A six-year-old British Columbia boy has written to the Canadian spy agency CSIS asking it to start a kid’s spy club for him and his friends. Jacob St. Jean is enthralled with spies and their exciting work. He begged his mother Erin for help to write a letter. She did and for four months Mrs. St. Jean had to explain to her son that it takes time for busy spies to reply to a little boy. Finally a bulky package arrived with a letter from the CSIS regional office. The letter said the agency was sorry to have taken so long to reply but the first letter had been written in invisible ink and had been lost. The second letter had been written in code but had to be discarded because the spies realized Jacob didn’t know the code. So finally, it was explained, they just decided to write it in plain English. It was a thrilling reward for the long wait. The package included everything Jacob needed to become a junior secret agent: a cap with a CSIS patch, a CSIS pin and a CSIS medallion etched with his own, unique number. “There’s a code on it,” Jacob says. “Special for me … I don’t think I should tell it.”
