Uncover - S19: "Run, Hide, Repeat" E5: Stan's World

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Pauline sets out to understand Stan’s mind and motives. She meets up with his son, John, who has some very strange stories of his own. And Pauline finally comes across a potential answer – something that could explain all of Stan's actions. But will it be enough to forgive him? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/run-hide-repeat-transcripts-listen-1.6682766

Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host CBC's daily news podcast, Front Burner. Every weekday, we set out to have a conversation about the biggest Canadian and global issues that you want to know more about, from politics to culture to online stuff. We spend a lot of time on the show thinking about the best ways to have those conversations and searching for the smartest people to have them with. That's it. That's The Cell. I hope you'll tune in. This is a CBC Podcast. The first weird thing was probably when I was 10 years old. The first weird thing was probably when I was 10 years old.

I asked my dad once, did you fight in the war? He said, well, I was in the army. And what happened was this. Me and another soldier were guarding an oil refinery somewhere in New Brunswick. And somebody came driving up to the entrance and broke through it and drove on like they were going to set off a bomb or something. I don't know. So my dad said that he and this other soldier, sentry guy, both shot at this individual and one of them killed him. And that was the first story. Stan Sears had two sons, Mike and John. Mike, the younger of the two, died tragically the same year that Stan and Sybil moved from St. John to Nova Scotia. John is 75 now and lives in Agassiz, B.C.

We never really knew each other growing up. He was a lot older than me and had moved out by the time my family became close with Stan and Sybil. In 2014, I started writing about what had happened to my family, trying to figure it all out. This would ultimately become the book Run, Hide, Repeat. Part of the process of writing was looking back at the bizarre path my life had taken and how Stan's influence had derailed my family. I needed to know why. Why had Stan deceived us for so many years? Why had he held on to that lie until his death? By writing about what had happened to us, I was trying to figure it all out. And so I tracked John down, hoping he could help me make sense of the whole strange story. Turned out he had some strange stories of his own.

My dad, myself, and my younger brother Mike were downstairs watching TV. And it came time to take the dog for his final night walk. So Dad said, I'll do it. And out they went. He put the leash on the Cocker Spaniel and out the door they went. It was a dark and rainy night, dark and stormy night. And they were gone for quite a while. And usually it's just a couple of minutes out and back in.

But he was gone for quite a while. And finally, I think I went to the door and thought well what's going on and I opened the door and the dog came running up with the leash trailing well where's dad and a couple of minutes later he showed up and he looked disheveled and it looked like he'd had crying or something. His eyes were wet and he looked kind of shaky. And his story was that a couple of guys had jumped him and tried to do him harm. And of course, me being at that age and my brother, we thought, well, we're going to take care of this. Nobody's going to mess with our dad. And we were going to go out and fix things or see what the hell was going on. But no, he said, no, no, no. It's taken care of. What? What do you mean taken care of? There's people out there that have taken care of it. Don't worry. And that was the start, Pauline. And after that, it got even weirder.

And after that, it got even weirder. I'm Pauline Dakin, and this is Run, Hide, Repeat. Episode 5, Stan's World. Can you tell me about what it was like to grow up with Stan as a dad? From the earliest time, he was very supportive. He was involved in my life and tried to guide me and teach me to do good things. I think my moral code of my life, I have thanks to him and mom. And my mom and dad were fairly strict in my upbringing, although my mom was a little more stricter than my dad, believe it or not. When John was in his early 20s, he started to notice a mysterious, secretive side to his father.

His stories became fixated on unseen dangers and an unnamed evil. John questioned whether or not they were true. You know, he'd come and tell us, don't go out tonight. There's people out there that want to do us harm as a family. But there's guys watching, so everything should be okay. Just stay inside. Oh, really? Okay, fine. And he and Mom would go to Paradise Valley,

which was a United Church retreat north of Squamish, and he'd say things like, well, it's easier for them to protect us up there than it is in the city. I don't think I ever recall him saying, it's a secret, don't tell anybody. But I didn't, because I knew no one would believe me. And there was no proof.

Dad, who are these guys? Can I meet them? Can they come to the house? Can we see them? Can we go to their office? No, Too dangerous. So there was all those kinds of concerns and stories and weird things happening. And part of me rejected it because it seemed too weird. Definitely too weird. But part of me, he's my dad, part of me kind of felt that, well, it could be true.

And it made me nervous. But it was also too embarrassed to talk to anybody about it. You know, when he was telling us these stories about the danger and the gunshots, he was convinced. And he was a good actor, because when you're preaching a sermon, I think you have to project yourself a little. You have to kind of act like it's serious and it's real, and here's the message.

And so he was good at that. He could cast a spell. They had been willing to suffer and even audience, I think, quite well. And I admired him for that. He was charismatic. A little bit. Yes, I think so. Yeah. And because he believed it was real. It was real to him. Like that night when he came home looking like somebody punched him around a little bit, he was well within that role. And if you'd seen it, like, wow, dad, are you okay? You know, he'd been through something, so. In 2016, I flew to BC to tell John my story in person

and see what he knew about Stan's weird world. It felt like I was in an avalanche of information. When you were coming, and I knew you were coming, I thought, okay, we're going to resolve this issue. Are all these weird stories and all this dark side stuff, was it real or a figment of somebody's imagination? And we're going to sort this out finally. That's when John told me the story about Stan getting beaten up while walking the dog

and all of the other strange events in his last few years of living at home. John said when he tried to talk to his mom, Sybil, about it, all she would say is that she trusted and supported her husband. And she had the white purse, which I think you're familiar with. And that purse she took everywhere. Camping, hiking, walking. That purse was always with her. Why, Mom, why you got the purse?

You don't need your purse for just going for a walk. Evidently, in this purse was a telecommunication device that she was supposed to use in case she was either kidnapped or attacked or something. Anyway, it was some kind of super transistor radio that would connect her to all the heroes that were around us, I guess. John wanted proof from his dad that his stories about threats and bad guys were true.

I kind of pressed him about meeting these weird ones, he called them, and he gave them personalities. One guy was a French guy from Quebec. One guy was a Mi'kmaq chief. One guy was a sergeant or something or other. And so his reaction to me pressing him for proof, I think, was he must have sat in his study in the church and wrote some letters to my mother, pretending, I guess, or whatever you call it, that they were from these characters. And one of the letters, I'll never forget, was in green ink, but it was exactly my dad's handwriting. And it was from the French guy. So French people speak English sometimes with a bit of an accent.

And this letter was written with an accent. French people don't write with an accent. He read it to me. I saw it there on the table. And it was his handwriting. And I started to lose it then because, Dad, that's your handwriting. No, it's not. because, Dad, that's your handwriting.

No, it's not. John told me once he and his younger brother Mike moved out and moved on with their adult lives, they didn't talk about their father's stories much again. So, the letters. June 28, 1989. Dear Miss P, thank you so much for your letter and the openness with which you tell me of your problems. As you've probably concluded on your own by now, it was Stan, it had to have been Stan, who wrote this letter, and amazingly, all of the other letters that came to me and mom too. This one

was from a psychiatrist who lived and worked inside the weird world at Place of Hope. It was 19 handwritten pages, the longest I received. It signed, Your Friend R. Whitman. By 1989, a year after Stan and mom told me about everything, the stress and anxiety that had kept me out of school in Winnipeg and had given me panic attacks in St. John were back. The burden of carrying all these secrets around with me was becoming too much. I'd talk to Stan about it, and then the letter from Dr. Whitman showed up. You must realize that it is very hard for any doctor to satisfactorily deal with a person via mail. However, you have detailed your problem so well, I think I can help.

Now, any human being living under the duress that you are so doing is going to have periods of great anxiety, especially when left on their own and when they do not know friend from foe. So do not be too alarmed at that anxiety. By the time Stan started writing these letters to us, he'd learned to disguise his handwriting. Each character had a distinctive script and signature, and those things were consistent from letter to letter. In letters where he was pretending to be a relative or family friend, he managed to match that person's handwriting so well that to a non-expert like myself, they looked identical. And the stories he told my family were more detailed, nuanced, more fleshed out than the ones he'd told John.

Every character had a unique voice and personality, a backstory, and these characters, invented or impersonated, they interacted with each other and referred to each other in letters. It's truly staggering, the kind of complex and highly orchestrated world building that would impress any sci-fi writer. I got this letter from Dr. Whitman the summer I turned 24. I'd seen three doctors about my anxiety, but obviously there was something I couldn't tell them. Of course, you can't tell your doctor the truth. Yes, to a degree, it defeats the purpose for which you go to him. I was having serious symptoms like panic attacks and temporary paralysis.

They wanted to put me on medication. Shortly after I received Dr. Whitman's letter, I got a bottle of a prescription anti-anxiety drug called Anafranil in the mail. I still don't know how Stan got it for me. Dr. Whitman's letter also offered suggestions on how I could mitigate my anxiety. Let me quote from a paper your papa did about 20 years ago on solutions for the person facing a maladjusted time in their life. I quote, and I hope he doesn't mind, I haven't asked his permission, the personality that finds adjustment to the pains of life... That's Stan, writing as Dr. Whitman, quoting Stan.

It's hard to wrap your head around, but I think it's revealing of how deeply Stan was invested in this weird world he'd created, of how deeply he was invested in my well-being, and how those two things were entirely at odds. Stan, as Dr. Whitman, was trying to help me deal with the anxiety that Stan had helped create. Stan separated me from my father, and then he became my papa. And once I'd figured out the truth, it was hard not to be enraged by that. Finally, your last question. Can you and your mom live with one foot in each

world indefinitely? Yes, but painfully. We hope the indefinite period is getting shorter. I do not mind writing all of this. I only hope I have helped a wee bit. Face to face would prove much better for us both. Above and beyond medical science lies the power of our loving God. We seldom lean on him enough. Your friend, R. Whitman. So how did Stan make up such complex, fully formed scenarios with a huge cast of fleshed out characters?

Lieutenant Y, my half-siblings, Aunt, Godfather, and so many others. And sustain that whole world over more than two decades. Beyond the pain and chaos it caused for my family, it was also fascinating. I needed to know more about Stan. Stan was born in Yarmouth, a fishing town on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, the son of a fisherman. When times were tough, the family picked seaweed to make ends meet. The family later moved to Grand Manan, a tiny island in the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Les, who was his dad, was a part-time preacher. When he couldn't make enough money fishing, he preached. And they were fundamentalist Baptists. They believed in, word for word, the Bible. And he had a harsh upbringing. He was punished. I'm not sure why he left Grand Manana or wherever it was and went to Montreal. And he worked for a drapery company called Brock's

there for a few years and then to Toronto where he eventually met my mom and I got married there. And then I came along a couple of years later. And in between, in the 1940s, Stan had spent some time in the army. How did he make the jump from the drapery business into preaching? He was in Toronto working. I don't think it was a very happy time for him, and he was going to the church, Q Beach United. And he met mom, who was much more religious than he was. And he was hanging out with the boys, drinking beer, I think, and smoking cigarettes, probably. And in a beer league, like hockey thing with the guys, he was a goalie,

like hockey thing with the guys. He was a goalie, so he said. And I think my mom's influence probably made him straighten up a little bit. So I think her influence got him more and more involved in the church. And then somehow, you know, ministers say it's a calling and that God called him finally.

Preaching suited Stan. He had gravitas. He wanted to help people and he took to the position of authority naturally. He was well respected. He related well with people. He did a lot of work with the poor and the disadvantaged, the alcoholics. He was a big guy with AA and often had sessions with people looking for counseling and looking for help. And I think he was probably pretty good at it. Stan was good at counseling. After all, that's how he met my mom, Ruth. Her sessions with Stan truly helped. She said they allowed her to find the strength and courage she needed

after leaving her abusive marriage. Not at all a common thing back then. He was popular with younger people, with my friends and stuff, because he could sort of relate to them at their level of things. He didn't try to be Mr. Know-it-all or Mr. Minister Guy and all this kind of stuff, holier-than-thou at all. He was just a regular guy. But most of John's memories are more personal.

You know, some of the fondest memories, really, I have of my dad are sitting around a campfire. He loved campfires, and we used to give him a bad time, my brother and I, about his smoky campfires around. More smoke than flames. I don't know what the problem was. So that was one thing. And the other thing that we did for many, many years, and we did it right up until he was in his 70s, and I would have been in my late 40s or 50 or something, and it was play catch. Baseball, glove, back and forth. And it kind of gave us some kind of connection, I guess, over the years.

And it was kind of funny because the older we got, the closer together we had to get in order to get the ball that far. And I still have the baseball and the gloves at home. John describes Stan as a caring father, a devoted minister, a man who was truly trying to make the world around him a better place. And that was a Stan I knew as well. But John and I both saw the other side of Stan. When I started writing about my life, I was living in Halifax. I'd been working as a health reporter for the CBC National News for about 15 years at that point. I used those skills to search and read the medical literature looking for clues that might explain Stan's behavior. Common diagnoses like schizophrenia

or psychosis didn't fit. They presented in more obvious ways and it's unlikely Stan would have been able to carry on such an otherwise normal life. I consulted a psychiatrist who was fascinated but stumped. It took several years, but eventually I came across this one research paper, and something clicked. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Alistair Munro. I'm a long-retired psychiatrist here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at one time was particularly interested in the subject of delusional disorder. Delusional disorder. It's defined as an illness characterized by the presence of non-bizarre delusions in the absence of other mood or psychotic symptoms.

And it sounded just like Stan. Delusions that were possible, even if they were improbable. And it turned out, amazingly, that Dr. Alistair Munro, one of the preeminent experts in delusional disorder in the world, also lived in Halifax. It was 2015. He agreed to meet me for a coffee, and I laid everything out for him. What were the things about Stan's story and what had happened with my family that made you think this was delusional disorder? Well, first of all, it seemed to me to fit into a pattern and when a delusion is presented to you, you may think it's understandable and acceptable, but if it goes on and on and on and is still the same strange belief.

Delusional disorder is typified by an unshakable belief in something that isn't true, and maybe isn't even likely, but could be true. And that makes it incredibly difficult to spot. The way that the family believed him, that's a phenomenon that we know very well with delusional disorder. It's called shared delusional disorder. The second person isn't suffering from the same illness. They're just overwhelmed by the delusional person's beliefs and believe them implicitly. And I think that's true of your mother.

And I think to some extent, true of you too. Obviously, Dr. Munro couldn't diagnose Stan based only on my descriptions of what had happened. Stan had been dead for 20 years by then. But his descriptions of the condition made sense when I applied them to Stan. I felt certain this is what had hijacked our lives. The medical literature says delusional disorder is rare, but no one really knows how rare. People with delusional disorder don't think they're sick. They don't go looking for help or volunteer for psychiatric studies.

So it's understudied, underdiagnosed, and undertreated. And the delusions themselves can be so well constructed that those around the person with the disorder, friends, families, co-workers, may not suspect anything at all. The interesting thing about delusional disorder is the delusions still remain more or less detached from the rest of the person's mental being. And so when the person is calm, they seem to be able to put aside the delusions temporarily and talk about the weather or politics or whatever. How convincing can these people be if they choose to share their delusion?

How convincing can it be? Well, I think you've got evidence of that. Totally convincing. Because not only do they present you with the facts, they have tremendous emotional intensity. And they just drive it at you. And so sooner or later your reasoning is swamped and you begin to accept anything that you're told. Science Land is this clandestine organization that is going to take over their world.

After my book, Run, Hide, Repeat, came out in 2017, I started to hear from other people whose lives had been derailed by delusions, secrecy, lies, and fantastical stories of unbelievable worlds. They wrote to me from around the world, and they were often excited or relieved to learn about delusional disorder. One of those people was Elaine. Her story about her ex-husband and science land, well, it stood out. The strategy is to kidnap scientists and force them to develop manipulative substances. There are eight teams of slave scientists that have been kidnapped. The story Elaine told me was incredible, and to an outsider at least, it seemed far beyond the realm of possibility. Here's the short version. Her ex is a naturopath. That's how they first met. He came across as a smart, kind, sensitive healer.

He was charming, good with people. They became friends, and a few years later, they became sensitive healer. He was charming, good with people. They became friends, and a few years later, they became romantically involved. Once they started dating, things became strange. We started dating in June, and by September was the first incident that had to do with Science Land, he claimed that his friend Peter had been murdered. And then another month later, his friend Boris was kidnapped by these people. So it was building for several months. According to her ex, the people behind Science Land were after him as well. His plan was to allow himself to be captured so that he could go inside and free Boris.

Elaine figured sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, so when her ex disappeared, she thought maybe he had been kidnapped. What were you thinking at this point? You know, at the time, I'm so embarrassed that I actually believed him. You know, I didn't have any reason to not believe him. And you really trusted and loved him? I did at the time. Yeah, I did. I believed him. I did at the time, yeah. I did. I believed him.

I should tell you that I am an M.D., and I really thought I knew how to identify mental illness. I thought I could spot that easily. Her ex managed to escape from science land, and then they got married. He was Elaine's second husband. My first marriage that lasted 18 years was abusive. That husband would hit me, and he keeps saying he's sorry, but obviously this is going to keep happening. So eventually I pressed charges, and at that point we got divorced. And it's this part of Elaine's story that really made it jump out from the others I heard. The similarities between what she went through in her first marriage and what my mother went through were

undeniable. And after we were divorced and I began to fess up that this had happened, I was appalled by the reaction of my family. They didn't believe me. They thought he was a nice person and they acted like I was lying and that I was making all this up because I was a bitter woman who'd been through a divorce. And I was really perhaps a little bit too primed for a very gentle persona who's very supportive, who believed in me and wouldn't hurt me. After they were married, the stories about Science Land intensified. Elaine's ex told her that she was in danger.

Science Land would come after her to get to him. And that's when she started to have doubts. She decided to get out. She had the marriage annulled and left. I suspected it was false, but I didn't have any proof one way or the other. I just said to myself, either way, I'm out of here. But I got to admit, for probably a full year after we split up, I still worried that it could be true. up, I still worried that it could be true. Like Stan, Elaine's ex has never been clinically diagnosed with delusional disorder, but Elaine is one of dozens who contacted me after reading my

book saying the symptoms of delusional disorder that I described match up with what they've witnessed and experienced firsthand with people in their own lives. Like me, they said, having an explanation for why someone you love and trust has deceived you is so important, life-changing. It's ultimately what allowed me to forgive, to heal, to move on. It allowed me to forgive, to heal, to move on. There's a French saying that goes, to understand is to forgive. It's not to say that what was done was correct or just,

but if we understand what has happened, I think it's much easier to forgive. Bandy X. Lee is an MD and forensic psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia and Harvard universities. She has a particular interest in the intersection of mental health, public health, and violence prevention. Mental illness is not a choice. It's an affliction, a disease like anything else. You don't blame the person for a random affliction that they happen to get. So we can have compassion for the person and compassion for the human condition. Dr. Lee has worked with patients who suffer from delusional disorder, so she's familiar with how it presents. I asked her about the letters, whether or not Stan would have been aware of his own deception. Was he writing them because he believed the weird world was real and believed the lie was justified

in service of a greater good? Or did he really believe that the letters were real? Did he emerge from some sort of fugue state and simply find them sitting on his desk? There may seem that there's a great deal of intentionality, but the mind is capable of great deception. Neuroscientists deciphered that approximately 98% of mental activity is unconscious. That said, even if the person is fully aware, if done under the influence of mental illness, it is often kind of a hijacking of the mind. The person is not a free-thinking, intentional person. The person is not a free-thinking, intentional person. These kinds of self-deceptions are typical of delusional disorder. They point to how enduring and self-sustaining it can be.

Stan had not only created but also maintained and evolved an entire imaginary world for decades. I wanted to know if this ability to keep an elaborate cast of characters and all of these intertwined narratives organized was typical. Yes, in fact, very much so. That would be the typical presentation in that the delusion is rather elaborate and quite impressive when you encounter it. And what makes delusional disorder more difficult is that the delusions occur rather later in life, unlike something like schizophrenia, for example, which occurs in one's teens or early twenties. Delusional disorder tends to manifest later in life, and so one has ostensibly established oneself in life, has had a job for a while, and may even have a family. And then a delusion sets in in ways that could become debilitating.

Dr. Lee says the families of those suffering from delusional disorder are also susceptible to being swept up into the disorder themselves. Delusions, unfortunately, are contagious, meaning those around them who have deep emotional bonds will adopt those delusions and act as if they had the disorder themselves. The person with the primary illness is the one who needs treatment. The person who's secondarily affected may simply get better if they're separated. But of course, if they've been together for a very long time and relatively isolated or moving from place to place, then it's very hard to wean the person off of the delusion or to convince them out of it, even after separation.

I think about my mom, who spent much of her adult life following Stan and Sybil across the country. She always made friends in each place, but she kept them at a distance and could never tell them her true story. Stan Sears died in 1996. My mom never let go of his delusion. My mom never let go of his delusion. I take comfort hearing that Stan did not intend to deceive or hurt my family,

but I'm still haunted by the question of how this all started, what triggered his delusions, and how my family became part of it. Somebody who was a psychologist talked to me about the idea of cognitive dissonance and the idea that here was this family man who met a younger woman and he was attracted to my mother and the the dissonance of being a righteous minister versus a guy stepping out of his marriage maybe could trigger something. It could have. It could have. You would not have expected your father to be someone who would be unfaithful to your mom.

No, absolutely not. And all the evidence of their relationship and how they got along was perfect. But evidently, not so. Yeah. I hope that relationship wasn't too hard on her. Yeah. Yeah, I hope she didn't know. Yeah.

She had a strong faith in all kinds of different things. And I think she thought that her role, and maybe it's an old-fashioned role for women, was to stand by her man and to have his back, always. And certainly she had, as far as the family unit went, she always supported him. Wait till your father comes home. And stuff like that. And she never complained.

She didn't criticize him behind his back. She was loyal and I don't know what else to say about that. She was a good person. She didn't get a driver's license until she was 65. And that was because my dad had angina and they were worried that something might happen and she might have to drive. So at 65, she went and got a driver's license. So she did all those great things in his shadow.

And always appeared to me to believe that there was all of this stuff going on in the background. Yes, you're right. She didn't ever say to me that, oh, he's making it up, or he's crazy, or anything like that. He's your father, he's my husband, and I have faith in your dad. Okay, what do you do? And I think she had a good life that I asked her many, many years after my dad had passed. Well, Mom, do you miss him? And her reply was, yes, every day.

So what does that say? Do I miss him? I miss parts of him. But in my bedroom, I have a bunch of photographs of friends, stepdaughters, my grandmother even, my mother, my brother. And every morning I get up,

I acknowledge those people and thank them more or less for having an influence on my life and for being part of my life. And it gives me comfort to do that. And it makes me feel good about the day. All these people were all together. But nowhere in my bedroom or anywhere in my house is a picture of my dad. Nowhere. Because every time I see his image, I'm reminded of the dark side. So I'm not trying to expel him from the history of my life. I just don't want to acknowledge it, I guess. And if I have a guilt, yes, which I do, and regret,

it is that I should have somehow done a better job of confronting him or something, making a change so that you guys didn't have to go through what you went through. Yeah, I appreciate that, John, but I don't feel that in any way. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah. And there were a lot of people that he fooled. When I think about what happened between 1988, which would have been roughly when Stan retired, and 1996.

I mean, I know what the story was that, you know, he was inside coming outside for visits with mom. And I just think, well, what was he really doing? And I guess he was living with Sybil on the West Coast, was he? Yeah, absolutely. He was living two lives, one with Sybil, one with Mom, for sure. I'm sitting with my brother Ted. He's visiting from Edmonton. And whenever we're together, it always comes up.

The relationship between Mom and Stan. The impact on Sybil and us. And Sybil thought he was living with her and just going on trips, I guess? You know what, I don't know what Sybil was thinking, but he presumably made up a story similar to what he's done in the past. So I'm sure he had something, you know, specific to say that he could get away. Yep. And mom just thought that he was inside coming to visit her. Yeah. Hard to believe, but yeah, I know for certain that she believed he was inside.

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Do you think Sybil knew that they were together? I have to think she would. You know, how would a wife not know that I'm sure she had an inkling that something was going on. knew that they were together? I have to think she would. You know, how would a wife not know that? I'm sure she had an inkling that something was going on.

Yeah. Yeah, she said to mom one time that mom and Stan were of such a mind that they should have been together, which made me wonder, did she know that? Yeah, and that's horrible to think that she would think that and feel that. But yeah, there's a very good chance she knew, for sure. Sybil Sears died in 2014 at the age of 95. She and Stan are buried next to each other. I've visited the site, and for me, it's a difficult thing to reconcile. the site, and for me, it's a difficult thing to reconcile. That to anyone who doesn't know the full story, who doesn't know what John Sears and Ted and I know, Stan and Sybil appear to have been

a devoted couple who, after a long marriage, have been laid to rest side by side. You know, when he passed, it was mixed emotions. Honestly, like first and foremost, relief. Will this be the end or the beginning of the end? And then there was actual real sadness because when we were kids before all this nonsense, he was wonderful. He was a great person and a surrogate father in a way. Stan died in 1996. I know that because that was when mom got breast cancer the first time. Did she tell you that Stan had died? She did. She did. And at that point, I had thought that, hey, maybe this thing is over, And at that point, I had thought that, hey, maybe this thing is over, of course.

And the next time I saw mom, I think I might have come to Halifax or she might have come to visit me. It wasn't over. No. At all. I know. And we hoped. We just hoped it would stop, right? It would be nice.

Yeah, for sure. But at the same time, we couldn't really say much because I didn't want to send her off, you know, off the end. It's, you know, it was so, she was so entrenched in that story that there's nothing you or I could say that would change her mind. And I basically, at one point, I recall when I came to Halifax for a visit, said, look, you know what, let's just not talk about it anymore. It's probably better. You know, I'm, I'm, I doubt, you know what, let's just not talk about it anymore. It's probably better. I dote this story, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. Let's just be together, and it is what it is. Yeah.

Yeah. I believe that my mother, Ruth, loves Dan Sears, and I believe that Stan loved her deeply. But when Stan died, it was Sybil that delivered the news to my mom by letter weeks after it had happened. For my mom, for that time, he simply disappeared and she believed the worst,

that the O had finally caught him. Yeah, that's sad that she had to hear that way. Yeah. For both of them, of course. I always think about, you know, how Stan was the love of her life, and she grieved him all alone. She couldn't grieve publicly. She didn't talk about him with us, So she didn't say much about it.

She didn't to me anyway. Yeah. No, she just basically said he'd passed and that was it. There was no, no details. And, and I guess one might think that the storyteller was gone. So how could she create, you know, she didn't create anything in this story. So how possibly could she explain these things at that point? You know, he's dead. Mom never got to say goodbye to the man she loved, the man she had followed across the country, the man she believed was protecting her, protecting her family for so many years. In the end, she was alone with the remnants of Stan's story

and her grown children who no longer believed and didn't want to talk about it. Do you ever think, was there anything else we could have done? You know, I often thought about getting Stan aside and trying to, you know, have a conversation with him that might lead to the truth or something. But, you know, I just felt, and I think you felt the same way, is that if we disrupt this thing, there could be some consequences to it. And certainly when he passed away and mom continued to carry on with the story, we agreed that it would be better not to. I would have loved her to have, I guess,

the aha moment where, you know, this wasn't true, I can relax, I can so on, but it was just too late. Far too late. And we always said that aha moment might cause a complete breakdown because she had invested most of her adult life in that story. She dragged her kids across the country and done things that if there if there'd been no good reason she'd have been destroyed and the guilt ridden and yeah and there was no reason for us to even consider putting her through that yeah so you know i often think about um after she died how complicated it was to grieve for her?

Because there were so many feelings. Yeah, it was hard to know what to say in those last words, other than, of course, I love you, because she really did everything she could for us. I mean, she thought she was protecting us from monsters, you know, and, and yeah, but it was, it was a little difficult in the end to know what to say. There was not a moment in my life with my mother that I didn't feel like she was looking out for what was best for me and you, of course, more so me,

but, but, and even, even Stan, you know, at the end of the day, I think somehow in his head, he thought he was doing the right thing and it was protecting us. And who knows, right? We'll never know. Like Ted, despite this wild story that defined our childhood, I'm left with such a strong sense of love for my mom. I believe she was trying to protect us. And I'm grateful for how she always made us feel loved and supported.

I think that gave Ted and me the resilience we needed to survive the chaos. My feelings about Stan are more complicated. I do think he thought he was protecting us too, although it was from his own imaginary inner demons. I have often wondered what my life would have been like if Mom had never met Stan Sears, if we had never left Vancouver, if we'd really known our dad. It's impossible to say, and ultimately, I can't imagine a life more rich,

more satisfying than the one I've known. In the end, it is telling my story, defying the old family rule to never tell the secret that has paved the way to more open and honest relationships and allowed me to be at peace. It's an amazing, incredible story that I wish I was reading from that was someone else's life, honestly, because I'm sure I would love the book from that perspective. But hey, you know what? Here we are. We're together. That's all that matters right now.

Yeah. Love you too. Love you too. We'll meet again. You've been listening to Run, Hide, Repeat from CBC Podcasts. It's based on my book Run, Hide, Repeat, A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, published by Penguin Random House Canada. The show is written by me, Pauline Dakin, and Michael Catano. Michael Catano is also our producer.

Graham MacDonald is our associate producer and sound designer. Roshni Nair is our coordinating producer. Our podcast art was designed by Chloe Cushman. Our cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox. Our video producer is Evan Igard. Willow Smith is our senior producer. Special thanks to Eunice Kim for her help with this series. And to Chris Howden, Julian Uzielli, Samira Moyadin, Leah Simone Bowen, Duncan McHugh,

Carmen Melville, Damon Fairless, Jeff Turner, and Matthew Lazenrider. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Arif Noorani is the director, and Leslie Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts. If you want to see some family photos and home videos, check them out on Instagram, at CBC Podcasts, and give us a follow while you're there. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.