Recently released British intelligence files note that the family of former federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff spied on suspected Nazi sympathizers in Canada on behalf of the British security service MI5.

The Ignatieffs were “White Russians,” opposed to the Communists, and the family’s patriarch, Count Pavel Ignatieff, was once an influential member of the court of Tsar Nicholas II.

The 1917 Russian Revolution drove the Ignatieffs into exile while the tsar and his family were executed by firing squad.

Grateful to the British government for offering them exile, the Ignatieffs cooperated regularly with the British intelligence service after settling in Canada in the mid-1920s, according recently released MI5 files obtained by the Star.

The documents deal with activity through the 1930s and early 1940s and show that the Star played a role in the drama. The Star sponsored Nicholas Ignatieff for a visa on a failed attempt to re-enter Russia during the era of dictator Joseph Stalin.

According to intelligence supplied by Nicholas Ignatieff, Michael’s uncle, some fellow White Russian émigrés saw Hitler as a potential “saviour” who would return their old family estates to them.

“They (pro-Nazi Russian émigrés in Canada) will do literally anything to help his cause, so ardent is their belief in the new order which they think he (Hitler) is to bring to Europe and possibly to the world,” the MI5 files state, quoting intelligence supplied by Nicholas Ignatieff.

“Meanwhile their intrigues have run forward to a big plan for turning Communist Russia into a Fascist state with a crowned head as its symbol of embodiment,” the files continue.

Nicholas Ignatieff also warned British intelligence authorities about the strongly anti-Jewish leanings of other White Russians in Canada.

“Nicholas Ignatieff has carefully studied the politics of Europe and especially those of the White Russians,” the newly released MI5 files state. “He knows well the anti-Semitic and Fascist leanings of a large section of the latter . . . ”

The MI5 files note that Count Pavel (Paul) Nikolayevich Ignatieff, Nicholas’ father, was considered a liberal inside the Imperial Russian court, before the revolution.

“Anti-Semitism was rife among a section of White Russians for years before the Revolution; indeed, his father had been severely criticised for his strong opposition to it by certain old White Russian friends of his before 1914,” the MI5 files state.

Nicholas Ignatieff worked as a history instructor at Upper Canada College in Toronto between 1934 and 1939, before volunteering for active service as a lieutenant with the First Canadian Division Engineers.

He balked at becoming a full-time intelligence officer when urged to do so by Lord Tweedsmuir, Canada’s Governor General.

“This is intriguing information and it’s new to me,” Michael Ignatieff said to the Star Tuesday in an email. “I did not know he (Nicholas Ignatieff) had contact with the Governor General, Lord Tweedsmuir, or that his reports went back to MI5.”

Tweedsmuir was also known as Sir. John Buchan, a highly successful poet, historian and mystery novelist.

“Ignatieff struck me as a very fine type of man, eminently loyal to this country and its constitution and very full of nous,” the MI5 file states.

“On his own admission he completely mistrusts and rather despises all Europeans. He would seem to be cut out for the highest form of Intelligence work and had indeed considered it on a suggestion from the late Lord Tweedsmuir, but came to the conclusion that he would rather stick to ordinary soldiering as a Sapper (combat engineer). He is however quite willing to be of any further assistance that may be possible to us in the matter of his wide contacts with White Russians and others. He speaks perfect English, with a Canadian accent, and says that his knowledge of Russian and its dialects is perfect. His French, he thinks, would pass for that of a native anywhere.”

Nicholas Ignatieff warned British authorities of a German immigrant in Winnipeg who was openly fascist and reportedly held a dinner to celebrate Hitler’s occupation of Holland.

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He also reported serious suspicions about artist Nicolas de Grandmaison, a French-Russian émigré and painter.

“He travels very widely and visits the U.S.A. frequently, specializing in the portraiture of the Indians,” the MI5 files state about Grandmaison.

The files note that Nicholas Ignatieff also warned British authorities about a Russian émigré from the Volga region named either “Schneider” or “Sneider.”

“He (Schneider) had set up a land and real estate agent and was one of those put in charge of the settlement of the refugees from the Sudetenland in North Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta in 1939,” the files state.

“He was always a strong Nazi supporter and thereupon chose for his administrative staff men with pro-Nazi views. Certain of the funds which were voted by our Government for the relief of Czechoslovakia, were, when it was invaded, diverted to this land settlement scheme. SNEIDER got busy among the ‘refugees’ and found that a large number of these were in fact Nazis. These he managed to settle at once on to farms and shortly afterwards proceeded to buy them out with these Government funds so with bags bulging with British gold these ‘refugees’ trickled back to Germany.”

An intelligence memo from November 20, 1940, notes that Nicholas Ignatieff suggested that the Russian Red Cross be used to gather wartime intelligence inside Russia.

Nicholas Ignatieff’s father Pavel Ignatieff was head of the Russian Red Cross at the time.

The files note that the Toronto Star sponsored Nicholas Ignatieff for a visa so that he could travel in Russia, ostensibly as a journalist and Red Cross official.

“In 1933 he tried to go to Russia in order to effect a reconciliation between the Soviet Red Cross and the Old Russian Red Cross,” the MI5 files state. “He was supported in his application for a visa by the ‘Toronto Star’… The Moscow Foreign Office, however, refused to grant a visa. He tried again in 1935 after the new Soviet constitution, but was again refused by Moscow for ‘internal political reasons.’”

Nicholas Ignatieff became Warden of Hart House at the University of Toronto after World War II. He died in 1952 at the age of 48 of a heart attack.

The file also describes him in terms that might be used to describe his nephew Michael, now a professor at Harvard University and the University of Toronto.

“He had Liberal ideas and stayed aloof from politics and the cliques that grow from them,” the files state.