ODBC Escape {oj} problem w/ ADO

[Surly]

Hola,
I am running the "Oracle in OraHome92" driver
From a VB application using ADO
On an Oracle 9.2 instance

My problem is this does not work:
Select foo.* From {oj foo Left Outer Join bla on foo.col = bla.col}

While this does:
Select foo.* From oj foo Left Outer Join bla on foo.col = bla.col

I get rows with the second example and none with the first example

The first example works fine on SQL server
Yes the application must run on both dbs so I cant change to the (+)

It seems that it works intermittently which I think is because
sometimes there are rows to return from both tables and thus the outer
join is not needed

Is there a driver option I should be using?

Thank you