Publication of Hearts of Freedom: Stories of South East Asian Refugees

Hearts of Freedom: Stories of South East Asian Refugees,” releasing September 16, 2025 with McGill-Queen’s University Press, draws on 145 oral histories collected across Canada. Survivors recount oppression, genocide, perilous escapes, and the challenges—and kindnesses—of building new lives in Canada.

Between the fall of Saigon in 1975 and 1997, over 210,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians fleeing oppression and genocide were resettled in Canada. While this was Canada’s largest non-European resettlement effort, there have been relatively few academic studies and, until now, none have dealt with all three refugee communities across Canada. The new book, Hearts of Freedom: Stories of South East Asian Refugees, authored by Peter Duschinsky, Colleen Lundy, Michael J. Molloy, Allan Moscovitch and Stephanie Phetsamy Stobbe begins to fill the gap.
The book is due for release by McGill-Queen’s University Press on 16 September 2025. It is based on 145 oral histories collected by young Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian Canadians
who interviewed former refugees from coast to coast under Carleton University’s Hearts of Freedom project. First-hand accounts of harsh oppression, concentration camps, genocide and hair-raising escapes by sea and land, as told by the survivors themselves, impart an authenticity, drama and immediacy seldom found in conventional histories. Equally compelling are recollections of first encounters with snow, cold and strange food, the unexpected kindness of sponsors and other Canadians, and encounters with racism. We gain insights into the
strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s resettlement programs (government-assisted and private sponsorship programs) from people who experienced them at their best and worst. We learn how the refugees’ understanding of multiculturalism strengthened their attachment to Canada.
Hearts of Freedom is a companion volume to Running on Empty, which told the story of the 1975–1980 resettlement operation from the Canadian perspective.
The Hearts of Freedom team is planning a launch event specifically for members of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, FORUM and other immigration and foreign affairs veterans at the Beechwood National Memorial Centre on the morning of 13 November 2025. More information about this event will be publicized closer to the date.