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In the year 1921 Canada became the newest enterprise of an adventurous spir it: a renowned scholar, the scion of one of Europe's most ancient houses, and yet a member of a reformist party dedicated to improving the lot of the working man and the peasant. This m ixture, which was extraordinary even in the eyes of his contemporaries, included a utopian dre amer for whom Canada, and especially British Columbia, was the ultimate haven.
This man was my father, Leone Caetani, born in 1869 in Rome, Italy, and the refore while that city was still part of the Papal States, for it was only in 1872 that Italy became the independent and united country for which Garibaldi had fought, and in which Gari baldi's friend, my great - grandfather Michelangelo Caetani, had always believed and for which h e, too, had worked. The dreamer in my father was perhaps a heritage from his Polish great - grandfather, Count Rzewuski, who left his home in Poland to spend the close of his life in th e Near East among the Arabs. My father's mother, however, was an Englishwoman, Ada Wilbraha m, and it was his English blood, I feel sure, that made him feel that only life in a co untry run on the British principles of freedom of thought and conscience could offer him a real h ome.
I have been asked to write a portrait of this exceptional being. My mother and I accompanied him on that arrival in 1921. I was born in Rome in 1917 and grew up listening to the stories of his travels in the Near East, in India and Persia and North Af rica; of his campaigns in Italian politics as a Radical Socialist; and of his service in the First World War as an artillery officer in the Italian army in the Dolomites.
As a young man, my father decided to become an Oriental scholar, concentrat ing his studies on the Islamic religion, culture and history. He learned complete familiarity wi th at least eleven languages and could speak Arabic like an Arab. Six foot, four inches tall, slim , agile and strong, he travelled alone and often at great danger to himself over Syria, Turk...