CANADIAN CAPER
Cable news reports are electrifying viewers with spine tingling tales of secret rescue missions on desert air strips in the Libyan desert. Aboard the Hercules C-130s, the British have sent in Special Boat Service and Special Air Service commando teams to extract British and other refugees.
The “Great Game” is still afoot. It’s not just Britain and Russia anymore. Often we do not see it. Usually we forget it quite fast despite its high adventure. In 1979, the event now known at the “Canadian Caper” happened.
In 1979, Canada engineered one of the great adventures of our day in Tehran, Iran. Today’s incidents in Libya remind me of the daring actions of the staff at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran. In 1979, Ken Taylor ( b. in Calgary, grad of University of Toronto) was the Canadian Ambassador to Iran. On Nov 4, 1979, the Iranian revolutionaries illegally took hostage 66 US embassy workers. Fifty-two of these were held for 444 days and finally released on January 20, 1981.
Through the footwork of Immigration Officer John Sheardown, six other US diplomats were rescued off the streets of Tehran. For seven weeks, two daring families, Ken and Patricia Taylor and John and Zena Sheardown, thwarted the raging revolutionaries and hid the six US diplomats. Ken Taylor worked the problem up to Ottawa and down to the streets of Tehran. Through intensive reconnaissance of the Tehran airport by Canadian staff, observation of airport boarding procedures, and fake Canadian passports, the six US diplomats worked their way onto a plane to Zurich on January 27, 1980. On the same day, Ambassador Taylor shut down the Canadian Embassy and with the remaining staff returned to Canada. Hasta la vista, baby. The other fifty-two US hostages were held for almost a full year longer.
The seven weeks refuge for the six “wanted” diplomats was not just simply “laying low,” but was nerve wracking and eventually terrifying as suspicious telephone calls to the hideouts indicated that the hostage takers suspected that they themselves were being gamed.
Ken and Patricia Taylor and John and Zena Sheardown were all awarded the Order of Canada honour. Ambassador Taylor was awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal. John Sheardown, now 86, also a World War II bomber pilot was recently admitted into the Ottawa Perley and Rideau Veterans' Health Centre. His wife Zena stands by his side.
