Continued from page 32)

It was not until 1972, some sixteen years after leaving the Toronto area and finally settling in Vancouver and twelve years into his third marriage, that Alexei revealed his identity to the younger of his two sons.  The last Tsar's grandson was twenty-six years old when he first learned of his Royal heritage.  Mrs. Romanov reports that when her stepson was warned recently that his father's DNA test results might soon be published he curtly informed her that he wants "nothing to do with it".

In the mid 1950's Alexei started a small dance studio in the beachfront town of White Rock, just south of Vancouver and only five minutes drive from the Pacific Border Crossing into the United States at Blaine, Washington.  It was there on the beach that he met the girl who would become his third wife and her parents in July of 1956.  They tied the knot four years later when he was almost fifty-six and she was just twenty.  It was a happy union that was to last seventeen years until his death in 1977.

Mrs. Romanov states that when she met Alexei it was her father who first sensed that the man calling himself Heino Tammet was someone of nobility.  In the beginning he would only tell them that, "as a youngster I lived in many houses"... although he was not beyond dropping the occasional hint in the hope that they would figure it out for themselves.  When they finally did, they put him on the spot and he admitted his identity to them.  Alexei collected every book he could find about the fate of the Tsar's family and his widow says that he made jokes about being a ghost whenever he read the stories of his own death in 1918.

Alexei only began using his Romanov name again in 1971 when he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Edward Heath.  That action was prompted by his fear that England's government planned to recognize a Polish impostor named Michael Goleniewski as the Russian Heir.

In the following year he identified himself as the Crown Prince for the second time in a letter of condolences sent to Queen Elizabeth II upon the death of her uncle, The Duke of Windsor.  Ten days after sending his telegram to Buckingham Palace an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Force appeared on his doorstep and grilled him with questions for several hours.  Three days later the investigator returned with more questions and advised the Tsarevich to live out the rest of his days in silence.  A week and a half after the officer had said that he would be filing "a favourable report" a thank you note bearing Her Majesty's coat of arms appeared in his letterbox.  It was addressed to Alexei Romanov, Esquire.

©  J. Kendrick 1997                                                                                                                                  (Continued on page 34)