The Wild Bush Boys of BC

This story is just plain weird...

Sunday, November 02, 2003
VERNON -- Two half-starved brothers who emerged from the bush two weeks ago are telling an astonishing tale of growing up in complete isolation in the remote backwoods of B.C.'s Interior.

Initially, the story of Tom and Will Green seemed like Swiss Family Robinson fiction.

But now a wide-ranging group, including a young mom, a lawyer, a counsellor, Salvation Army staff and the local Member of Parliament have come to believe it just might be true.

"They are not like other street kids," says Carol Anne, who once ran a group home for runaways and now works as a receptionist for Okanagan/Shuswap MP Darrel Stinson. "They don't have that what's-it-to-you, in-your-face demeanour."

The kind-hearted group of residents has put the brothers up in a hotel and given them food. They are also fiercely protecting the privacy of Tom, 22, and Will, 16. None would arrange an interview, for fear of spooking the boys back into the bush.

Born in the wilderness, the brothers claim they were raised in complete isolation by their mom and dad, who call themselves Mary and Joseph Green. They believe they were born in Canada, but that their parents are American.

They say they have never been to school, seen a doctor, watched TV or made a childhood friend.

Their mother taught them to read using books she bought during occasional trips out of the wilderness homestead.

The family's sole contact with the outside world was with one friend who paid them rare visits. They hunted for food and supplemented their diet with provisions from town. The brothers say they do not know where the family's money came from.

Will says he was ordered to leave home this summer when he became a vegetarian and his mother declared him an "alien influence" in the home, says Rhelda Evans, a case worker for Stinson.

Tom followed and the brothers made their way to Vernon where they spent the summer in the bush begging fruit, vegetables and money from local farmers.

Evans has so far found no one who can verify their birthplace or citizenship. They claim to have no birth certificates, hospital or school records and carry no identification. If the story is true, says Evans, then in the eyes of the state, Tom and Will Green do not exist.

A kindly woman with 13 grandchildren, Evans was initially skeptical. But after meeting the brothers, she joined the group trying to help.

"There are individual kids who are really good actors, but I don't think two kids could be really good actors," she added.

Stinson, who grew up near Revelstoke, is reserving judgment. But knowing the backwoods of B.C., he believes the story is plausible. The vast tracts of wilderness in the B.C. Interior have long drawn people seeking refuge or solitude. The Kootenay area near Nelson was a magnet for American draft dodgers in the '60s. And to this day, there are settlers living deep in the forest where the unwritten etiquette is to leave alone those who shun company, Stinson says.

"I spent a lot of my former life in the bush. I once met a person who hadn't been out in society since 1918. We took him out in 1976 and he flipped out seeing cars and stoplights. So is it possible, you bet it is."

The brothers are protective of their parents and refuse to divulge their location, says Evans.

"We're still trying to win their trust so they will allow us to help them," she says.

The boys have asked for nothing and seem genuinely grateful for a place to stay, says Capt. David MacBain of the local Salvation Army.

Their bizarre story seems borne out by their actions, he said, relating Tom's reaction when he was given money for food.

"What was striking about that was he didn't know what he'd do with $50. It seemed an astronomical amount of money to Tom," MacBain said. "It's kind of hard to know what's real and what's not."

But the boys definitely need help, he said.

Tom and Will first surfaced about four months ago. They were camped out in the bush behind the Kalamalka General Store in Vernon and survived on the generosity of farmers who gave them money and produce. The brothers often came into the store to buy bags of discounted vegetables -- oranges, apples and sometimes avocados, says Chandace Chase, a store cashier. Unlike normal teens, they bought no pop or junk food, she said.

"They seemed to have money. The man [Tom] sometimes paid with a 20."

Chase thought they looked ill, pale and much too skinny. "They were friendly but seemed kind of sad," she said.

Chase was not the only one who noticed the boys' ill health. Tammy Ryder saw the brothers in the area a number of times and was shocked by their appearance.

"I ran into them, I saw them on the street and I thought Auschwitz . . . that's the first thing I thought of was studies I've done on concentration camps."

Ryder, a mother of three, was so concerned she wrote them a note and left it in the store with some quarters, suggesting they call if they needed help. The call came a couple of weeks ago.

Ryder put them up in a hotel and turned to friends and local politicians for help.

When the boys came to Stinson's office they were scruffy and malnourished, but clean. Tom is tall, over six feet, and has long fair hair and blue eyes. Will is shorter with a darker complexion and mousy brown hair. His cheeks and eyes were sunken from months of a poor diet and his complexion was pasty. He panicked when Stinson's staff recommended he see a doctor, so no one pushed the issue.

Both speak quietly and are polite.

Evans said the first challenge is to solve the mystery of the boys' identity. They have been told they have grandparents in the U.S. but they don't know their names and have no way to contact them, Evans said. With no ID, they cannot collect social assistance or apply for social insurance numbers, which would allow them to work.

"It's a very tragic situation," Evans says. "We can give them money and we can feed them. We can put them in a hotel as long as somebody's willing to pay for that. But what happens then?"