WATCH: A Toronto woman recalls life as a WW2 decoder. Christina Stevens reports.
TORONTO – A new movie just released delves into the ultra-secret world of decoders at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and a Toronto woman has unique insight; after all, she was there.
The movie, The Imitation Game takes a closer look at the what went on at a hidden-away mansion in Britain known as Bletchley Park. There decoders were tasked with helping win the war by deciphering encoded messages from the enemy. They worked in obscurity.
The film portrays some of the larger-than life characters who drove the efforts to crack the enemies’ codes, particularly from the Germans. But Bletchley Park was kept running by a whole cast of people, including at least 17 women from the Canadian Navy.
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Jean Powell was one of them. At 92 years old, she is still an enigma to her family. They know very little about her experiences during the Second World War because for years she wouldn’t talk about it.
Powell lived the clandestine life at Bletchley Park, portrayed in the movie. Jean Tackaberry, as she was known then, was a “classifier”. She read the decoded messages and would route them to the correct department. She still guards her secrets carefully — she left no doubt about that when asked to describe some of the messages she read.
“I can’t tell you, what do you think I am? I can’t tell you now!” Powell said. “All I’m going to say is it was about information about people, and who were in the war. But I can’t tell you. Not even now.”
She does reveal she worked mostly on messages from the Japanese, and about prisoner of war camps. She recalled how women in the cafeteria with relatives who were PoW’s came to her looking for information. She would tell them she didn’t know anything.
“Do you think I want the whole room to be filled with people crying? I don’t want that. And I just say, I don’t know, I’m sorry I don’t know,” she said, conceding that it was hard to read some of the messages.
Powell’s sons said she has always been secretive about her time at Bletchley Park.
“File clerk. That is it. That is all she’s ever said,” said Bill Powell. “File clerk. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.”
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Historians believe the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park likely shaved two years off the war.
“The ability to read your enemy’s communications if you will, kind of like reading his poker hand, that was absolutely paramount when it came to warfare,” said David O’Keefe, a historian and author who has researched Bletchley Park.
While her family is proud of Powell’s role, she said she has never really thought about how many lives she may have played a part in saving.
Mostly she just doesn’t want to think too much about that time, but Powell still wants people to know Canadians did their part.
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