Calgary woman recognized for work as code-breaker in Second World War

CALGARY – An 88-year-old Calgary woman has been honoured for her work as a code-breaker in the Second World War.

Marion Booth received the Bletchley Park Commemorative Badge on Tuesday in recognition of her “vital, secret service” as an employee of the British government’s code and cypher school.

Booth joined the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service in 1944, and in the next spring she began intercepting Japanese radio messages.

The work done by Bletchley Park code-breakers was the subject of last year’s Oscar-nominated movie “The Imitation Game.”

When the war ended, Booth worked for the Canadian government gathering and interpreting information obtained from the Soviet Union.

She was sworn to secrecy for 25 years, and still doesn’t say much about what exactly she did.

“I don’t think I ever really knew what my work ended up, where it ended up or why,” she said Tuesday. “But I knew somebody somewhere was taking care of it.”

Booth moved to Calgary in 1972. She has three children and says none of them really asked about her work, so she never had to lie to them.

She said joining the war effort at such a young age seemed to be the right thing to do.

“Seeing all these boys I was in high school with going off to war at 17, 18, 19 years of age,” she said, “we girls all just decided we wanted to do something.”

And to be recognized for her work at her age now was also pretty special.

“It means that what we did didn’t go unnoticed,” she said. “We did a lot in Canada to help the war effort.”

(Global Calgary, CTV Calgary)