As a Communist Party member in Calgary in the early 1940s, Frank Hadesbeck performed clerical work at the party office, printed leaflets and sold books.

But he also had tasks his party comrades could know nothing about: snooping on mail, copying phone numbers from scratch pads and rummaging through waste baskets.

Hadesbeck, known to his RCMP handlers as agent 810, would pass along any information he could glean to the national police force.

Frank Hadesbeck was alone, broke and looking for work in Alberta when the RCMP recruited him as an informant, on condition he join the Communist Party to establish a cover.{ai:summary}<p>In the early 1940s, Frank Hadesbeck, a member of the Communist Party in Calgary, engaged in clerical duties while secretly acting as an informant for the RCMP. Known as agent 810, he gathered intelligence by monitoring mail, copying phone numbers, and searching through waste.</p><p>His dual role highlights the complexities of political surveillance during that era. #politics</p>

RCMP informant’s decades of spying on social reformers are chronicled in new book

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