[Sneak Peek] Camp X： Canada’s Secret Spy School & The Real James Bond ｜ ft. Robbie Cressman
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Summary
During the Second World War, hidden along the shores of Lake Ontario, a top-secret training facility helped shape some of the most daring intelligence operations of the war. Known as Camp X, it was Canada s answer to the world of espionage, sabotage, and covert communication. Agents were trained there in everything from code-breaking and intelligence gathering to survival behind enemy lines. Decades later, Camp X remains one of Canada s most fascinating and mysterious chapters in history. Today, we re joined by Rob Cressman, historian and expert on Camp X to separate the fact from the fiction, explore the camp s lasting legacy, and uncover the stories of the men and women who trained in secrecy to help win a global war.
Transcript
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During the Second World War, hidden along the shores of Lake Ontario, a top-secret training
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facility helped shape some of the most daring intelligence operations of the war.
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Known as Camp X, it was Canada's answer to the world of espionage, sabotage, covert communication
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and special operations. Agents were trained there in everything from code-breaking and
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intelligence gathering to survival behind enemy lines. Decades later, Camp X remains one of the
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most fascinating and mysterious chapters in canadian history today we're joined by rob
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cressman historian and expert on camp x to separate the fact from the fiction explore the
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camp's lasting legacy and uncover the stories of the men and women who trained in secrecy
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all right well uh robbie thanks so much for joining us this is so cool for me yeah uh as
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mentioned i kind of teed you up in the intro there but uh as i take a look at and thank you
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very much for these uh here's just a sample of the books i think that we're going to get out of
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the crestman camp uh this first one by the way very cool tracking the little giant killer this
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is really a story that we're going to be talking about today in many ways we're going to hear this
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name bill underwood and his legacy of combat uh training your updated version inspired by that
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discrete fighting i'll recommend that you reach out and i'll put the link in the description for
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these and what we're going to be talking about today of course is camp x a little bit about you
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first of all robbie how do you end up uh the guy who knows all about this i mean i know what you do
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for a living but are you even allowed to share that yes i am it's some of what i do has been
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published and so i can to some degree but uh but definitely mike wrote what's really come about is
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it's been an unintended path to discovery of discovery for me i started off in short as a
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silly civilian which i still still am but i've been a supporter to the special and black ops
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communities within our allied and countries five seven and nine eyes and beyond but essentially
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as a civilian had a love for martial arts but i was always a patriotic guy and even back in the
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80s and 90s it kind of bothered me with respect like why do i have to go to china japan korea
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to learn how to fight i knew our canadian military history was exemplary so a question
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came to me essentially well you know did our canadian boys have ever i want to learn some
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canadian did our canadian guys ever create a canadian fighting system i want to at least
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learn something western and so i started to do the research found nothing until i came across
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the legacy of bill underwood when everything essentially opened up and in short i discovered
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that Canada not only has a martial art, if you will,
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although it's birthed in the military special operations perspective,
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it's not civilian, okay, or wasn't birthed civilian,
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but essentially we have a grandfather of fighting,
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that it was actually classified after World War II.
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Now, he was involved publicly after World War II,
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but his real accomplishments were actually deemed to be illegal
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to teach outside declared war because it was that vicious and violent.
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So I ended up reviving Bill Underwood's legacy.
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Okay, and his original combato systems, which were taught during the war.
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Underwood, Bill Underwood, British-born Bill Underwood, emigrated to Canada,
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created the first fighting system for a Canadian military called combato.
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And then after the war, he started to get asked by law enforcement and government,
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like, hey, Bill, you were teaching our soldiers how to use their hands and so forth.
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Combato is designed to kill everything that moved.
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can you modify a fighting system to be a little more defensive and subject control oriented and
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he developed the defendo system which essentially became the template for policing defensive tactics
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not only in canada but many places in the states so i ended up basically being the individual that
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revived bill underwood's legacy and there was not a single reference to him on the world wide web in
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the 90s everything that's there today is because of the research i was doing okay and that essentially
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opened doors as i started to research the fact that huh underwood these vets would talk about
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but the fact that Underwood was a secret instructor at this super top classified training facility called Camp X.
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Like James Bond was born. I'm like, what? Bond was born out of this camp in Canada.
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And I ended up connecting with the world expert on Camp X who verified that, yes, we believe Underwood was involved.
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And I then spent a connected 20 years in the Camp X legacy.
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And when the classified community, let's just say it's a, you know, sometimes a horrible blanket term,
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But the sensitive communities, as I was doing research, found out that I had a lot of the original stuff, let's say, from the tradecraft from the Camp X era.
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I started to get asked, listen, would you show our intelligence agents today what we were doing at Camp X?
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The whole Bill Underwood and Camp X legacy was so mysterious.
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And so our modern agencies, you know, really didn't have any idea about,
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they knew what was there but didn't know what was going on,
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even up to the levels of our Joint Task Force 2 or JTF2, our SEAL Team 6.
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They knew about CAMPEX but didn't really know what was going on there.
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Now, I very much believe why, and I've released this in this book,
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but we know why now they've kept that legacy suppressed.
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But I was originally asked, starting back in the early 2000s,
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say listen we'd love to see some of this what was going on and so times change though and as in
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essence as they asked me to problem solves and giving them ways to fight with their hands okay
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that we're much really more applicable to special operations and not the ring for mma so in other
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words sports right this is a scenario where you're up close absolutely there's been a change there's
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been a change of temperature with your so show us what they're doing then yeah you can't really fit
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that the old model over today's uh over today's environment so they said listen robbie can you
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develop something and that was was for me which was birthed in the early 2000s was i went about
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trying to develop a method that really taking taking the mindset and the the point and purpose
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of what was going on at camp x and how to develop an application for it in a modern environment and
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in essence i can wrap it up with one thing the difference between your standard martial arts
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sports mixed martial arts kind of platform than what our guys and girls need today at a special
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ops level or a black ops level is this the world war ii context was essentially they had to take
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a civilian it was a civilian okay okay let's say for example to train them as a spy maybe they
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needed a forensic accountant to be dropped into an automotive factory in france sneak him in there
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and he'll report back on what the nazis were we're doing with this factory now okay how do you take
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an accountant who a horrible overstatement or rather blanket statement but you know who's got
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a tape between his glasses and a calculator in his pocket all his life he's never fought
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how do you take an accountant Mike teach him how to be able to defend himself and win a bar fight
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and by the way you've got hours to do it welcome to Camp X and so I took that mindset of short
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duration high retention training developed a whole new method based on much more modern physiology
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and for 20 years I've been out running around our allied special ops communities within tier one
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special forces within government intelligence agencies and policing special operations units
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uh and and teaching training method yeah wow okay let's go back to the original method and and uh
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uh bill underwood's uh first sorry under underwood did i say that right underwood yeah bill underwood
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yeah let's go back to his uh original uh training and teachings which fascinated you so much in the
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first place combato combato that's correct combato yeah so tell me about this what what made this
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unique at a time in world war ii where spies needed to be trained was it the fast the ability
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to train them fast was it the like what how was this born to be his thing well in essence i mean
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underwood's story is absolutely a fascinating one i mean a childhood friend of harry houdini
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buffalo bill coley charlie chaplin i mean again that's why i wrote a book on it it's insane
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the history is absolutely incredible um but in essence underwood was a part of a day and he was
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a leading uh you know let's say on the leading edge of it in many ways he was really the first
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grandfather in north america he really gave the americans much of their start at the beginning of
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in unarmed fighting the beginning of the war but it was an era when the east was truly meeting the
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west for the first time so you had these judoka judoka's jiu-jitsu you know masters that were
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coming for the first time to British shores or European shores and they were kind of clashing
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and really in a very I guess really it's a very practical story in a way they really needed to
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yes come up with an ability to give guys and it was really more the boys back then and then the
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ladies in a lot of ways but give them a short duration high retention skill set you can't train
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sports and even MMA type skills you can't learn that in a short time you can't learn how to
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punch and kick in a short period of time you would assume yeah yeah you can't and I can tell
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that that's what i do for a living and for a long time and internationally at that but that being
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said essentially what underwood and some of the guys of his time were developing was a much more
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linear direct and aggressive approach to jujitsu and judo so it was more biomechanical in nature
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still uh by way of biomechanics but it was more direct it was linear and to the point
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okay and so it could be learned and that's why sometimes it was called dirty judo okay
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it came down to that but all right underwood really made it western and whereas in the east
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they would turn it into much more of a philosophy and a way of life, what we call warrior culture.
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Boys back in Underwood's day would just call it a trick. Hey, let me show you a trick. If somebody
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grabs you here, let me show you how to contend with that. And that's a trick to deal with that.
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So it kept it simple and linear. But what Underwood did was he even went further and was still trying
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to figure out how he did it and what he did. But he developed a system of unarmed fighting. And this
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is not, you know, I know what I'm talking about.