Chris Tyrell

This photo is of my birth Mother, Francoise, at age 25. 

A writer whose work fascinated and delighted my while I was in college, Kurt Vonnegut, was addressing an assembly of art students at a convocation. He has some advice for them, he said, on how to tell your parents that you want to be an artist. Before I tell you what he said, the point of my story is that it is almost universally accepted that parents do not want their children to be artists—they equate artistry with poverty. With this prejudice in mind, Vonnegut advised his audience to wait until a Sunday evening family meal to announce their intentions. And, after a pleasant hour together, to say to the family, “I have some news to share. I’m gay.” He then advised his audience to wait for the hubbub to die down, and then say: “I was just kidding. I’m going to be an artist.”

I never told my father, a single parent, that I was going to be an artist. I was determined to lead my own life, but at the same time, I wanted him not to have to worry about me or support me. So I decided to make my BA practical by taking a year of teacher training—I figured I could always do substitute teaching to supplement any shortfall in annual income. I don’t think my father assumed I would be a teacher and that he was comfortable with my decision. He never talked to me about my career at all.

I taught full-time for my first two years after graduation; in career year three, I did some teaching but mostly took professional training for my arts career. That was the last year I taught; I lived for the rest of my career on my creative skill set. At age forty or so, I sadly faced a fact that had long caused me sadness: my father had not attended a single one of my shows and none of my graduation ceremonies. He was a nice easy-going guy, a good man, but a man completely uninterested in the arts and my career. He told others that  he was proud of me, but he never spoke to me about my work.

Visualize this: A young artist enjoys early career success and by his mid twenties is running an art gallery, seeing his exhibitions tour Canada and winning awards but at each event, he walks through the crowd searching for one important face that never comes in spite of assurances that he will. It never got easier but I never lost hope.

Francoise went to Europe after giving me up where she enjoyed a flourishing film career. She was delighted by Gene Kelly, with whom she had an affair. 

He was a jock and I couldn’t get that either. Sports was fun to do with friends, but that was it. I had no interest in team sports or sports on TV or professional sports. But I did participate in his world; I had to when I was young and I am glad, to this day, I learned how to ski and sail.

Not long after the emotional revelation of our differences and a certain acceptance of how things were, I had a heart attack and I received a tentative diagnosis of Prinzmetal’s Angina (or Syndrome). Prinzmeta’s is a difficult diagnosis, and so doctor’s asked about my family history as part of their diagnostic research. I told them I was adopted and so my friends (with my permission) embarked on a search for my birth mother. A short few weeks later, I was in a government office speaking to her on the phone.

My mother and my father adopted me after I had spent about seven months with my birth mother and a short time in an orphanage. My adoption was legally sanctioned and my name changed when I was two. When I was nine, my mother began a slide into mental illness. By the time I was twelve, she was a paraplegic and had been institutionalized. My father’s indifference to my career was balanced by a loving devotion to my mother until her death several years later.

Francoise, along with fellow Canadian actor, John Vernon, starred in ”A Special Day” with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroinanni. 

I cannot conceive of a way to communicate the emotional impact of meeting my birth mother. We looked like twins born twenty-five years apart; we had the same speech impediment; we were instantly in love with each other. I had never experienced such a feeling of assumed understanding. For the first time in my life I felt complete; for the first time in my life I felt I belonged to someone, and through her to life and the universe.

Like me, her life was all about and only about art. Like me, she founded a theatre and exhibited artists. Like me, she ran a gallery, and like me, like me, like me, like everything about me, she was me. And the miracle for her was that I was fluent in French. I was born with a passion for all things French, and I taught myself to speak. I never took a single class in high school and my accent is very good for an Anglophone. And now I knew why: my mother and father are Quebecois and I couldn’t be prouder even if Joseph and Mary were my parents.

Francoise, my beloved birth mother, lived in Montreal. She would have been at every single show I did, all my graduations and the proudest parent there. That is a certainty. And I can’t help but believe that my love for and career in the visual arts was preordained—the second greatest gift of the woman who gave me life. Telling her of my career in the arts filled us both with pride.

One of Francoise’s last films was “Agnes of God,” starring Anne Bancroft.

Meeting my birth mother validated my passion and that part of my character with which I identify most—my creative self.  Who I am linked me fundamentally to her. My passion was inherited. Nothing ever felt so good. I was born to be an artist. Period.