Jean Crozier (nee Willis) was born June 24, 1922 in Toronto. She grew up in the Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood, where she attended Northern Vocational School and learned to be a stenographer – and that’s where she was when learned that Canada had declared war. Her father had a good job with the railroad, so the family was insulated from the worst effects of the Great Depression. Jean’s brother was in the Royal Canadian Artillery during the war, and he served 5 years, seeing action in Italy and the Netherlands. Jean and some friends went to join the Canadian army too, but nothing came of it, so she took work as a secretary with an “insurance” company in New York – a job that came to her through the RCMP and which was actually a cover for British intelligence. There she was in the employ of William Stephenson – the Man called Intrepid. She did that work from January 1944 to May 1945, after which she spent a few months at Camp X in Oshawa. There too she remembers her work as largely clerical – and that she was stationed on an army base and she did not feel like she was connected to the war effort, though she certainly was! When the war was over she returned to Toronto and later moved to Wawa, where she married and found her place in postwar Canada. Jean Crozier was interviewed by Scott Masters and Zach Dunn at her home in London in February 2026.
