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CDN hero of Iran hostage crisis can’t get long-term care bed

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Canadian hero of Iran hostage crisis can’t get long-term care bed
By Mark Brownlee, Postmedia News

July 31, 2010

OTTAWA — A shortage of spaces in long-term care facilities for veterans will mean an unlikely reunion at an Ottawa hospital room this weekend for a group of Canadians and Americans whose lives intertwined 30 years ago during the Iran hostage crisis.

John Sheardown, who was the Canadian Embassy’s chief immigration officer in Iran during the hostage crisis, is hobbled by an injured hip, suffering from dementia and unable to get a bed in a long-term care facility for veterans.

So when his former colleagues gather to mark the 30th year since they took six U.S. officials into their homes and helped them escape capture, they’ll be paying a visit to Sheardown at the Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus.

"I have no way of knowing what would have happened had he not taken us in," said Mark Lijek, one of the Americans who escaped after hiding in Sheardown’s house for three months from November 1979 to January 1980.

Sheardown’s situation has left his wife, Zena, upset the government isn’t taking better care of the Second World War veteran, especially at a time when his former colleagues gather to celebrate what is now known as the Canadian Caper.

"In his hour of need, where is his place? Where is his bed in the veterans’ home? He’s a Second World War veteran, and I assumed before all this happened that he’d at least be taken care of," said Zena Sheardown.

She’s been trying to get the 85-year-old into a long-term care facility for the past two months, a process that officials say can often take one to three years.

Meanwhile, Sheardown is now on a waiting list with 172 other veterans, all of them vying for one of 250 beds that are available only to veterans at the Perley and Rideau Veterans Health Centre in Ottawa.

But, while Zena says she feels the government has forgotten the contributions her husband made to his country, the Americans he helped rescue 30 years ago haven’t.

Lijek says they were well taken care of while in hiding, as the Sheardowns even managed to track down a turkey so he and the others would be able to celebrate American Thanksgiving.

"I really think I would not be able to imagine a better way to spend those three months," he said. "He did everything anyone could possibly do to make us feel as welcome and as comfortable as possible."

Lijek and the others plan on visiting Sheardown in the hospital.

"Our American guests very much want to see John," said Roger Lucy, who was involved in the hostage crisis 30 years ago and organized this weekend’s reunion.

Mary Sebastian, the district director of the Ottawa office of the Veterans Affairs Department, says her department only offers reserved spaces for veterans in ordinary long-term care facilities, which means they are at the mercy of the provincial government when it comes to creating new spaces.

"Until a bed becomes available, we don’t have a lot of flexibility in making offers. The beds have to become available and, unfortunately, that’s usually due to the death of a veteran," she said.

The Sheardowns were with the Canadian Embassy in Tehran when Iranian students and supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the U.S. Embassy in November 1979, taking most of the Americans in the compound hostage and setting off the Iran hostage crisis.

Six Americans managed to escape, and after some negotiations between the Canadian Embassy and the federal government, the Sheardowns took four of the hostages into their home while Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran, took two. The six American "house guests" were eventually shuttled out of the country to safety on Jan. 27, 1980.



“Thirty years is a bit of a milestone,” said Taylor, who lives in New York but was in Ottawa to attend the reunion with Lijek, Lucy and a few others.

“I think a number of us thought time erodes memories, but 30 years later we all remember it very vividly. And it was a unique moment in Canada-U.S. relations.”

Taylor said this is the third such reunion they’ve had in as many decades, and the group shared a good “chuckle” when recalling some of the events.

“What it amounts to, to some degree is, it was a simple story with a good conclusion. And there’s not many of these these days,” he said.

Canada’s contribution to the crisis did not go unnoticed by other Americans, who quickly turned Taylor into a celebrity by booking him for events across the country.

The U.S. government awarded Taylor the congressional gold medal, the only Canadian to have ever received the award. Former New York mayor Edward Koch also awarded Taylor the keys to the city.

"It’s an almost singular moment of real Canadian-American friendship and it’s remembered that way in the U.S.," said author and historian Robert Wright, who recently published a book on Canada’s role in the Iran hostage crisis, Our Man in Tehran.

"It’s seared into people’s memories because it’s such an important story."

with files from Laura Stone, Postmedia News

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Canadian+hero+Iran+hostage+crisis+long+term+care/3346995/story.html
 
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