Canadian who sheltered Americans in Iran dies

Associated Press

TORONTO

John Sheardown, a former Canadian diplomat who sheltered fugitive American Embassy staffers at his Tehran home at great personal risk during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, has died. He was 88.

His wife, Zena, said Saturday that Sheardown died in an Ottawa hospital Dec. 30. She says he was treated for Alzheimer’s disease for the past four years but also suffered from other ailments.

Sheardown, the First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran at the time of the Islamic Revolution, played a key role in the events depicted in Ben Affleck’s Oscar-contender film “Argo,” although he was not portrayed in the film.

Almost a week after militant Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in retaliation for U.S. support for the recently deposed shah, Sheardown got a call from one of the six Americans who had evaded capture. American consular officer Robert Anders was calling for help.

After that phone call, the Sheardowns agreed without hesitation to shelter four of the six Americans in secrecy in their 20-room house in Tehran. Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, housed the other two Americans.