‘Railway Children’ director reunites with long-lost aunt

It's a heartwarming case of life imitating art.

Director Damian Cruden recently arrived in Toronto to stage his hit production "The Railway Children" at the Roundhouse Theatre.

The play concludes with a long-awaited family reconciliation. But he could not have known that his time in the city would reunite him with his 78-year-old Aunt Margaret.

Cruden, the artistic director of the York Theatre Royal, told the Toronto Star in a recent interview that his estranged aunt, Margaret Agnew, once lived in Toronto; he hadn't seen her for over 30 years. His grandfather also once called Toronto home.

Fortunately for him, Jenny von Buchstab — a Star reader and genealogy buff — contacted the paper with a lead as to Aunt Margaret's whereabouts; von Buchstab found that Margaret's husband, Kenneth Agnew, died last December in Orangeville.

Star librarian Astrid Lange tracked down the death notice; within an hour of a call to a funeral home, Margaret's son, Don, was on the phone with Star columnist Martin Knelman.

Soon Cruden was talking to his long-lost aunt, weeping over the connection.

"How strange the human gene is. An intimacy was evident in our conversation, a softness, a forgiving …It must be that our time on this planet is so short that whatever connections we have become more and more vital as we move through it," Cruden told the Star.

As "The Railway Children" garners rave reviews — and impresses with its live locomotive — Cruden's eight-week adventure in Toronto surpassed his own expectations:

"I've made friendships, faced new challenges, met a different culture, built a production, taught and learned, and now found family. It is a wonderful life, and I feel blessed within it."