Outsider by Brett Popplewell

An outsider, by definition, is “someone who is not accepted by or who is isolated from society” (Oxford Languages). Dag Aabye (pronounced Obi, like Obi-Wan Kenobi) was an outsider for most of his life. Born in 1941, he was an orphan adopted by a wealthy farm couple in Norway during the Nazi occupation. His parents supported the Nazis and so when the war was lost, they faced reprisals, lost most of their wealth, and fled to Argentina along with other escaping Nazi supporters, collaborators, and war criminals. Once there, they left 4-year-old Dag with total strangers, a German couple also newly arrived, where he was surrounded by children from places he had never heard of, speaking languages with which he was unfamiliar. Meanwhile, his parents went off to start a cotton farm on an inhospitable remote and rugged land near the jungle. They found it almost impossible to clear the land, let alone turn a profit, and before too many years, they decided to return to their property in Norway and test the waters.

It was during this time, Dag began to suspect that he was the product of a union between a Norwegian mother and a German father, part of the Lebensborn project under Heinrich Himmler, the purpose of which was to strengthen the German master race. (This was something I was unfamiliar with and found it equally fascinating and revolting.) These children were often ostricized and beaten after the war by both school mates and their own parents. Dag’s adoptive mother took her anger for the loss of friends and fortune out on him, at one point calling him a Lebensborn, making him believe that he, indeed, had had a German father and was an outsider.

Dag skiing Whistler

Dag left home and left no trace to follow. He had taught himself to ski and so was able to work jobs at ski resorts teaching others while gaining experience on various mountains. He became an extra or stunt man in films with famous actors such as Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Donald Sutherland. He worked as a logger in B.C. And he became an extreme skier before there was such a thing (a term Nancy Green coined to describe him). He married a woman who also loved skiing, had 3 children, and was a steady provider. Until his mother died.

It was after this point that Popplewell met Dag. Having inherited a great wealth from his parents’ estate, Dag began to change. He didn’t want the money, went through it like water, deserted his family and began living in an abandoned school bus in the parking lot at Silver Star Ski Resort. When the owners got tired of seeing the bus there, friends helped him move it to a friend’s property up the mountainside near Vernon to an incredibly isolated spot where he settled in and made himself a home. This is where Popplewell first met the 75-year-old Dag and a relationship grew where a prospective story had once glimmered with possibility.

Dag had developed an interest in marathon racing and was running for up to 7 hours a day to stay fit in order to compete in the annual Alberta Death Race. In his school bus, he had a large library which he read voraciously and he kept daily journals about current events he garnered from listening to the radio, recorded the weather, his running times, and words of wisdom he came across in his reading. Despite injuries (he was losing strength and healing less quickly as he aged), he hadn’t been to a doctor in years. His children weren’t speaking to him except for his daughter who kept in touch occasionally by leaving messages at The Rooster in Vernon, a restaurant/bar Dag visited from time to time.

Popplewell became fascinated by Dag’s story, which changed from time to time and lost its cohesiveness, but as his path began to intertwine with Dag’s over the course of 6 years, Brett decided to help Dag track down his genealogy. Outsider is about that as much as it is about a man choosing to isolate himself from society and refusing to age gracefully. Their journey back to Norway and through research on the Internet and DNA testing, is one of discovery for Dag and a kind of catharsis for Brett.

Brett tells Dag’s story weaving past and present together in a fascinating tale of searching for a truth to explain how he came to be an outsider. He treats Dag and his idiocyncracies with dignity and a levelling of fact and fiction. He portrays Dag as a bit of a philosopher, using some of the quotes he recorded in his journal as headings and retells discussions centred around Dag’s personal philosophy, such as “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, they grow stronger” (Winston Churchill) and, “Time matters most when time is running out”. Popplewell presents the picture of an Outsider who has come to terms with himself and is content, a man with a positive outlook. It is a story of courage and determination. A story worth reading. ****1/2