“There were a few hiccups here and there, but we were always very close. It staggers me to see the turn it’s taken.”
It breaks Kathleen Stafford’s heart to think about the current tense relations between Canada and the United States.
Forty-five years ago, Stafford and her husband, Joseph, were among a handful of Americans spirited out of Iran with the help of Ambassador Ken Taylor and Canada’s diplomatic staff in Tehran. The “Canadian Caper” made headlines around the world and was later dramatized in the 2012 Oscar-winning film Argo.
But U.S. President Donald Trump’s talk of a trade war, insults that Canada “isn’t a real country” and repeated claims that Canada will become “the 51st state” threaten to fracture that once-strong relationship.
“We’ve given probably 20 talks to Rotary Clubs here, universities, the State Department, women’s groups — to anyone who will listen, really — about how courageous the Canadians were and what wonderful allies we have,” Stafford said in a phone interview from her home in Austin, Texas.
“It was extraordinary: the gift of the friendship between Canada and the United States. So, now, it’s very painful to see that it’s not being respected, it’s not being acknowledged.”
It pains Roger Lucy, too. Lucy is one of the last survivors of the Canadian team that sheltered the Americans and worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to sneak their American house guests out of Iran on specially issued Canadian passports. Lucy, now retired and living in Ottawa, was first secretary at the Canadian Embassy and it was his keen eye and knowledge of Farsi that spotted a crucial CIA error that could have derailed the whole scheme.
Lucy admits he was “scared witless” throughout the 79 days the Canadians sheltered the Americans. There was a constant risk that the secret would leak out, putting everyone’s lives at risk. Still, helping Canada’s American allies during the crisis was “the natural thing to do.”
Lucy is shocked by Trump’s aggression now.
“I’m just gobsmacked by what’s happened,” he said. “My entire career we had a solid relationship with the United States. There were a few hiccups here and there, but we were always very close. It staggers me to see the turn it’s taken. ‘Breaking one’s heart’ is putting it mildly. It’s just tragic.”
In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries had overthrown the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and anti-American anger was at fever pitch. On Nov. 4, Iran’s Day of the Martyrs, protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy, capturing 53 Americans whom they would hold as hostages for the next 444 days.
But six Americans — Kathleen and Joseph Stafford, consular officer Bob Anders, diplomats Cora Amburn-Lijek and Mark Lijek, and Lee Schatz, a Department of Agriculture worker — who had been in a separate building, eluded capture and hid from the mobs for several days in various houses. Eventually Anders contacted his Canadian counterpart, John Sheardown, to ask for help.
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“John said, ‘Fine. Why didn’t you call sooner?’” Kathleen Stafford recalled.
Sheardown was waiting outside his home in a Tehran suburb when the Americans arrived by car. He opened his garage so they could get out of the vehicle without being seen by others.
“He was so welcoming. And, boy, what a relief it was,” Stafford said. “We asked him, ‘Does the ambassador know we’re here. Is it going to be OK with him?’ and he said, ‘Sure. That’s the ambassador over there.’”
The Staffords had mistaken the youthful looking Taylor, with his blue jeans and curly hair, for a junior staff member. Eventually, the Staffords moved in with Taylor and his wife, Pat.
“They were so good to us. They were always encouraging. There was never any bad news,” Stafford said. “Every day they’d come home from work and we’d be there, waiting for information. They were just marvelous to us.”
The Staffords, however, felt awful about the imposition.
“The worst part was that, once we were with the Canadians, we just felt horrible. We were just dumped on them. We were on their couch every day. They’d come home from work and they had these people there they didn’t even know.
“We felt very safe, but we had this feeling that we were putting someone in danger. That was one of the weights we carried.”
Lucy was in Switzerland when the U.S. Embassy was seized, but when he returned to his post in Tehran in December he became Taylor’s right-hand man. When Sheardown was recalled to Canada, Lucy moved into Sheardown’s house to care for the Americans sheltering there.
But negotiations to free the 53 hostages went nowhere and the Canadians realized a separate plan to free their guests was needed. Working with the Americans and in the utmost secrecy, then Prime Minister Joe Clark agreed to an Order in Council to issue the six Americans authentic Canadian passports in false names. The CIA then hatched the plan to “exfiltrate” them with a ruse that they were Canadians in Tehran to scout for a movie shoot. That story is told (with some dramatic licence) in the Hollywood blockbuster Argo and, from a Canadian perspective in the 1981 Canadian-American production Escape from Iran, made before the CIA’s involvement was declassified.
Lucy was the diplomat sent to bring the passports back to Tehran sealed in a diplomatic pouch. His keen eye spotted the blunder that could have ruined everything. The passports had a forged entry visa that mistakenly used the Western Julian calendar instead of the solar calendar used in Iran. It would have shown the six “Canadian” film scouts arriving in Tehran after they had already left.
“Ken asked me to have a look at the documents because I spoke Farsi and could read Arabic,” Lucy said. “Any Iranians who had seen the passports would have spotted the mistake right away.”
Fortunately, the Canadian government had thought to send spare passports. The CIA exfiltration expert, Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck in Argo), was also a skilled forger and he created new visa stamps with the correct date.
In addition to the passports, the Americans were provided with “pocket litter” — Canadian health cards, drivers’ licences and other Canuck minutiae — to help with the ruse. Embassy staff outfitted them with spare clothing bearing Canadian labels.
The night before they left, Lucy put on a military jacket and boots and conducted mock interrogations to prepare them for potentially hostile questioning at the airport by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
“They told me I was suitably scary,” he joked.
The exfiltration, on Jan. 29, 1980, went off without a hitch. The Americans boarded a Swissair flight for Geneva and landed there a few hours later. Taylor, Lucy and the other last Canadians at the embassy left Tehran later the same day.
“The idea that the Canadian Parliament would OK us having false passports is just amazing, I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. I doubt it,” said Stafford, who travelled under the fake name “Rachel.”
Was she allowed to keep her Canadian passport as a souvenir?
“Oh, no,” she said with a laugh. “As soon as we got to Switzerland, the first thing they said wasn’t ‘Hello.’ It was ‘Where’s your passport?’”
Nearly half a century later, the Canadian Caper seems like ancient history and is even forgotten by many. Sheardown died in 2012. Taylor died in 2015.
“It’s getting a bit fuzzy in people’s memories,” Lucy said.
Those who took part still regularly gather for reunions. Later this year, the Staffords plan to attend the 100th birthday celebration for Anders, the man who first contacted the Canadian Embassy staff for help.
Lucy won’t go. He refuses to travel to Trump’s U.S.
“I’m sorry, but I’m just not willing to go to the United States while he’s in power,” Lucy said. “I didn’t go last time and I won’t this time.”
The Staffords, who have travelled to Prince Edward Island and Quebec in the past, have put plans to visit Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies on hold.
“We thought, ‘Maybe people won’t want to see us,’” she said.
But both Stafford and Lucy hope that the Can-Am ties, now frayed, can be rebuilt.
“I hope that people’s memories are short in a few years and all the goodwill returns,” she said.
She can’t understand why the Trump administration is so hostile to its northern neighbour.
“We don’t see why it’s happening. Why? What is the point? It’s very sad to see,” she said. “We’ll just keep giving talks. We can’t do much. We don’t have any power, but we can do that.”
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