Halifax's role in the most important WW II mission you never heard of

In July 1940, as war raged in Europe, a British naval vessel docked quietly in Halifax harbour.

The cargo was labelled as fish but was, in fact, gold and securities.

The ship was HMS Emerald, and it carried the first in a series of shipments transporting Britain's wealth to safety in Canada.

It was part of Operation Fish, a secret mission that would see Halifax play a key role in ensuring Britain's success in the Second World War.

By then, the Atlantic Ocean had already become a graveyard for hundreds of Allied ships thanks to Germany's formidable U-boat fleet.

But while the Germans sank hundreds of other vessels that year, all of the Operation Fish ships made it to Halifax safely.

In total, the 2025 equivalent of over $200 billion in gold and securities came through the port of Halifax.

It remains the largest movement of physical wealth in history.

When the gold and securities arrived in Halifax, they were inspected by officials from the Bank of Canada and loaded onto waiting Canadian National Express train cars.

Escorted by hundreds of armed guards, the assets headed to Montreal before eventually making their way to the Bank of Canada vaults in Ottawa.

"Winston Churchill had just become prime minister at a perilous time," notes Paul Doerr, a professor of history at Acadia University.

Churchill had made it clear in his speeches that the British Isles could be overcome militarily by the Nazis.

"He expected that if the work continued, it would be continued by the Empire countries, the Commonwealth, including of course Canada," Doerr said.

"That's why the gold reserves moved out, to enable those countries to carry on the war, to finance the war."