Former Canadian diplomat Ken Taylor has died

Taylor was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the U.S. Congress in 1980 and then U.S. President Ronald Reagan paid tribute to Taylor at the White House.

“He was completely lucid through yesterday”.

He then aided their escape by arranging plane tickets and persuading the Ottawa government to issue fake passports.

Taylor was the architect and driving force behind the protection and eventual escape of six American Embassy workers during the violent Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979.

A few of Taylor’s exploits in Iran in 1979 later became the subject of the 2012 Hollywood film, “Argo”.

He also spent time with his grandchildren and his wife, Pat, his son said. “Now Ben and I both feel free to talk about them”. The caper evokes a golden age in Canadian foreign policy, when the country played an outsized role in world affairs under energetic prime ministers like Trudeau and Lester Pearson.

Ken Taylor was Canada’s envoy in Tehran in November 1979 when students stormed the United States embassy, taking dozens of Americans hostage.

Taylor’s accomplishments were made known to a new generation through “Argo” though he publicly disputed a number of points of the film, and its presentation of the Canadians depicted.

But, Taylor didn’t seem to mind that Argo was told from an American’s point of view and even attended gala screenings of the film.

“You really think your little story is going to make a difference?” the diplomat asks, to which Mendez responds with customary American bravado, “I think my little story is the only thing between you and a gun to your head”.

In his 2010 book Our Man in Tehran, a study of the Canadian role in the hostage crisis, historian Robert Wright summed up Taylor’s character this way: “He evinces not simply the fortitude to stand tall in the face of imminent threats or danger, but the courage of his convictions …” We took it on the position from Joe Clark and Flora MacDonald – ‘Trust us, it’s super top secret, ‘ ” recalled former Tory MP Ron Atkey, in an interview with The Globe on Thursday.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: “Ken Taylor represented the very best that Canada’s foreign service has to offer”.

According to Stall, his funeral will take place later this month in Toronto.

“The activity level of the Canadian diplomats is at a more passive level [in the film] than was actually the case in reality”, Taylor told Global News correspondent Eric Sorensen in 2012.