The Lost Canadians

CONTENTS

Foreword: Lost Canadians:

Resolving the Contrails of Corruption

Introduction: Raining Ashes

Prologue: Against All Odds: The Story of Flight811

PART 1 LOST CANADIANS UNDER THE LIBERALS

1 The Long and Winding Road

2 I’m Not Alone in This Universe

3 Is There Political or Bureaucratic Intelligence in the Universe?

4 The Politics of Politics

5 In This Corner, the Prime Minister; in That Corner, the Lost Canadians

6 Ottawa’s Nitty-Gritty, Down-and-Dirty Shenanigans

PART 2 TO STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE

7 Thee Is You and Me

8 Lest We Forget... Lest We Ignore

PART 3 LOST CANADIANS UNDER THE CONSERVATIVES

9 Changing of the Guard

10 On the Scales of Justice

11 Dog Poop, Farts, Toads, and Britney Spears

12 And the Winner in the Stupid Category Is...

13 Tora! Tora! Tora!

14 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Mr. Chapman Goes to Ottawa

15 The Right Thing to Do for the Right Reasons

16 Lucy in the Sky

17 The Gold Medal Olympic Gamble

18 Please, Put Me Out of Business

19 Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

PART 4 WRAP UP AND ANALYSIS

20 That’s a Wrap

21 Analysis and Recommendations

PHOTOS

APPENDIX 1 Lost Canadians on Citizenship

Charles Bosdet on Citizenship and Nationality

Marion Vermeersch on Her Status (post–Bill C-24)

Paul Diekelmann on His Status (post–Bill C-24)

Fred Colbourne on Citizenship: What Parliamentarians Need to Know

APPENDIX 2 The Revised History of Canadian Citizenship

Acknowledgements

Notes

Text Credits

To everyone who ever gave of themselves on behalf of their fellow man, from the really famous to the small child who on his or her own accord did something beneficial, and not just for themselves. After all, we are our brother’s keeper.

Copyright © 2015 by Don Chapman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.caor call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Pugwash Publishing

Vancouver BC / Phoenix AZ

Published by Pugwash Publishing and distributed by Smashwords

ISBN 978-0-9940554-2-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-9940554-0-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9940554-1-5 (ebook)

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of some individuals.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Chapman, Donald L., 1954—, author The lost Canadians : a struggle for citizenship rights, equality, and identity / Donald L. Chapman.

1. Chapman, Donald L., 1954—. 2. Citizenship, Loss of—Canada. 3. Stateless persons—Canada—Biography. I. Title.

JL187.C53 2015 323.6’3 C2015-900949-99

C2015-900950-2

Cover design by Peter Cocking

Cover photograph by Daniel Grill/Tetra Images/Corbis

Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis

Ebook by Bright Wing Books

15   16   17   18   19      5   4   3   2   1

FOREWORD

LOST CANADIANS: RESOLVING THE CONTRAILS OF CORRUPTION

IT WAS THE

quirky American television commentator Sam Donaldson, during the turbulent Senate hearings into President Clinton’s sexual escapades, who inadvertently demonstrated why Canadian governments so mishandled the act of granting citizenship. The trouble with Bill, Donaldson explained on air, is that when he’s in the witness box and swears to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ he then tells three different stories.

The connection is vague at best, but that’s exactly what’s gone wrong with the system of issuing citizenship to Canadians caught in special circumstances. Courts, boards of appeal, legal circuses of various levels of incompetence—all have their say and all issue their often brutal sanctions. But the theme never changes. There is no standard procedure on how the bureaucrats’ self-contradictory regulations are enforced. Phone the Department of Citizenship and Immigration’s call centres, ask a Canadian consular attaché, and talk to any MP about how best to retrieve your citizenship—and you’ll get three different answers.

As this unusual book amply demonstrates, no one really knows the stone-cold hard truths that govern our citizenship rules. The answers may be blowing in the wind, waiting to catch the attention of the beholders; but decades of amendments, and amendments to amendments, have led to so much confusion that if murderers were treated in the same loosey-goosey way, convicts could never be sure whether they would spend the rest of their lives munching saltpetre in the hoosegow or be nominated for Kiwanis scholarships.

At the moment, the best anyone can advise the many individuals whose Canadian citizenship is being questioned is that they will be treated in one of two ways: by being told either, Sure, Charlie, finish your Molson. Of course you’re the very model of a good citizen... we think, or, more likely, No damn way, Joanna, you gave up your citizenship when you danced the night away on your twenty-fourth birthday while on March break in Orlando... we think. The difference seems to depend on a combination of whim, ignorance, news of counter-coups in Syria, and the prevailing mood of the inquisitors. They know nothing about disrupting narrative arcs. If the process was in any way clearer, the courts wouldn’t be so busy with citizenship actions.

Gaining citizenship should be a natural act for Canadians. As the pages that follow clearly demonstrate, obtaining Canadian citizenship has become something of a fixed lottery, a game of mischance. Some sunny Friday, following the equinox, the lively green paint on the bureaucrats’ office walls will signal spring and the voluntary handing over of the proper documents, followed by a high-five. But the identical documentation request, issued on a rainy Wednesday in the same green office, might end in tears.

It is, as the King of Siam tried to explain a long time ago, a puzzlement. When this book is published, I fully expect the ministry that operates the lottery of granting citizenship will accuse me of misinterpreting its regulations. Damn right. I don’t understand them either. I hate to think that I have misinterpreted them as frequently as they do, but, yes—that is quite possible. Even likely.

Which brings us to the unlikely hero of this unlikely volume: Don Chapman—part United Airlines jetliner pilot boasting captain’s flying duds with the four gold stripes; part seldom-humbled missionary looking for new positions; and part Eagle Scout who deserves a great deal more credit than he has harvested.

I met Don Chapman through a chance introduction by Daniel Veniez, a mutual friend, successful political columnist, and would-be BC Liberal MP whom I admire a great deal. Chapman resides on British Columbia’s misnamed Sunshine Coast, one of my former stomping grounds, where I missed becoming named Mr. Hopkins Landing by only 500 votes in a community of barely 100.

This is how this book started: Don being the storyteller. Actually, it’s more a cri de cœur. It is a call to arms for a fresh approach to the most fundamental rite of passage—from birth to citizenship—that ought to be easily claimable instead of being tied up in the brutal dynamics of delay—a phrase that ought to be reproduced in petit point on every bureaucrat’s hope chest. The system has improved, at least in part because of Chapman’s radical advocacy.

The word radical possesses damaging characteristics in Stephen Harper’s government lexicon, but its dictionary definition has nothing to do with occupying bankers’ offices. The process of radicalization simply means getting to the root of things, which Chapman does effortlessly (and twice on Sunday) without even working himself into a sweat—and he ain’t no radical.

What has united his army of Lost Canadians is the simple credo that being hung out to dry is not a legitimate or desirable posture.

The functionaries of Switzerland’s administration, who thrive on it, coined the best phrase to describe how governments hibernate: its meticulously inactive burgher-bureaucrats boast about exercising the dynamics of delay as an admissible tactic. It is certainly effective but it solves nothing. Indeed, worse than nothing because its practitioners and victims alike reap no benefits, only anger.

The upside for Don Chapman is that he has met a band of brothers and sisters whom he counts among the most admirable, if damaged, Canadians. Their bravery and stubbornness almost equal his own. In the face of injustice, his victories on behalf of victimized Canadians have been his reward.

Chapman, his family, and his remarkable retinue of Lost Canadians believe they have found a way to beat down each challenge to existing regulations. Sadly, their crusade has gone no further afield. Ottawa has retreated to its bad old ways and, despite some favourable fallout from the C-37 legislation, that useful bill also served as the evidence of its system’s remaining inadequacies. Case in point: no one, including Citizenship and Immigration Canada, is consistent when telling people if they definitively are, or definitely are not, Canadian citizens. That’s the real nut: How can you run a major G-8 country that isn’t certain who among its 35 million people are or are not citizens?

Our thumb-sucking savants like me spend their cloistered lives attempting to define the boundaries of the Canadian identity. It turns out that this is easy, compared with divining who is or isn’t entitled to it. Most of the inhabitants of this magnificent hunk of geography north of the forty-ninth parallel are Canadians not by persuasion but by convenience, or worse, by inadvertence. I am trying to change that, Chapman declares.

Having worked with Don and met many of the Lost Canadians, I believe in his cause. I am also convinced there is only one solution to Canada’s citizenship dilemma: the priority of tabling a brand-new citizenship act—meticulously conceived, non-political, but redrafted so that its mint-fresh approach sheds light instead of creating even more shadows.

It’s that simple. And that difficult. But it must be done.

PETER C. NEWMAN

INTRODUCTION

RAINING ASHES

I’M AN AIRLINE

pilot currently on leave of absence from United Airlines. Pilots are analytical people, always striving to understand the truth. Plane crashes are investigated to discover what went wrong. The objective is to learn the cause of the crash, be it mechanical, electrical, or human error. We never want to repeat the same mistakes.

To get into the pilot’s seat of a Boeing 747-400, as I have many times, one must have a high degree of training and years of experience. Pilots are constantly taking written and oral examinations, practising on simulators, and watching training videos. Poked and prodded, we are examined for physical or mental problems, and even then we have federal inspectors showing up unannounced, often at the last minute before a flight, to spot-check our performance. If the feds aren’t satisfied with what they see, we can incur penalties, including fines, and even have our licences pulled. The point is that, despite our rigorous training and there always being more than one pilot at the controls, mistakes happen, albeit rarely. In contrast, some career fields seem prone to constant gaffes and blunders—like politics. And so it behooves us all to remain vigilant, knowing that, as humans, no matter how accomplished, we are not impervious to error.

For me, the statement I’ve been to hell and back is synonymous with I’ve been to Ottawa and back. I’m the person behind seven parliamentary bills, all dealing with Canadian citizenship law. This book is written through my pilot lens in the hope of exposing what went wrong, and of making Canada a better country. The wrongs made and perpetuated against Lost Canadians should never have happened, let alone be repeated, and there’s a lot of blame to go around.

In an accident, pilots are frequently the first to die. Hence, we share a common goal with our passengers: to arrive safely at our destination. In politics—in governments around the world—there exists a disconnect between the people and their respective leaders: politicians often don’t suffer the consequences of the legislation they pass into law. Something has gone terribly wrong.

This book isn’t just an historical account of the Lost Canadians but an accident investigation of what went wrong and is still wrong in Ottawa. The deficiencies are not unique to Canada—everywhere one finds a politician, there seems to be a corresponding problem.

Most Lost Canadians were completely unaware of their precarious situation. For years, the government denied knowing how many were out there, indicating to the media that the numbers were relatively small. In 2007, Citizenship Minister Diane Finley suggested 450. Today, Citizenship and Immigration Canada ( CIC ) admits to there being at least 750,000, though we believe the figure is closer to 1 million. Either way, that’s substantial in a country of about 35 million. It means that somewhere between 2 percent and 3 percent of all Canadians were or still are Lost Canadians. And if you’re not one of them, then odds are that a family member or friend was or is. Without question, the legislation that came about because of our advocacy, in one way or another, touched every Canadian on the planet.

I lost my citizenship as a six-and-a-half-year-old child because I was born in wedlock, in Canada, and wasn’t adopted. Had any of these factors been different, I would have remained Canadian.

Confused? No wonder. Canadian citizenship law is outdated, mystifying, and unfair, and what you don’t know can hurt you. No use trying to make any sense out of this, because you won’t be able to.

Roméo Dallaire discovered, quite by accident, in the early 1970s that he wasn’t considered Canadian.

During the summer of 2010, eighty-seven-year-old Canadian war bride Priscilla Corrie was denied a passport—her previous one had expired—when CIC abruptly stated that, as a non-citizen, she wasn’t entitled to one.

Quan Louie, born in Vancouver in 1922, died in 1945 when his bomber was hit by enemy flak over Magdeburg, Germany, and exploded. The federal government now claims that not only was he never a citizen but neither were the other 111,000 Canadian war dead from World Wars I and II. 1

Guy Valliere was born in Montreal in 1926. He grew up, married, had a family, voted, paid taxes, and was a soldier for Canada in World War II. He went to his grave disenfranchised simply because he was born in wedlock.

Jackie Scott came to Canada with her British war-bride mother and Canadian-soldier father in 1948. She was turned away for being born out of wedlock.

For marrying a non-British subject before 1947, Velma Demerson was a woman without a country for the next half century. Apparently, this sort of thing happened with some regularity: Canada was particularly adept at rendering children stateless.

Sarah Currie and her husband, Mike, were both Canadian citizens at birth. Both were military brats. CIC would not recognize their adopted son on the grounds that the couple hadn’t demonstrated a substantial connection to Canada. It didn’t matter that Mike had served three tours of duty in Afghanistan as a Canadian soldier.

Heather Harnois is a Canadian First Nations woman; her roots in North America go back thousands of years. Her child was born in Canada, yet the government says Heather isn’t Canadian.

It’s hard to imagine all this going on in a post–Charter rights Canada. But it was, and is. The laws have still not been fully corrected. These real-life stories of fellow Canadians will touch your heart—they’re gut-wrenching, tearful, maddening, and joyous. And the stories are many, as are the government’s reasons for rejecting its own people.

I’m the leader of the Lost Canadians, which consists of a hodgepodge, really, of individuals from across Canada and around the world. Among our ranks are Nobel Prize winners; Hollywood actors; NHL players; members of Parliament; everyday folks; and everything in between. We fought a long battle with Ottawa, and we won.

In these pages you’ll discover a chronicle of Canada, from its beginnings to where we’re going as individuals and as a country—from discrimination to acceptance. Like that of David and Goliath, this is a story in which a handful of average people take on the fed, and win. It’s the narrative of navigating across the treacherous waters of Ottawa, in and around the hallowed hallways of Parliament. It’s the story of the little guy being victorious, and of how those actions changed a country, its history, and its people. It’s about an ongoing battle, which probably began the nanosecond two people stood together on planet earth, to achieve that which we all deserve: justice, dignity, and equal rights.

PROLOGUE

AGAINST ALL ODDS:

THE STORY OF FLIGHT 811

When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never, never, never give up.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

JAPANESE PROVERB

DURING THE WEE

hours of February 25, 1989, in Wellington, New Zealand, Susan Campbell sat straight up in bed with a clear vision of her son. Sensing her anxiety, husband Kevin put his arm around her for reassurance. After a few minutes they both fell back to sleep. Little did they know how much that moment would forever change lives; not just their own but also thousands of others around the world. If there was any peace to their sleep, it would be the last for many years. In just a few short hours they would learn of their son Lee’s passing.

Earlier, on the other side of the international dateline, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Brian Kitaoka, a United Airlines ramp serviceman, prepared to do something he’d done countless times before: close the main cargo door of Flight 811. It was a simple procedure, holding down the toggle switch located in a small recess of the forward, right-side fuselage near the lower corner of the doorway of the huge Boeing 747. It took all of maybe twenty seconds for the main cargo door to close. Kitaoka’s final action was to reach up and push in a palm-sized handle, which mechanically closed two pressure-relief valves while simultaneously swinging eight J -shaped aluminum bars into place. The door was now sealed and the plane ready for flight.

Taking off from Runway 8 in Honolulu requires an immediate right turn. It’s what those in aviation call a noise abatement procedure. Almost straight ahead of the runway lie the Waikiki hotels full of tourists, who would be less than thrilled if, every few minutes, they were forced to endure the roaring of jumbo-jet engines at takeoff power not far above their heads. So immediately after liftoff, Captain David Cronin, First Officer Al Slater, and Flight Engineer Mark Thomas put the plane into a 30-degree right turn to a more southerly direction, almost in parallel to the beaches of Waikiki and just a few miles offshore.

At 10,000 feet above sea level, pilots transition from a sterile cockpit—that of talking only about matters that pertain directly to the flying or safety of the aircraft—to a more relaxed one. At 18,000 feet, the landing lights are turned off on the climb to cruising altitude. For Flight 811, while the pilots casually checked their gauges, talked to air traffic control, and flew the plane, the fifteen flight attendants were preparing the meal service. On board were 337 passengers, many getting ready to nod off for their long flight to New Zealand. It was all routine.

As the plane neared 23,000 feet above the black nighttime ocean, at exactly nine minutes and nine seconds past 2 a.m., a loud thump was heard. Captain Cronin shouted, What the hell was that? It was followed, 1. 8 seconds later, by a mammoth boom. Had a bomb gone off?

Curt Christensen, one of the flight attendants, was assigned to the rear of the plane. Immediately after the explosion he felt the cold of the outside air. Debris flew through the cabin amid swirling grey smoke. Ceiling panels fell, as did door and side panels—often right on passengers’ heads. Thanks to his years of airline safety training, Christensen went into emergency mode. Noticing a dim light toward the front of the airplane, he made his way forward through the jungle of oxygen masks and rubble. He paused to help passengers, clearing debris off them. As he reached business class, he saw a glow from the numbers three and four engines on the plane’s right side. But, to his horror, something was missing. Where the passengers and seats are normally located there was nothing but a void—a gaping hole in the airplane. The entire section was missing. Sparks and flames shot back from the engines as far as the eye could see. Below, nothing but the cold, uncaring Pacific Ocean. For a split second he wondered if the plane would be ditched but then realized the water would immediately gush in through the massive opening. Either that or, worse, the plane would break apart upon contact with the sea. And then, even if a few people were lucky enough to survive the crash landing, what about the sharks? His fate, and that of everyone else, was now in the hands of three people: the pilots.

Aviators know that, in an explosive decompression, many things can happen. Immediately we don our oxygen masks—depending on altitude, a human has only so much time of useful consciousness. We then ascertain we’re able to communicate with each other and with air traffic control—it’s imperative that everyone is on the same page, so to speak. The first job is getting the plane safely down to an altitude where passengers can breathe on their own, usually 10,000 feet. There’s much to consider in precious little time. The wrong move could mean disaster. A direct lesson from Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, which went down in the Florida Everglades on December 29, 1972, is that a pilot must at all times never forget to fly the plane, otherwise, the results can be disastrous. With Flight 401, the pilots’ attention was focused entirely on a mechanical problem. The result? They flew a perfectly good airplane into the ground. So just imagine a bomb going off in your airplane—you’re responsible for the safety and lives of perhaps hundreds of people, but your mind must be focused on something else: flying the plane. Easier said than done. And the pilots of Flight 811 knew this.

Yet fly the plane they did—not necessarily by the book, because what had just happened was never contemplated. After donning their oxygen masks and communicating with each other and air traffic control, they assessed their situation, making sure the plane was still airworthy. Then they began a slow descent to heavier, more breathable air. The airplane was turned back toward Hawaii, and Thomas went downstairs to the lower deck to see for himself exactly what had happened. He must have had a sickening feeling, looking at the gaping hole and out at the glowing engines. He had no idea if or how many passengers had been sucked out and into the engines.

Given the debris and carnage, he too surmised that a bomb had gone off. On returning to the cockpit, he gave his assessment to the captain and first officer, reporting a wide-open hole from the right side, forward emergency exit back maybe ten feet. Considering the damage to the plane, he recommended a top flying speed of 250 knots—half of what it was doing just before the explosion. It required precision flying, as the plane still had full fuel tanks and so was far heavier than desirable for low-level manoeuvring. It was also at half power, since the numbers three and four engines had failed. The structural damage was even more extensive than Thomas realized: the nine passengers sucked from the cabin, seats and all, had become projectiles. Some were ingested into the engines, others hit the leading edge of the wing and rear stabilizer, causing tremendous destruction, even to the flight controls. Flaps and leading-edge devices, when deployed, allow an airplane to fly at greatly reduced speeds without stalling; but on Flight 811, Captain Cronin lost the ability to use full flaps. With a stall speed of around 240 knots, there could be no mistakes. Flying the plane required every bit of skill and precision the three pilots had amassed over the years.

Around 4,000 feet above the sea, the plane finally levelled off. In front of it were the flickering lights of Honolulu. There would be no consideration for noise abatement or the tourists in Waikiki this time.

The landing speed for a 747 is normally 135 to 150 knots. With only partial flaps being extended, Captain Cronin would have to nurse Flight 811 in closer to 200. Would the brakes hold? Would the brakes even work? Would the landing gear buckle? Was there enough runway for the plane to stop at 200 knots?

The noise was so deafening that no one in the cabin could hear the captain’s order to assume brace positions. Curt Christensen and his fellow flight attendants knew what to do and prepared the cabin and passengers as best they could. For the last few minutes, all that was left for them to do was to wait, and hope. Some probably prayed.

Captain Cronin made a wide, circling approach back to Runway 8. All three pilots knew they had one chance only to get it right. Everything had to be precise: the rate of descent, the landing speed, the touchdown point. There was no room for error or misjudgment. In the end, it was a perfect touchdown. The pilots did their job, and they did it to the highest degree possible. Later they were given the Award for Heroism by the US Secretary for Transportation, with accolades read aloud in the US House of Representatives.

But the story of United Flight 811 was far from over. In fact, the investigation was just beginning.

AFTER EVERY

aircraft accident or incident, hearings are held to determine the cause. The objective is not to place blame on individuals but to understand exactly what went wrong. If the cause was mechanical or electrical, all airplanes of the same design are usually grounded until the defect is corrected. If the cause is attributable to the crew, procedures and training changes are made. With Flight 811, the investigation in turn needed to be investigated, but that story is for later.

For Kevin and Susan Campbell in New Zealand, the news came several hours after Susan’s sudden awakening. How does one describe the devastation parents feel when confronted with a phone call telling them their child is missing and presumed dead? What should have been a banner day, with welcome-home hugs, became the worst day of their lives. Lee, their son, was one of the nine people sucked out of the airplane and flung to their deaths.

At about the same time that the Campbells heard the news, on the opposite side of the world, the top investigators of the US National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ), representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA ), and the best of the best Boeing engineers were in the process of being dispatched to Honolulu to determine why the accident happened and how a similar situation could be prevented from happening in the future.

Accident investigation is an exacting science. Together, investigators piece together like a jigsaw puzzle everything from parts of the airplane to people’s lives. Nothing gets taken for granted. Many years back it was the Canadians who discovered that the hairlike filament in a light bulb the size of a pebble could, under close inspection, reveal whether the plane had electrical power before crashing, and also its speed at impact. Black boxes aren’t the only thing examined—everything is scrutinized.

Investigators take a close look at the pilots: How much sleep did they have? Did they have any family problems? Was there something, anything, no matter how trivial, that could in some way be a contributing factor? Fatigue, interpersonal communications, training, you name it, everything gets dissected. The investigators talk to the dispatchers, look into the company procedures, Boeing procedures, aircraft history and maintenance, weather, aircraft controllers, other airlines, and similar incidents or accidents. No stone is left unturned.

Often, years pass before a final accident report is released. For United Flight 811, it was just under fourteen months. On April 10, 1990, the NTSB stated that the cause of the accident was either a stray electrical signal or, most likely, the sloppy operation on the part of United Airlines ramp serviceman Brian Kitaoka when he closed the cargo door. The findings were merely speculation, nothing definitive. The NTSB released its final report without ascertaining the cause of the accident, despite that being its mission.

Now consider, for a moment, that you are Brian Kitaoka. How do you feel, knowing that two powerful government agencies—the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration (both supposed to be neutral when striving for the truth), as well as Boeing, the world’s leading manufacturer of airliners—are pointing their collective finger directly at you, telling the world that because of your sloppy work nine people died violent, horrible deaths. You’d have to live with it for the rest of your life. Pretty devastating, and not just for Brian and the victims’ families. I imagine everyone around Mr. Kitaoka—spouse, children, parents, cousins, friends—felt some sort of shame. How could they not?

But that wasn’t the end of this story. Nor was it the end of the investigation. Kevin Campbell—Lee’s father—was a retired auto dealer and expert mechanic with a background in mechanical engineering. From the moment the formal government hearings began, he and Susan immersed themselves in the investigation. On their own, they combed through thousands of documents on the cargo door of the 747, from service manuals to service bulletins, from FAA orders to United maintenance records. Like the pilots of Flight 811, Kevin could not accept mediocrity. In the ensuing months, Kevin and Susan set up their home as a forensic laboratory of sorts. Meanwhile, Boeing was working with the NTSB and the FAA on its own investigation, and while there was no denying the 747 cargo door had experienced previous deficiencies, Boeing’s top aeronautical engineers believed Flight 811’s incident was most likely due to human error, and not just by Brian Kitaoka but by other ramp servicemen too, who, over the years, had manually closed the door. Words like believed and most likely aren’t reassuring in an investigation report—pilots and the public alike want more definitive answers. But speculation about what might have caused the door to blow out was all their combined research produced. Of importance, Boeing’s findings neatly swept aside the NTSB ’s conclusion that the accident could just as well have been caused by a stray electrical signal. The latter possibility, of course, was potentially embarrassing and costly to Boeing.

Airplanes are noted for their backup systems, meant to ensure that a failure of one component is not catastrophic. In the case of the electrically operated cargo door, mechanics could, with a wrench, manually crank it shut if the electric system failed. The Boeing 747 is one of the world’s most popular planes, in service since the 1960s. Several times over the years, airline crew have had to manually close the door. The mechanical inner workings operate identically whether closed automatically with the electrical switch or manually with a wrench. But if closed with a wrench improperly, it’s possible to damage the locking mechanism.

Almost without exception, aircraft accidents are a result of a chain of events. It’s rare to have one single thing take down a plane. Pilots study various mishaps and crashes to learn what went wrong, so as not to repeat the same mistakes with the same possibly fatal consequences. The idea is that, if you break the chain, the accident never happens. In my studies, I’ve noticed a commonality among pilots: often they utter shortly before a crash, I’m uncomfortable with this or This doesn’t look right. Kevin and Susan Campbell had the same feeling about the government’s investigation.

Boeing maintained that workers who manually closed and latched the cargo door with a wrench damaged, over time, the locking mechanism, setting in motion the chain of events leading to Flight 811’s cargo door failure. According to Boeing, ramp servicemen, when manually closing the door, first set the locks in place by depressing the lock handle, then wound the latch actuator in reverse—toward the open position—to confirm that the latches bumped against the locks. This is called backwinding. Ramp workers have always denied doing this, and no hard evidence has surfaced that this highly unusual procedure was ever widely practised. 1 In a 110-page deposition, Brian Kitaoka denied he closed Flight 811’s cargo door manually.

Independently of the Campbells, another private citizen got interested in the investigation: retired Boeing pressurization expert Elliott Maylor, self-described as a casual observer. He too had a difficult time accepting Boeing’s backwinding theory. As Seattle Times writer Byron Acohido put it, Neither Maylor nor the Campbells seemed likely candidates to tilt lances at the all-powerful closed fraternity of industry executives and government regulators that is the U.S. aviation-safety system. 2

Meanwhile, the NTSB examined other airlines specifically to see the history of not just the 747 cargo door but also of any other Boeing planes with similar operating systems. What became clear was that Boeing knew problems existed with the cargo door as far back as 1975—fourteen years before that fateful Flight 811. A number of airlines reported trouble with the locking system, made out of lightweight aluminum that could bend when the door was closed manually. Boeing issued advisory bulletins, suggesting the airlines reinforce each of the door’s locking arms with an additional aluminum plate. Twelve years went by. Then, in March 1987, a Pan Am 747 lost all pressurization shortly after takeoff from London, England. The cause was later determined to be the failure of the cargo door’s locking system. The only thing that kept the door from blowing off were two pull-in hooks. The investigation concluded by saying that several times in the past the door had been improperly closed by backwinding. The Pan Am incident was one of the links in the chain, a precursor to Flight 811.

A weakness in the chain was the FAA . With the dual purpose of being an overseer of safety and a promoter of aviation, the administration has sometimes been accused of giving in to the huge airline lobby, of putting a price tag on safety. In the investigation of Flight 811, Boeing had a powerful influence over the FAA and the NTSB . Although possibilities of the door experiencing some sort of electrical malfunction, such as an intermittent power surge, were on the table, Boeing kept the focus on backwinding. And disturbingly, the FAA went along with it.

Kevin Campbell was meticulous in his investigation; he even built prototypes of the locking system. He pored over technical documents—more than 2,000 pages of them—and with the help of a nearby New Zealand university even devised computer simulations. Together they tracked down survivors, interviewing them about any recollections they had, no matter how inconsequential. Two things stood out: something on the cockpit voice recorder, and a statement by a fellow passenger. The first was Captain Cronin yelling, What the hell was that? just before the door ripped from the plane. The second was Roland Wilhelmy, a passenger, saying he heard a buzzing noise about two seconds before the explosion. Kevin surmised that the electrical power for the door actuating switch was coming alive.

Could it be that the problem wasn’t at all as Boeing suggested, but a design flaw? If so, Boeing would be forced, at considerable expense, to redesign all of its 747 cargo doors, as well as face liability for damages. The Campbells, as private citizens, were up against some big guns with lots of money, and they became cannon fodder—Kevin was discredited and dismissed as a backyard garage mechanic who had no business competing against Boeing’s specialized, high-tech aeronautical engineer PhDs, with their supercomputers. What kept the Campbells going was their desire for the truth. For their son, for everyone on that and future flights, they had to know why Flight 811’s cargo door had failed.

Examining photographs taken by investigators, Kevin and Susan discovered tiny scorch marks and loose wiring in the switch that activated the cargo door locking mechanism. To them, it was evidence that the switch had arced—that is, an electrical charge had leapt from one wire to another in midflight, starting up the motor that opens the door. 3 Independently, Elliott Maylor in Seattle reached the same conclusion.

Records from past cargo door malfunctions noted malfunctioning switches. That ramp servicemen had to at times close the door manually was proof the switch could fail. After all, why would anyone want to manually close the door when a perfectly good automatic electrical system was available? Furthermore, despite a history of 747 cargo door electrical problems, despite United’s maintenance records for the very same cargo door that malfunctioned on Flight 811 indicating it had experienced electrical problems in the ten weeks leading up to the accident, despite all kinds of other supporting evidence, and despite NTSB investigator Ron Schleede’s acknowledgement of the Campbell’s remarkable efforts, he ultimately dismissed the stray electrical signal scenario put forward by the Campbells as highly improbable.

Now, more than ever, it was clear to the Campbells that the accident investigation also needed to be investigated. Why was so much obvious evidence overlooked? In the issued formal report, it seemed that the NTSB had relied heavily on Boeing’s analysis, saying the cause was the sudden opening of an improperly latched cargo door. 4

The official investigation may have been over, but the problem hadn’t been solved. Why not? Because the NTSB , the FAA , and Boeing were wrong. Or worse, could it be that they were in denial about the truth?

Thousands of people remained in harm’s way.

The smoking gun came in 1991 on a different United 747, this one out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, bound for Tokyo. As the cargo door was closed its associated circuit breaker popped open. When reset, it popped again, suggesting an electrical short circuit. The door was then closed manually, the breaker reset, then tested several times to make certain that it was working properly. The door was then closed and latched but not yet locked when suddenly, without anyone touching the open-close toggle switch, the latch actuator came to life and rotated the latches open. The door hooks pushed the door open and the lift actuator extended the door to its fully opened position. Twenty-eight months after Flight 811, the Campbells’ theory of stray electricity was proven. The NTSB was forced to reopen its investigation into Flight 811.

Kevin and Susan Campbell, along with Elliott Maylor, were vindicated. So too was Brian Kitaoka. Imagine how he and his family felt when told that his actions did not in fact contribute to the deaths of nine people, that he had not done sloppy work. The Campbells proved not only what had caused the terrible tragedy on Flight 811 but also that the little guy, if doggedly persistent, can overcome the federal government and corporate America. Above all, they saved a lot of lives. Most people who have flown on an airplane with an outward-lifting cargo door similar to that on Flight 811 would have no idea that their being alive today might be a direct result of the Campbells’ efforts. It mattered not that Kevin and Susan were discredited by the powers that be, it didn’t matter that the FAA , the NTSB , and Boeing all said they were wrong; the Campbells knew they were onto something—and that revealing the truth meant many lives could be saved. They pressed forward as laypeople with no expert knowledge of a 747, let alone the complex workings of its cargo door. From the moment they received a horrifying, early-morning phone call about their son Lee to the day they were able to teach the world’s leading experts, including the plane’s manufacturer, a thing or two about that airplane, they were obsessed with getting to the truth. Theirs was a mission with unbelievable passion. Their motivation came from deep inside: they knew they could make a difference, and that the truth must be told. They did it for the same reason I took on the Canadian government in citizenship law, enduring personal hardships, a dismissive government, a mostly uncaring media, indignant bureaucrats, uneducated and uninterested politicians, and a completely indifferent Canadian public—all because it was the right thing to do.

For Flight 811, as with all mishaps in aviation, there’s a venue for investigating causes. The US has its congressional hearings, whose objective is to seek the truth, to learn. The hearings on Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are but two examples. But with the Lost Canadians, despite knowing citizenship problems have existed for more than half a century, Parliament has largely ignored the issue; any sort of accident investigation, an avenue to seek the truth, is virtually non-existent. If a forensic account of what transpired on Flight 811 and of the follow-on investigation, and then of the investigation into the investigation, were written by the Campbells, it would have much in common with this book. Except, in the story of the Lost Canadians, not all the Brian Kitaokas have been vindicated and, worse, cargo doors continue to malfunction. In the end, the Campbells made an extraordinary difference to aviation. Sadly, the malfunctioning of Parliament on the issue of Lost Canadians has yet to be fixed.

As you read this book, you’ll see that I approach the issue as a pilot, seeing things through the lens of an aviator. From hour one on the first day of pilot training, it’s drilled into us pilots that accidents are the outcome, the consequence, of a chain of events. Break the chain and the accident never happens. In Canada—in citizenship law—the chain has not been broken. By the tens of thousands, unsuspecting Canadians remain at risk. And you might be one of them.

PART 1

LOST CANADIANS UNDER THE LIBERALS

CHAPTER 1

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

LAO TZU, FOUNDER OF TAOISM

VISITING CANADA WAS

always an adventure for me. As a kid, it was fun getting out of the car at the border crossing, then running into the country through the Peace Ardch. There were so many neat things about returning to Vancouver, the place where I had come from. The drive from Seattle was about 225 kilometres, which meant that in less than four hours—years ago, there were no multi-hour border wait times—I’d be out playing with my cousins. They lived near our maternal grandmother, whom we visited every few months. As a special treat, she’d give me a couple of dollars—a real $ 2 bill—to spend as I wished. My other grandmother did the same, so it was fun teasing my cousins Barbara and Scott, since I had something of an abundance, which they didn’t. The elation lasted but a short time. When we got to a neighbourhood store, almost always run by a Chinese family, I’d end up buying candy for everyone: Mackintosh’s toffee, snack bars, sesame seed candy, and sticky red licorice. It was a child’s dream. I loved Canada.

One morning in 1962, when I was in second grade, my mother put out my Mariners’ blue blazer, pressed and ready to wear. My brother, sister, and I were about to become US citizens, and my parents wanted us to look our best. The ceremony would take place just after lunchtime at a courtroom in downtown Seattle (we lived in the pleasant suburb of Bellevue), so we’d still attend school in the morning. At around 10:30 a.m., I stood outside the principal’s office, waiting to be picked up. I didn’t like the idea of becoming American. * It’s not that I had anything against the country—I loved the States—it’s just that I was Canadian. Everyone in my family was from Canada. I loved listening to my maternal grandmother’s stories of growing up in Antigonish, a town occupying a coastal nook in northeastern Nova Scotia that became known as the province’s Highland Heart. My grandmother was born in 1885, and her father and her father’s father were both physicians. In his day, her dad was one of only two surgeons in all of Nova Scotia. She’d explain what life was like at a time when transportation was strictly by horse and sleigh.

My great-great-uncle William Alexander Henry was a Father of Confederation and, later, mayor of Halifax, as well as a judge on Canada’s newly formed Supreme Court. Henry embodied our family’s political bent, spending equal time as a member of the province’s Liberal and Conservative parties, eventually rising to become solicitor general in both administrations. My maternal great-great-grandfather Alexander Wentworth Macdonald was the first president of the Antigonish Highland Games, the oldest continuous highland games outside Scotland. His arrival in Canada was rather unusual. He’d been the ship’s doctor when sailing from Scotland to Canada. According to my grandmother, the captain was cruel, often beating crewmembers who didn’t perform to his brutally demanding standards. There was a mutiny, and Dr. Macdonald joined the mutineers. That sealed his fate: he couldn’t return to Scotland. In my family, it seems there is some sort of genetic code of rebellion, one passed down through the generations.

That was my Scottish ancestry in Canada. On the French side, it went back even further. My other maternal great-great-grandfather, Henry Gesner Pineo from Pugwash, Nova Scotia, was born in 1798 to a mother who had also been born in Canada. It was in his house that the famous Pugwash Conferences were held, earning Cyrus Eaton a Nobel Peace prize. Then there were the Chapmans, Scotts, Oldridges, Harringtons, Seamans, Strachans, and probably at minimum fifty-seven more instances of family ties. After several centuries, the white pages tend to be filled with names of relatives. I believe myself to be an eighth- or ninth-generation Canadian, maybe more. Over the years, some ancestors attained notoriety. One of my great-grandfathers was the only casualty of the great flood in London, Ontario, in 1937. The story passed down was that he’d been rather inebriated and couldn’t find the way out of his own basement. He was English. (On the Scottish side of my family, you’d find a few overindulgent relatives who also loved the drink.) My paternal great-grandmother was Irish.

We’re a family of all kinds of people from many countries. Over the centuries there have been labourers, small-business owners, CEO s (Empire Brass Manufacturing— EMCO —in London, Ontario), politicians, doctors, dentists, orthodontists, and one lone airline pilot: moi . In times of war, we took pride in defending our country, probably with no more or no less enthusiasm than any other long-standing Canadian family, and with similar results: scars, injuries, and death. Nova Scotia was one of the final destinations of the Underground Railroad. Family lore has it that my maternal great-grandmother’s people had taken part in the network, helping slaves from the States get into Canada.

My maternal grandmother was a women’s rights advocate and, when given the chance, typically voted for a woman over a man. She also encouraged young women, including my mother, to seek professions outside traditional female occupations. My Vancouver-born mother graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1937, earning the first BA granted in its School of Sociology. My parents emphasized that we should strive to leave the world a better place, that individuals can and do make a difference, and that we should always stand up for what is right. I’ve tried hard to follow these principles.

My dad’s best friend, Jack Rose, lived across the alleyway from him in Vancouver. Dad was on Fifteenth Street just west of Arbutus; Jack’s house faced Fourteenth Street. My mother was on Maple, not far away, in Kitsilano. She remembered when a neighbour, Mrs. Johnson, crossed the street in front of a streetcar and didn’t quite make it. She was scooped up by the cow-catcher. They freed her at the next stop a block away—her only wound being to her self-image. Today, it’s hard to imagine there ever being cows wandering near downtown Vancouver. Mum walked across the Burrard Bridge the day it opened on Dominion Day 1932. So many memories—the Nine-O’Clock Gun, the fiery sunsets over English Bay.

In World War II, Jack was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Hong Kong and, on his repatriation to Canada, became a spokesman for the Japanese Canadians interned on the west coast. My dad was stationed in Port Alberni, far from the horrors of war.

To put himself through school, Dad had worked as a waiter on the CPR trains, earning all of ten cents per hour plus tips. He was up by 4 a.m. and got to bed when the last passenger called it quits, usually around midnight. Working on the trains was also the only way he could afford to go back and forth between Vancouver, where he visited his family on holidays, and Toronto, where he was studying. He graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry in 1943, just in time to be commissioned into the Canadian Armed Forces’ Canadian Dental Corps. At the graduating ceremony, when officers saluted with swords, Dad used a toilet plunger. He didn’t have the money to buy the real thing and, besides, why spend money on a weapon when, he figured, there’d be little need for a sword as a dentist. At least he hoped not.

I grew up playing hockey as a centre on the PeeWee, Bantam, and Midget teams from the Seattle area. Fifty cents bought a Seattle Totems hockey ticket. Seattle often squared off against the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Hockey League. In the winters, my team would travel to Vancouver for tournaments and, in the summers, I’d return there for hockey camps. In 1967, to get to practice, I’d board the bus in Kerrisdale, on Vancouver’s west side, and make my way through downtown, then across the Lions Gate Bridge to the North Shore. Lining the streets were flags and ornaments commemorating Canada’s 100th birthday. The return bus drove past the corner of Fourth and Arbutus, where many of Canada’s West Coast hippies hung out. One time the Vancouver Sun published a photo of me standing on the ice with Max McNab, then coach of the Vancouver Canucks and former Stanley Cup champion with the Detroit Red Wings. For a kid, it didn’t get any better than that.

The pride of being Canadian was simply a part of me. There was never a time I didn’t have it. Growing up in Seattle, I hung an image of BC’s shield by my bed. I felt as one with the land. Now, as an adult, I understand the First Nations peoples when they say they feel as part of the soil on which they walk. Everyone has ties to their beginnings. Like salmon fighting upstream, we share the instincts of wanting to return.

That’s why it was so difficult that morning in 1962, waiting for my parents to pick me up. I wanted to be Canadian, not American. At the citizenship ceremony, when it came time to take the oath and pledge allegiance to the US flag, I remained seated and silent. It helped being only seven years old and surrounded by tall adults—no one seemed to notice. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had lost my Canadian citizenship almost a year earlier.

Apparently, my mother had a hard time conceiving, so my parents decided to adopt. My adopted sister and brother are, respectively, five and six years older than me. Mum and Dad thought that was it as far as having kids were concerned until, quite unexpectedly, I appeared on the scene. In citizenship law, that made all the difference, in both countries. When my father became a US citizen on April 10, 1961, I too was recognized as American, since I was my parents’ natural offspring. But because the US didn’t easily recognize foreign-adopted children, processing my brother and sister took an extra year. My parents, not wanting to expose this differential treatment to us siblings, kept our citizenship status secret. Only years later did we realize the truth of it.

Because I got US citizenship on the same calendar day as my father, Canada cancelled my citizenship. If