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A top-secret life

Margaret Birnie cherished her work helping codebreakers during the Second World War

TRACEY TONG

As a wireless telegraphist for the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRENS), Margaret Birnie helped to determine the location of German U-boats during the Second World War. More than 60 years later, she received the Bletchley Park commemorative badge for her efforts.

Between July 2009 and November 2020, British intelligence service the Government Communications Headquarters recognized 3,441 surviving veterans, including Birnie, for their work at Bletchley Park — the top-secret home of Second World War codebreakers — and its outstations. “She was very pleased and excited,” says longtime friend Lorna Hockley. “She felt as if she’d been given the Order of Canada.”

Born in Mersea, Ont., to Scottish nationals Rev. Robert A. Birnie and his wife, church organist and music teacher Margaret Oman Birnie (nee Aitken), Margaret Helen Birnie grew up in Duntroon. Her father, Hockley says, was the minister of a three-point charge which included St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Duntroon, Nottawa Presbyterian Church and West Nottawasaga Presbyterian Church.

Raised in the church manse with her younger sister Jean, Birnie had a happy childhood and learned to play the piano and the harp. “She loved animals,” says Hockley. “There are several pictures of her as a child with their big black dog. She always had cats.”

A conscientious student, Birnie attended Duntroon Public School, and following her graduation from Collingwood Collegiate Institute in 1942, began working at the Bank of Montreal.

But Birnie, whose nephew Robert Larwill says had learned to sail in her youth, yearned for adventure. “Because she grew up close to Georgian Bay and the Collingwood Shipyards,” Hockley says, “she thought she should join the Navy. She also liked the blue uniform. She decided to join the WRENS.”

As the women’s branch of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom, the WRENS formed for the First World War and was revived in 1939. Birnie’s certificate of service indicates her date of attestation as May 5, 1943, says Hockley. “She was 18 years old.”

Training took Birnie to Galt, Ont., then to the naval base at

‘‘ She often talked about her years of (Navy) service. She said those years were the very best of her life. LORNA HOCKLEY, FRIEND

Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., for signal school, where there were 25 WRENS in her class. Following a three-month posting at Gloucester Naval Radio Station outside Ottawa, Birnie was sent to a special wireless station in Coverdale, N.B., where she trained as a code technician.

“For the safety of the convoys of ships in the North Atlantic, it was important to know the movements of the enemy,” says Hockley. “There was a high demand for operators trained to understand and copy Morse code.” As a wireless telegraphist, Birnie detected and copied enemy-coded traffic.

At Coverdale, she was put on regular watch at a receiver tuned to German control stations. “The control stations would send out messages regularly to U-boats in the North Atlantic,” Hockley says. “The operators would hear (them) and suddenly hear a different signal from a U-boat. As soon as the code technician heard the signal, she would hit a toggle switch to forward the information to the base’s radar shack so a bearing could be determined.”

The German messages were translated by another department before being sent to Ottawa and Bletchley Park in England, where codebreakers worked around the clock. A photo of Birnie’s group in 1945 showed 43 women, says Hockley. As a WREN, she worked three shifts a day, 12 days in a row, for 99 cents a day. With the war coming to an end, the need for operators evaporated and Birnie was demobilized and discharged to shore on July 23, 1945. “There was an opportunity to go to the west coast to help with the fight against the Japanese,” says Hockley, but Birnie opted for a return to civilian life, feeling that “she had already done her share.”

All WRENS were given the option of going to university or taking a cash settlement. Birnie chose the latter and bought herself a sewing machine. She rejoined the Bank of Montreal as a teller, working in Toronto at Yonge and Front, 50 King St. W. and First Canadian Place.

A woman of strong faith, Birnie was a long-time member of Calvin Presbyterian Church, where she sang in the choir and led a young people’s group and Bible study and founded a Scottish country dance group.

Birnie retired from the bank in 1981 and moved to Nottawa, where she joined the Life of Nottawa Church and the Collingwood and District Historical Society, serving as treasurer for both.

While she never married or had children, Birnie remained close with Jean and spent holidays and special occasions with her sister’s family. She went to Scotland and England to visit relatives, and to Costa Rica, Holland, France and several destinations in Canada. “She often travelled alone,” Larwill says, “and was never afraid.”

She was determined to remain independent, he adds, and took care of herself, eating healthily and keeping active by cross-country skiing, cycling and dancing well into her later years. She was an avid reader, says Hockley, and “even at her advanced age, learned to use modern technology — the computer.” Birnie lived on her own until she was 92, when she moved to the Pine Villa Retirement Home in Collingwood.

While receiving the Bletchley Park badge was one of the highlights of her life, she treasured her experiences during the war and the friends she made. For decades, Birnie kept in touch with her coworkers, travelling to WRENS reunions as far away as Winnipeg. “She often talked about her years of service,” Hockley says. “She said those years were the very best of her life.”

“You formed real attachments,” Birnie told her, “and some of them stayed with you for your whole life.’”

TOGETHER

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2022-08-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

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