NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, Friday October 10. Click here to see the complete original article.

In 1960 author Ian Fleming published his eighth novel featuring the fictional British Secret Service agent, James Bond. The novel was called For Your Eyes Only and it was a collection of five short stories based on script outlines he had created for a failed CBS Bond television series. For Your Eyes Only later became the basis of the 1981 film of the same name starring Roger Moore, but like many of Fleming’s Bond novels, there is little reference to the original story in the film adaptation and For Your Eyes Only is no exception since most of the original novel takes place right here in Ottawa.

The original book version uses locations in Canada and Vermont, most notably in Ottawa as he prepares for a mission to execute an ex-World War 2 Gestapo agent, Von Hammerstein, of whom Fleming based on the actual General Baron Kurt Von Hammerstein-Equord of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Fleming characteristically writes his Bond novels in great detail, using his own experiences as a British operative during the Second World War to give his stories an element of realism. In For your Eyes Only, Bond’s exploits throughout Ottawa and Quebec are thus carefully outlined in researched detail by Fleming which allows us to re-trace Bond’s mission exactly as it would have happened in the Nation’s Capital in 1959 by visiting the very same places as they exist today.

Follow Bond as we recreate his mission in Ottawa through images referenced to the original Ian Fleming story, For Your Eyes Only.

BOND IN OTTAWA

Video: Bond In Ottawa (from the Ottawa Citizen)

SOURCES:

‘For Your Eyes Only” Ian Fleming, 1960 Published by Jonathan Cape

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