GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

13. An international festival

Thom's good Dutch friend Hems, in charge of our Vienna office, went on ahead and arranged for all 21 of us to have Viennese Police ID cards. The uniformed man who handed them out said that all members of the force who were known communist sympathizers had been assigned out of town for the festival's duration, so if we needed help we should not fear to show our card to the nearest person wearing a uniform exactly like his. He warned us that a lost card would not be replaced.

WFDY announced that there were 18,000 official delegates registered from 112 countries, and each would display their country's flag in some way, mostly small copies sewn on clothing. I literally bumped into Canada's Red Ensign on a member of the McGill Newman Club. Peter told me the Canadian delegation's 55 members were solidly communist -- Canada had an official Communist Party then. Its organizing committee had refused to accept him as a delegate, but a Montreal member of the committee preparing delegates for WFDY gladly sold him an insignia and no Canadian delegate objected to his hanging out with them in Vienna.

The festival's program book had 60 pages crammed with events, locations, times. Each clutching a copy of it, we set out in search of our prey. Every day ended in the office with Hems ordering us not to compare the information we had gathered, simply writing (Yes, writing in cursive!) on lined foolscap notepads everything we ourselves had done. We dated and initialed each page (common sense when so many writers and sheets of paper were involved).

Then Hems stapled each report, crossed the writer's name off a list, put reports and the list into a very big envelope which disappeared overnight, every night. We never learned where or how they were used.

In 1967, then-freelance writer Gloria Steinem wrote in The New York Times that Radio Free Europe, our generous Vienna sponsor, was a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the CIA's gathering of data about the VIIth World Youth Festival was funded by a foundation set up with private money -- she didn't say whose.

So you see, I once worked for the CIA!

In Vienna latched on to three Polish men after I spotting white-above-red flags on their arm bands. I introduced myself as a Canadian studying in Switzerland. I just "happened to be in Vienna" while the festival was on, just followed my curiosity when I saw their arm bands. Could I practice my Polish with them?

They said they were medical students but looked to be in their mid-  to late thirties and one even betrayed, by things he said to the others, that he made decisions about the Polish delegation. They assured me that Poland had recovered very well from WWII. They claimed to have come "just for the fun of it" during summer holidays but, alas, had forgotten to bring spending money.

We on Thom's team got cash per diems we did not have to account for. And besides, we were reimbursed for hospitality extended to delegates if we handed in receipts. I had plenty of those after buying cigarets, transit fares, and lunches for the three "medical students". I asked them questions as casually as possible, but received answers without substance. They preferred to talk about Vienna, Canada, Switzerland. They were much better at "doing espionage" than I was.

One day we planned to hear a lecture on longevity delivered by an elderly Polish professor. Simultaneous translations were available in Russian, German, French, Spanish, and English. Headsets were free at the door and every seat had five labelled switches in an armrest. The doctors didn't take headsets but I did, and flipped switches among the languages I knew.

I was not prepared for what I heard. While the professor read a text in Polish about what Poland's medical profession was doing to prolong human lives, the English, French and Spanish translators informed me that Poland's benevolent, efficient communist government was following Russia's inspiring lead by providing all the good nutrition and education and medications and technology needed to increase citizens' lifespans.