Family frustrated to find elderly couple stranded in Bangkok

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What began as an exotic 'trip of a lifetime' touring Asia for Barbara and Douglas Kerr disintegrated into a nightmare for the elderly Etobicoke couple and their family last week.

The Kipling and Eglinton area pair, both in their mid-70s, were due to fly home from Bangkok, Thailand on Nov. 26, but those plans were paralyzed when "all hell broke loose," said their son, John Kerr. Anti-government demonstrations broke out the day before their planned departure and protestors took over the capital city's two airports, grounding all flights.

While half of the 80 or so Canadians travelling with their tour group were due to be evacuated yesterday in a Canadian Embassy-brokered plan, the 'grueling' travel plans - including an eight-hour bus ride, followed by 18 hours of flight time - proved too much for the ailing couple to partake, Kerr told The Guardian Tuesday.

"My father has a history of medical problems. He's had quadruple bypass surgery, has had several major arteries replaced, and he's diabetic," he said. "They just weren't up to it physically... and my father's health is deteriorating further."

While Kerr said he and his three siblings have been in regular e-mail and phone contact with their parents, their concern has only grown.

"The last couple of times I tried to call them, I thought the hotel switchboard had called the wrong room- I didn't even recognize my father's voice," he said. "We're grasping at straws now, trying to find a way to get them out."

In an e-mail to Kerr on Sunday, Barbara told her son she had learned that the governments of the Philippines, Spain, Holland, Malaysia, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Australia and Vietnam have all arranged planes to evacuate their stranded citizens - "where is the Canadian government with a plan?" she wrote.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the government is looking into "all options, including the possibility of securing chartered flights to help Canadians get from Thailand to Hong Kong," noting that upwards of 1,000 Canadian have been affected by the shutdown of airports.

But Cannon's fruitless attempts to help the Kerrs- as well as fellow Etobians Nancy and Terry Dockerill, and Carol and Mike Cunnane- prove he's been "asleep at the switch," claimed Etobicoke Centre MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, who stepped in Sunday upon hearing the news of his constituents' plight.

"I am extremely disappointed that Foreign Minister Cannon has not been able to muster the initiative or resources of his department to arrange for the safe return of these stranded Canadian seniors expeditiously," he said. "When Canadians are in jeopardy, notwithstanding the political situation at home, Canadians expect their government to focus on helping constituents first."

For his part, Wrzesnewskyj was able to arrange for an assistant to the prime minister of Thailand to personally meet with and help meet the needs of the stranded Canadians on the Kerrs' tour group, he said. That assistance included the securing of pharmaceuticals many on the trip, the Kerrs included, had run out of.

"Medication has been a problem," Kerr said, noting that when the Canadian Embassy failed to follow through on promises to deliver medicine, one of his parents' tour mates ventured out onto the streets of Bangkok to see if she could find a pharmacy. "What she encountered right outside their hotel- police officers attempting to corral a group of dissidents, then becoming overrun by those dissidents- caused her to go right back in. They're afraid to go onto the streets."

Wrzesnewskyj has also contacted the Thai Minister of Transport and arranged for security clearances to transport the group out of the country from an airport just an hour outside of Bangkok - but first an airline carrier has to be secured by the Canadian government.

Both Wrzesnewskyj and Kerr have been in contact with Air Canada and the Foreign Affairs office to broker such a deal, but no such arrangements have yet been made.

Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick told The Guardian the airline was approached by the government on Monday to look into the feasibility their role in assisting passengers stranded in Thailand. He said the Department of Foreign Affairs is currently making arrangements to charter a number of Bangkok Airways flights to fly Canadians from Thailand to Hong Kong and Air Canada has been asked to facilitate onward connections back to Canada from Hong Kong.

"We do not currently fly to Thailand, so we don't have the ground support in place (not to mention the airport is shutdown)," he said in an e-mail, adding that they don't have any spare aircraft for such a mission. "In short, it is not a simple matter of just flying somewhere on the spur of the moment, you need to do a lot of preparatory work. We are doing what we can, however, to do our part to ensure everyone is able to travel as soon as possible."

But that's not soon enough for the Kerr family.

"With everything that's happened this last week, I've gotten to the point where I believe nothing that I hear and only half of what I see," Kerr said. "That about sums up where I'm at now."

"We've had a few breakdowns, we've been so frustrated," added Kerr's wife, Joanne. "We almost want to go in ourselves and rescue them, but we're not able to do that either...there's just no end in sight."