Fred Rose, l'émissaire de Moscou

A short biography of Fred Rose (1907-1983), elected to the House of Commons for the Montreal riding of Cartier in 1943 under the Labor-Progressive Party banner, the front organization for the then-banned Communist Party of Canada, and re-elected in 1945. He served as an MP until 1947, when he was expelled after being convicted of a charge related to spying for the Soviet Union. Rose immigrated to Canada from Poland in 1916 with his parents, and by 1925 was involved with the Young Communist League of Canada. Rose visited the Soviet Union several times in the 1920s where it was later alleged that he was trained by the Soviets to recruit spies in the West. In 1946, Rose was arrested and imprisoned for conspiring to forward sensitive information about the Canadian explosive RDX to the Soviets. Rose was tried and convicted during the Cold War spy trials era following the revelations by Igor Gouzenko of Soviet spy rings in Canada and the United States, though he always maintained his innocence. Rose was released from jail in 1951 and returned to Poland, where he died in 1983.

Cap-aux-Diamants

No. 149

Printemps 2022

14-18

fr