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William Leonard Higgitt
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William Leonard Higgitt
William Leonard Higgitt (10 November 1917 – 2 April 1989) was the 14th commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), holding office from 1969 to 1973, and President of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from 1972 to 1976. Leonard Higgitt's background in intelligence and counterintelligence during and after World War II made him the preferred choice as RCMP Commissioner at what was the height of the Cold War. Higgitt's tenure as Canada's top spy, first, and then as RCMP Commissioner, also coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States, which was part of a period of broader political unrest and social change in Canada, including the Quebec nationalist movement and first-ever diplomatic negotiations in Stockholm between Canada and Communist China. Higgitt's time as Commissioner was marked by his efforts to balance a traditional view of the Mounties in the eye of the public, and a trust in the RCMP attending that view, with more modern, high-tech, and legally complex policing methods, including surveillance and data-gathering practices that found the RCMP facing increasing media and judicial scrutiny.
Higgitt directed national security operations during the October Crisis of 1970, when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) engaged in a series of urban bombings and also kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross. These events represented what was perhaps the most serious threat to national security in the history of Canada, and they also saw then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to the objection of Higgitt, invoke the War Measures Act, the first time in Canadian history that the Act was invoked during peacetime.
Higgitt has been the only RCMP commissioner to ever rise to this position after starting from the lowest possible rank—sub-constable, a rank lower than third-class constable and later discontinued by the Force. As Commissioner, Higgitt also presided over the RCMP centenary.
Higgitt was born in the village of Anerley, Saskatchewan, in 1917, to Percy Higgitt and May Higgitt (née Hall), and grew up in Anerley during the Depression years of the 1930s. Being born the same day that his uncle, Lennie Higgitt, died in World War I, he was given the name William Leonard, and was subsequently known as "Len" Higgitt by acquaintances throughout his life. Percy Higgitt's family traces their roots to Sheffield, Yorkshire, and May Hall to Boston, Lincolnshire. Percy immigrated to Saskatchewan in 1908, meeting May Hall there and starting a farm. Percy gave up his struggling farm when Leonard was four to be an Imperial Oil agent and grain buyer for the Canadian Consolidated Grain Company; later taking over the lone general store and post office in Anerley, which he operated for over forty years. Percy also provided municipal public service in various capacities. After primary schooling, Leonard Higgitt went to high school at Saskatoon Technical Collegiate. As a student in 1935, Higgitt featured in his high school's production of the comedy "So This Is London". In his student years, Higgitt also played hockey, baseball and soccer.
Wrote the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix in 1972, from very early on in his life Higgitt believed in the RCMP as a force for good: "Rural Saskatchewan offered little in the 1930s for a young man ready to set out on his own and, in the drought and dust and poverty, the RCMP stood out as a high and noble profession". Interviewed in 1972 by the Winnipeg Free Press, Higgitt said that as a youth he was struck by the dedication RCMP officers seemed to display in coping with the problems and hardships brought on by the Depression: "It wasn't just a matter of enforcing the law. It was a question of helping anyone who was in need. And no one who didn't live through that era can really appreciate what the needs were." After graduating from high school in 1937, at the age of nineteen, and two years before World War II began, Higgitt joined the RCMP at Regina, Saskatchewan, as a sub-constable; a rank later discontinued by the force. In Regina he completed recruit training, winning a medal for marksmanship, and became a stenographer at "F" Division headquarters. In 1937, Higgitt's was the first voice of a Mountie to be heard on the open airwaves, as police cars at the time were not yet equipped with two-way radios and it was necessary for Mounties to use commercial radio stations to send bulletins, including descriptions of wanted men, to detachment personnel twice daily.
Promoted to Constable, in Regina Higgitt supervised general criminal files and engaged in active police investigations, including conducting examinations of witnesses. With the outbreak of the War, and at the age of twenty-two, he was transferred to Ottawa and put immediately into intelligence and counter-intelligence. While assigned field investigations over the War years, Higgitt married a nurse, Evelyn Maude Pyke, of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1944. He also played on the RCMP basketball team in the Ottawa YMCA Basketball league, and on the RCMP soccer team in the Ottawa and District Football Association league. He also represented the RCMP in marksmanship tournaments.
Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, and Canada followed. Higgitt was posted to Ottawa, Ontario, for special war duties and "disappeared into" the Intelligence Branch. By the late 1930s, various fascist groups across Canada had combined into the National Unity Party under the leadership of Adrien Arcand. Other such groups, and individuals sympathetic Nazism, remained underground. The Soviets were also using Canada as a staging point for spying on the United States (a Soviet military intelligence illegal carrying a Canadian passport in the name of Ignacy Witczak, obtained in part through the assistance of Sam Carr, an important member of the Communist Party of Canada, had arrived in the US in 1938). As the War escalated, Higgitt was appointed Government advisor to the Commons Judicial Committee on Internment Operations, a committee set up to identify and mitigate potential security risks to Canada and the Allied effort against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Prior to the Allies' pivotal Normandy Landings, the internment operations led to the removal of several hundreds of German- and Italian-born Canadians, Arcand included, to detention camps in Canada's hinterlands until the surrender of the Axis powers. On the first day of World War II, RCMP agents broke the German-financed Canadian fascist group Deutsche Arbeits Front, interning four hundred Nazis. When Soviet Russia entered the war, more than one hundred Communists were interned at Hull, Quebec. Higgitt and his RCMP superiors advised the Canadian Federal Government that Japanese Canadians, for their part, posed relatively little threat as a supposed 'fifth column' of spies and saboteurs. Subsequently, the Government, not believing the RCMP, took the responsibility for evacuating coastal Japanese Canadians to interior British Columbia out of the Mounties' hands and gave it to the BC Security Commission, and in turn, by 1943, to the Department of Labour.
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William Leonard Higgitt
William Leonard Higgitt (10 November 1917 – 2 April 1989) was the 14th commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), holding office from 1969 to 1973, and President of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from 1972 to 1976. Leonard Higgitt's background in intelligence and counterintelligence during and after World War II made him the preferred choice as RCMP Commissioner at what was the height of the Cold War. Higgitt's tenure as Canada's top spy, first, and then as RCMP Commissioner, also coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States, which was part of a period of broader political unrest and social change in Canada, including the Quebec nationalist movement and first-ever diplomatic negotiations in Stockholm between Canada and Communist China. Higgitt's time as Commissioner was marked by his efforts to balance a traditional view of the Mounties in the eye of the public, and a trust in the RCMP attending that view, with more modern, high-tech, and legally complex policing methods, including surveillance and data-gathering practices that found the RCMP facing increasing media and judicial scrutiny.
Higgitt directed national security operations during the October Crisis of 1970, when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) engaged in a series of urban bombings and also kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross. These events represented what was perhaps the most serious threat to national security in the history of Canada, and they also saw then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to the objection of Higgitt, invoke the War Measures Act, the first time in Canadian history that the Act was invoked during peacetime.
Higgitt has been the only RCMP commissioner to ever rise to this position after starting from the lowest possible rank—sub-constable, a rank lower than third-class constable and later discontinued by the Force. As Commissioner, Higgitt also presided over the RCMP centenary.
Higgitt was born in the village of Anerley, Saskatchewan, in 1917, to Percy Higgitt and May Higgitt (née Hall), and grew up in Anerley during the Depression years of the 1930s. Being born the same day that his uncle, Lennie Higgitt, died in World War I, he was given the name William Leonard, and was subsequently known as "Len" Higgitt by acquaintances throughout his life. Percy Higgitt's family traces their roots to Sheffield, Yorkshire, and May Hall to Boston, Lincolnshire. Percy immigrated to Saskatchewan in 1908, meeting May Hall there and starting a farm. Percy gave up his struggling farm when Leonard was four to be an Imperial Oil agent and grain buyer for the Canadian Consolidated Grain Company; later taking over the lone general store and post office in Anerley, which he operated for over forty years. Percy also provided municipal public service in various capacities. After primary schooling, Leonard Higgitt went to high school at Saskatoon Technical Collegiate. As a student in 1935, Higgitt featured in his high school's production of the comedy "So This Is London". In his student years, Higgitt also played hockey, baseball and soccer.
Wrote the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix in 1972, from very early on in his life Higgitt believed in the RCMP as a force for good: "Rural Saskatchewan offered little in the 1930s for a young man ready to set out on his own and, in the drought and dust and poverty, the RCMP stood out as a high and noble profession". Interviewed in 1972 by the Winnipeg Free Press, Higgitt said that as a youth he was struck by the dedication RCMP officers seemed to display in coping with the problems and hardships brought on by the Depression: "It wasn't just a matter of enforcing the law. It was a question of helping anyone who was in need. And no one who didn't live through that era can really appreciate what the needs were." After graduating from high school in 1937, at the age of nineteen, and two years before World War II began, Higgitt joined the RCMP at Regina, Saskatchewan, as a sub-constable; a rank later discontinued by the force. In Regina he completed recruit training, winning a medal for marksmanship, and became a stenographer at "F" Division headquarters. In 1937, Higgitt's was the first voice of a Mountie to be heard on the open airwaves, as police cars at the time were not yet equipped with two-way radios and it was necessary for Mounties to use commercial radio stations to send bulletins, including descriptions of wanted men, to detachment personnel twice daily.
Promoted to Constable, in Regina Higgitt supervised general criminal files and engaged in active police investigations, including conducting examinations of witnesses. With the outbreak of the War, and at the age of twenty-two, he was transferred to Ottawa and put immediately into intelligence and counter-intelligence. While assigned field investigations over the War years, Higgitt married a nurse, Evelyn Maude Pyke, of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1944. He also played on the RCMP basketball team in the Ottawa YMCA Basketball league, and on the RCMP soccer team in the Ottawa and District Football Association league. He also represented the RCMP in marksmanship tournaments.
Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, and Canada followed. Higgitt was posted to Ottawa, Ontario, for special war duties and "disappeared into" the Intelligence Branch. By the late 1930s, various fascist groups across Canada had combined into the National Unity Party under the leadership of Adrien Arcand. Other such groups, and individuals sympathetic Nazism, remained underground. The Soviets were also using Canada as a staging point for spying on the United States (a Soviet military intelligence illegal carrying a Canadian passport in the name of Ignacy Witczak, obtained in part through the assistance of Sam Carr, an important member of the Communist Party of Canada, had arrived in the US in 1938). As the War escalated, Higgitt was appointed Government advisor to the Commons Judicial Committee on Internment Operations, a committee set up to identify and mitigate potential security risks to Canada and the Allied effort against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Prior to the Allies' pivotal Normandy Landings, the internment operations led to the removal of several hundreds of German- and Italian-born Canadians, Arcand included, to detention camps in Canada's hinterlands until the surrender of the Axis powers. On the first day of World War II, RCMP agents broke the German-financed Canadian fascist group Deutsche Arbeits Front, interning four hundred Nazis. When Soviet Russia entered the war, more than one hundred Communists were interned at Hull, Quebec. Higgitt and his RCMP superiors advised the Canadian Federal Government that Japanese Canadians, for their part, posed relatively little threat as a supposed 'fifth column' of spies and saboteurs. Subsequently, the Government, not believing the RCMP, took the responsibility for evacuating coastal Japanese Canadians to interior British Columbia out of the Mounties' hands and gave it to the BC Security Commission, and in turn, by 1943, to the Department of Labour.
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