Our definitive history of Operation Fish and Montreal's hidden gold

In the early hours of July 2nd, 1940, trucks rolled through empty Montreal streets toward the Sun Life Building. The RCMP had shut down traffic around Dominion Square. While the crates were marked 'fish', they contained Britain's entire fortune, and if the Nazis had known, the war might have ended right there.

Operation Fish remains one of the most audacious financial gambits in history: the secret transfer of Britain's gold reserves and securities to Canada during the Second World War. The story involves storm-battered warships crossing U-boat-infested waters and a hastily constructed vault three storeys beneath Montreal's Sun Life Building that would guard more negotiable securities than almost anywhere on earth. Somehow, despite more than 600 people being involved, the Axis powers never found out.

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