Newfoundland woman played key role in 1980 Tehran ‘Canadian Caper’
She was a modest woman who rarely drew attention to herself, but Mary Catherine O’Flaherty had an incredible story to tell.
Almost 40 years ago, the woman from St. John’s, N.L., played a pivotal role in the “Canadian Caper,” a tense international incident that involved armed Iranian revolutionaries, a prolonged hostage-taking, coded diplomatic messages and an ultra-secret CIA plan that would later become the subject of the Oscar-winning film “Argo.”
When O’Flaherty died last month in Ottawa at the age of 92, her brief obituary gave no indication of her remarkable life in the diplomatic corps.
“She was calm under the toughest of circumstances,” says Valerie Pike, a longtime family friend who lives in St. John’s. “It would really have to be something to distract Mary’s attention or destabilize her in any way.”