More than two decades passed before Canadian veteran Elsa Lessard had any idea she contributed to the decoding efforts that eventually cracked the German Enigma code in the Second World War.

Lessard, a former member of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service, was in her 20s when she worked as a “secret listener” in Coverdale, N.B., intercepting encrypted messages from the Germans. She was one of 700 women trained to intercept the Morse code.

“We spent eight hours a day, around the clock, different shifts and we copied, intercepted the German messages. When a submarine wanted to report whatever, it had to surface, so it very briefly it sent a message,” said 93-year-old Lessard in an interview with CTV’s Power Play.

”We knew the code and we would alert another Navy gal away off in a shack somewhere to intercept.”

At the time, Lessard had no idea that her work was part of a massive decoding effort at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion in the U.K., where British mathematician Alan Turing eventually broke the German Enigma ciphers. 

“We knew at the end of the ‘70s about Bletchley Park and the Bombe (encryption) machine that Alan Turing used … which would automatically decode the messages,” said Lessard. 

There were civilians like Lessard in many Allied countries doing similar message interception, whose work was all bound for Bletchley Park. It was just last year that she was recognized with the Bletchley Park Commemorative Badge for her work as a secret listener. 

“The Bletchley Park badge shows the globe -- it’s a hologram. It was to represent all the people who were listening in on the enemy,” said Lessard, who wears her medal proudly.

The award came with a special certificate from British Prime Minister David Cameron, thanking Lessard for her service.

Lessard is currently featured in the World War Women exhibit at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The exhibit includes artifacts, images, audiovisual material, oral history and text associated with the lives of the women who contributed to the Canadian efforts in the First and Second World Wars. 

For Lessard, the exhibit is important because it recognizes the role women play during war time.

“That’s true of women through the ages. They have not been recognized that they have always been part of their country’s involvement in wars,” she said.