Thomas Alden

Thomas Alden (played by Jeff Daniels) is an award-winning Canadian sculptor and inventor residing in rural Southeastern Ontario. He was once married to recording artist Aliane with whom he had a daughter named Amy, born in 1982.

In the winter of 1985, Alden decided to build an exact replica of the Lunar Lander although he did not have the money to do it. Exceeded with his odd and costly projects, his wife moved away to New Zealand with their child. Alden was afraid and angry; he buried himself in his work and barely ever visited his daughter in her new home.

Alden found an interest in gliders and ultralight aircrafts. He made friends with a young man named Barry Strickland who owned a glider himself; they experimented and flew together where the terrain allowed them to reach a certain altitude. He also began a relationship with a local woman named Susan Barnes who often came over and helped him with his work. A development project for Alden's rural community was proposed during that period and both Thomas and Susan feared its repercussions on the environment.

Aliane died in a car accident in the Spring of 1995. Alden traveled to New Zealand to attend the funeral and take thirteen-year-old Amy back with him to Canada. Amy was not pleased with this; she was still grieving her mother and did not remember the early years in Ontario. She gave Alden the cold shoulder and resented him for having shown so little interest in her for the past ten years. She also disliked having Susan Barnes in the picture. Alden tried hard to make this new family work by being nice at first, and then being tough, but nothing seemed to work.

Since Thomas Alden was behind in his work and a Montreal museum expected an unfinished dragon sculpture from him, he asked his brother David to move to the farm for a while and help him catch up with his work. The sculptor was absorbed in his endeavours and paid little attention to Amy who wandered sadly and aimlessly around the farm and lost interest in life.

One morning, a team from the development projet began uprooting trees around Alden's property and destroyed some nesting Canada geese's habitat. Thomas was furious and planned to speak up at the town meeting that would be held in a few days. He went back to his shop and didn't notice Amy skipping school. The girl found sixteen abandoned goose eggs among the uprooted trees. She gathered them and placed them in a makeshif incubator in the barn without her father suspecting anything. Thomas Alden headed for the town meeting with Susan the following night and left Amy alone with her uncle David. Alden denounced the illegal actions that had taken place around his property and asked why the laws in place were not enforced to stop them. Glen Seifert, an Animal Regulation Authority officer also spoke and warned the residents of what would become of the clean air and clean water if the development project was ever to take place. Alden came home frustrated to find his brother asleep on the couch, a beer bottle in his hand. They soon realised Amy was missing, and ran out in panic with flashlights. Susan found Amy in the barn sleeping on the hay with a flock of tiny goslings chirping around her. Amy woke up and pleaded for permission to keep the birds. Her father agreed but was quite puzzled to find them on the kitchen table the next morning. He started for the Animal Regulation office where he met with officer Seifert who gave him some advice about how to feed the geese and offered to drop by on the week-end. When Seifert came, Alden showed him the goslings following Amy around the field. He was fascinated at how they kept so close to her, and the officer explained that the geese had imprinted on Amy; they automatically assumed she was their mother since she was the first living thing they saw when they hatched. Later that day, officer Seifert stated the Canadian laws regulating domestically raised geese and how they had to be rendered flightless. His bureaucratic talk wasn't exactly clear and both Thomas and Susan remained confused. Seifert walked up to Amy who was watching television with the geese and picked up a gosling, ready to clip its wings as he explained the simple procedure. Amy flew into a rage and started hitting him. She gathered the geese and locked herself up in the bathroom. Alden pushed Seifert out of the house and expressedly told him to stay off the property despite the officer's threat to confiscate the geese. Amy refused to come out of the bathroom and Thomas opened up to Susan about how difficult the relationship with his daughter was, admitting he was in no way a better father now than he was when she was three. Susan had a good conversation with Amy the next day, explaining that Thomas did not know about Seifert's intentions and Amy's resistance began to dissipate.

When Alden had completed his sculpture, he began working on motorized gliders and ultralight aircrafts with his brother and Barry Strickland. Many of their prototypes failed, but they finally managed to put the C-IBYE model together that allowed for easy take off and smooth landing. At that point, Alden expressed his idea to teach the geese to follow an aircraft to render migration possible in the fall. The geese followed Amy on a four-wheeler, after all. Both Susan and Amy thought it was insane, but Thomas asked Amy to give it a try and teach the geese to follow him too. After a few attempts, the geese began to accept Thomas, and the inventor gradually got them used to engine sounds and aircrafts. When the geese's wings had fully developed and were fit to fly, Barry, Susan and the Aldens attempted to get the birds to take off with Thomas but were not very successful at it. One afternoon, Thomas got discouraged. He was telling Susan about it when Amy decided to try flying the plane herself. She only flew a few meters and crashed, but the geese followed all along. Thomas ran towards her in anguish, thinking his daughter had killed herself, but Amy was only in a state of shock. He decided to get Amy an aircraft of her own and teach her to fly so they could both take part in the migration in spite of Susan's reluctance. The first attempts were successful and Thomas started to plan an itinerary. He meant to work with maps, but his brother disagreed, saying they needed to have a very clear notion of when they would fly in the day, when they would land and what the ultimate destination would be. He proposed to make a call to his friend Doctor Killian, a North Carolina ornithologist who suggested a local wetland to lay over. The team had to show up by November first, otherwise, the patch would be destroyed by developers. Preparations were made and the geese pushed to a limit to determine how long they could fly on a stretch. During such an outing, Amy's limping goose Igor was hit by her ultralight and fell into the forest. Officer Seifert came to the farm while the Aldens went looking for Igor and confiscated the rest of the flock. On the day of departure, Thomas picked up his daughter from school and they took off with Igor tied behind Amy in a baby carrier. They flew over the Animal Regulation office, and released by Barry and David, the geese tagged along.

The journey wasn't without incident, and the Aldens had to make an emergency landing at a military base after flying for hours over Lake Ontario, fly through the fog among skyscrapers and deal with hunters when the flock joined wild geese on their migration route. The operation brought media attention and many environmentalists gathered at the North Carolina wetland to await the geese's arrival. On the way to the site, a mechanical problem occured with Thomas' aircraft and he crashed into a corn field, injuring his arm. He made himself a sling, convinced Amy to continue on her own, gave her some instructions and hitchhiked his way to the wetland. Thomas joined Susan, Barry and David who were waiting with Doctor Killian and many other supporters. Amy landed with the geese shortly after, securing the wetland for generations of wild birds to come. Background Information The character of Thomas Alden is inspired by Canadian sculptor and inventor William Lishman who, along with the Operation Migration organisation, reintroduced many endangered migratory birds to their native habitat using ultralight aircrafts. The inventions and sculptures seen in Fly Away Home were the work of Lishman, and many scenes were shot on his Ontario property. Lishman served as pilot double for actor Jeff Daniels and his family helped in the training of the geese. When Lishman saw the result, he had the funny feeling of looking at his life through a distorting mirror.