Young Ted's father, Rafael, was "the lone Cruz in the 1970 phone book," Maclean's notes. | AP Photo Canadian magazine looks into Ted Cruz's Calgary roots

Maclean's, one of the top magazines in Canada, has a big story out Thursday looking into Ted Cruz's roots in Calgary, Alberta — where he was born, and where his parents did technical consulting work for oil companies. The title: "Ted Cruz: Made in Canada."

Back then, Ted was known as "Felito" — his first name is Rafael — and he lived with his parents in a rented, Spanish colonial-inflected house in a middle-class neighborhood. (Across the street, the article archly observes, from a government-built hospital, "part of what in July 1969 had become Alberta’s federally supported single-payer medical system.")


Young Ted's father, Rafael, was "the lone Cruz in the 1970 phone book," Maclean's notes, and little Felito was later teased as "Dorito" by his classmates.

The article details the Cruz family's life in Calgary, along with his parents' work there "doing geophysics work for Canadian oil companies." It paints a different portrait of Cruz's father, in particular, who has become better known for his hard-edged speeches about U.S. politics and his outreach to Christian conservative groups.

“He was sometimes egotistical,” one former busboy who knew Rafael Cruz told Maclean's. “He would want to be the centre of attention, walking around with his Cuban cigars, buying drinks for everybody.”

That lifestyle — and his father's decision to abandon the family and become a pastor — has become an element of the Texas senator's autobiographical narrative: In his speech announcing his presidential bid, for instance, he said his parents were "both drinking far too much" and "living a fast life."

“When I was 3, my father decided to leave my mother and me," Cruz said. "[H]e got on a plane and he flew back to Texas, and he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore and he didn’t want to be a father to his 3-year-old son.”

Maclean's does not seem impressed with GOP rival Donald Trump's less-than-subtle attempts to present Cruz as a kind of Albertan Candidate who might be constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.

"His mother, now in her 80s and living in Houston, was always and is a United States citizen, so he should be just fine," the authors write, dismissing the questions about Cruz's Canadian origins as "the sort of childish pranksterism that social media has established as part of the process of selecting Earth’s most important politician."

"In another country, or perhaps with another party, his family’s Canadian saga would be a compelling bit of narrative," the magazine sighs. Instead, with Trump now pressing the attack ahead of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, "[t]hat Canadian chill may be Ted Cruz’s lone stated memory, but it could also be an enduring impression."