Carleton Preserving Emotional Refugee Stories

Forty years ago, Canadians helped more than 120,000 refugees settle in Canada after brutal communist regimes took over in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The refugees came in waves, from 1975 to 1990, in rickety, undersized boats with little or no navigation, and over land, across rivers and through mountain passes. They took only what they could carry—clothes, bits of food, children, unborn babies and memories.

Canadian church groups, municipalities, organizations and individuals opened their arms to them, accessing sponsorship programs created specifically by the Canadian government to respond to the crisis.

Not since the settlement of displaced persons following the Second World War had Canada given safe haven to so many people at once, and never before to a group of people so culturally, ethnically and linguistically different from the Canadian bilingual mainstream.

For the complete article, please go to the Carleton University site.

Note to Researchers

A consent form was signed by each of the interviewees whose videos are posted here on the website. They have each consented to making the video available to the public and they have consented to the use of the contents of their videos by the Hearts of Freedom project researchers. Consent is not available to external researchers to quote or publish from it. Researchers interested in the subject have the opportunity to view a documentary film, Passage to Freedom which has been completed and is available through a distributor https://www.mcintyre.ca/ Researchers from the project are in the process of completing a full length book based on the interviews. Once this book is available researchers will have the opportunity to review it and to refer to it for research purposes.