The Curious Lineage of Lars Jessen

My friend Lars Jessen is a Canadian, though his roots reach back to Schleswig — that wind-swept corner of northwestern Europe now divided between Germany and Denmark. Whether his forebears were Danish, German, or Frisian he cannot say, and perhaps it hardly matters. In any case, as I’ve said, Lars is Canadian through and through, and thinks and speaks only in English.

What is worth telling, though, are the professions of his nearest ancestors.

Lars’s late grandfather, Karl Jessen, spent his working life as… an executioner, or simply a hangman.
Yes, a hangman — for during his years of service, Canada still carried out death sentences by hanging at the gallows.

Old Karl was known to drink more than was good for him (which, given his trade, is hardly surprising), yet within his household he was gentle and kind. And he was a consummate professional: none of his “clients” ever slipped from the gallows or suffered extra torment from a poorly tied or insufficiently soaped rope. As the saying goes, true mastery never fades.

Karl’s wife — remembered by all simply as “Aunt Christina” — became locally famous for preparing the condemned their last meal with her own hands: a beef steak or her special meat patties, served with boiled or baked potatoes and followed by apple pie. The prison administration would add half a bottle of cheap red wine to the meal.

So those were the sort of grandparents Lars had.

Their son, Kaspar Jessen — Lars’s father — chose a different path entirely. He became a doctor, first tending patients on the prairies and later in the city of Victoria. Unlike his father, Dr. Jessen never touched wine or any other spirit, and was regarded as a calm, even rather dull man. He was widowed young, yet left behind two sons.

For reasons never made clear, the dreary Dr. Jessen came to see his elder son Lars as “a stray slice” and cut him out of his will, leaving all he owned to the younger son Nils — an IT specialist and an unrepentant bachelor.

I cannot imagine what my friend Lars might have done to earn such disfavor. To me, he is a likeable and easygoing man — though, admittedly, not a man of towering ambition. After finishing school, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy, though he did not linger there. After leaving the service he entered the police, and after some time left that too, taking up work as a taxi driver.

Lars Jessen has acquired neither family, nor house, nor fortune — and yet he seems entirely content.
“The main thing is, I don’t owe anyone anything,” he likes to say. “And I can always earn enough for a small apartment, for food, and for beer.”

He speaks of his father’s and grandfather’s professions with dry irony, even with a touch of scorn, often remarking that he sees little real difference between the two.
And perhaps, in that, he is not entirely wrong — especially if one thinks of modern Canadian medicine.

September 2025