Britain, briefing Canadian units on conditions in German-occupied France. He volunteered to be parachuted into France with the Special Operations Executive to support the French Resistance. Along with John Kenneth Macalister, another U of T student and Rhodes scholar from Guelph, Ontario, he was inserted on the night of June 15, 1943. The two were almost immediately picked up in a random search by the German army.
The two men were tortured by the Gestapo, who wanted them to pretend to still be free, and so encourage more SOE personnel to parachute in and be captured. Neither cooperated with the enemy. The Gestapo entertained Pickersgill at their Paris headquarters in an effort to persuade him to assist them. Pickersgill didn't relent. Instead, he broke a wine bottle, used the jagged edge to slit a guard's throat and managed to escape by jumping out a second-storey window before SS guards shot him four times and recaptured him. He was sent to the Buchenwald extermination camp, where he and Macalister were strangled as spies in early September, 1944. Buchenwald survivors said Pickersgill continued to try to keep his fellow captives' spirits up to the very end, telling bad jokes and encouraging them to march in step like soldiers.
Captain Pickersgill, an alumnus of the University of Toronto, was honoured on September 15, 2004, at a wreath-laying at a small [|garden] dedicated to him and his fellow Special Operations Executive agent, Captain John Kenneth Macalister at the foot of the University's Soldiers' Tower.
He was buried at Groesbeek Memorial, Netherlands. Grave Reference: Panel 11.
Captain John Kenneth MacAlister
July 19, 1914 – September 14, 1944. John Kenneth Macalister was born July 19, 1914, in Guelph, Ontario. Son of Alexander and Celestine MacAlister; husband of Jeannine MacAlister, of Paris, France. He spoke French and English. After graduating at the top of his law class at the University of Toronto, Macalister attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He graduated from there with first-class honours, and went on to the bar exams in London where he came first among the 142 from across the empire who sat the tests. He turned down a position teaching law at the University of Toronto in order to serve as an intelligence officer, responding to the faculty with only, "Sorry. Many thanks. Macalister."He was parachuted into France with the SOE to support the French Resistance on the night of June 15, 1943. They were met by agent Yvonne Rudelatt as planned, but were shortly afterward stopped by the Gestapo, who had been tipped off by an informer. Although they tried to get away, shots were fired and Rudelatt was hit, causing the car to crash. They were taken to Fresnes prison, where they were interrogated and tortured repeatedly. Macalister steadfastly refused to reveal his security checks to the Germans, who had his codes and wished to send misleading messages back to the SOE's London headquarters. Macalister gave his interrogators nothing and when his captors tried to send messages, SOE recognized them as fake. He was sent to the Buchenwald extermination camp, where he was executed as a spy September 14, 1944.
Captain MacAlister, an alumnus of the University of Toronto was honoured on September 15, 2004, at a wreath-laying at a small garden dedicated to him and his fellow SOE agent, Captain Frank Pickersgill at the foot of the University's Soldiers' Tower. In 1995, the former principal of University College, Douglas LePan published an epic poem on MacAlister titled Macalister or Dying in the Dark.
He was buried at Brookwood Memorial, Surrey, United Kingdom. Grave Reference: Panel 21 Column 1.