Obituary: Scientist, violinist, ballet dancer Patricia Taylor played key role in the “Canadian Caper”

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When she was a PhD student in bacteriology at the University of California Berkeley in October 1958, Patricia Lee went to the dining hall to fuel herself for an early morning German language class.

It was 7 a.m., and the hall at the university’s International House was deserted but for one other person: Canadian Kenneth Taylor, a master’s student in business administration, was on his way to play golf.

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They two talked, eventually fell in love, and married two years later, launching a remarkable partnership that would carry them to diplomatic postings in Guatemala, Pakistan, England, the United States and Iran, where they helped to pull off the “Canadian Caper” – one of the most celebrated chapters in the history of Canadian diplomacy. Patricia Taylor continued to work as a research scientist even as she moved from country to country with her diplomat husband.

She published more than 100 papers on tropical diseases and viral infections, and was also an accomplished violinist and ballet dancer.

“I always thought there were three or four of her,” Kenneth Taylor once said of his wife.

A member of the Order of Canada, Patricia Taylor died in September in Ottawa at the Red Oak Retirement Residence. She was 95.

“Her whole story is incredible,” said her only child, Douglas, who lives in New York. “She was a warm, engaging, exacting person, who did remarkable things in life.”

Patricia Elsie Taylor was born on March 20, 1929 in Ayr, Australia in the northeastern state of Queensland. One of 11 children, Taylor grew up in Townsville, where her parents – part of Australia’s large Chinese community – owned a grocery store.

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Like all of her siblings, Taylor worked in the store; she excelled in school while also studying dance and music. An adventurous spirit, she hitch-hiked alone across Europe at the age of 18 before settling into her university studies. She obtained bachelor and graduate degrees in science at the University of Queensland, and trained with virologist Macfarlane Burnet, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for his work in the field of immunology.

An international fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship allowed Taylor to study at Berkeley, where she earned her PhD.

She devoted lunch hours and evenings to music and ballet. She played the violin with the Queensland University Orchestra, and later, the California (Berkeley) Symphony Orchestra and the Guatemalan National Conservatory Chamber Music Group.

She was a principal dancer with the Queensland Ballet Theatre, and danced in ballet companies in California and Guatemala.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Taylor worked as a research scientist while fulfilling her responsibilities as a diplomat’s spouse. In Guatemala, she worked at the Institute of Nutrition for Central America and Panama. In England, she worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In New York, she did HIV/AIDS research at the New York Blood Center’s Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute.

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Diplomatic spouses were not supposed to work, but she did not let bureaucratic restrictions interrupt her career.

“I didn’t want to work for the sake of working: I was just interested in the field,” Taylor once told an interviewer.

In Iran, Taylor worked at the Pasteur Institute and the Iranian National Blood Transfusion Service. She was in her office in downtown Tehran in early November 1979 when her husband told her they would be playing host to some unexpected guests in the ambassador’s residence.

Six American diplomats who had escaped the storming of the U.S. embassy by young Islamic militants had sought refuge with the Canadian embassy. Two would be staying with the Taylors and four in the home of another Canadian diplomat, John Sheardown.

The Taylors told their Iranian staff that the visitors were Canadian tourists.

The Americans remained holed up with their Canadian hosts for two-and-a-half months before a daring plan to exfiltrate them from Iran was put into motion. With the help of the CIA, a scheme was concocted to deliver false Canadian passports, visas and identity documents to the six Americans, who would then leave via the Tehran airport.

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Their cover story held that they were members of a film crew, scouting locations for a Hollywood science fiction movie called Argo. On the morning of Jan. 27, 1980, the nervous group of imposters successfully navigated the airport and flew to Frankfurt, Germany.

Taylor, his wife and the remaining Canadian embassy staff followed later the same day.

Patricia Taylor was made a member of the Order of Canada in October 1981 for her role in the caper. Her citation reads: “During the Iranian crisis, at serious risk but with cool determination, she shared responsibility for concealing a group of Americans in the Canadian residence for over two months, thus helping to ensure their safety and ultimate escape from the country.”

The rescue spawned several movies, including a 2012 Oscar-winning Hollywood drama, Argo, that played fast and loose with the truth. As she watched the film’s suspenseful climax during a private screening, Taylor leaned over to her husband and whispered, “We did get out OK, didn’t we?”

Taylor retired to Ottawa after her husband died in October 2015.

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