The Canadian Press
TORONTO—George John Dryden, who spent years of his life trying to prove conclusively he was the love child of former Canadian prime minister John George Diefenbaker, died yesterday, a longtime friend said.
Dryden, 47, who had terminal pancreatic disease, suffered fatal injuries in a suicide attempt, Merry-Ellen Unan said.
He blamed decades of alcohol abuse for the illness.
“I didn’t have a bad life,” Dryden told The Canadian Press last week in his last interview.
“I basically ended up killing myself.”
Dryden, who bore an uncanny resemblance to “The Chief,” grew up in a Toronto family of privilege as the son of prominent federal Liberal Gordon Dryden.
About five years ago, however, a cousin told him it long had been a quiet family rumour that Dryden’s mother, Mary Lou Dryden, had an affair with Diefenbaker that led to his conception.
In a stunning revelation, DNA tests confirmed Gordon Dryden was not his biological parent.
“For somebody who knows who their father is, it seems kind of strange,” Dryden said at the time.
“But I went for 42 years thinking I was a Dryden and I just found out . . . that I’m not.”
The bombshell sparked his elusive quest to prove his parentage definitively. It also caused an ugly rupture with the Drydens.
The family kept him from his ailing mother, and hid the death of his father from him for eight months.
Unan, who met Dryden 20 years ago and was with him when he died, described him as sensitive, caring, a wonderful friend, but also “very much a lost soul.”
“He was searching most of his life for his identity,” Unan noted.
“He truly didn’t know who he was.”
Dryden said his mom, a staunch Conservative and known confidante of Canada’s 13th prime minister, admitted to him she had seen Diefenbaker privately around the time he was conceived in late 1967 or early 1968—a few months after she married Gordon Dryden.
