This is a first person column of Vien Huynh-Lee, who lives in Ottawa, And it is part of a Canada’s day series exploring what Canada means for people from this country. For more information about first person stories, see Frequently asked questions.
One of the first gifts I received when I arrived in Canada was an Air Canada red blanket. I had a year and wrapped me when my family landed at Montreal airport in November 1979.
We were some of the 60,000 refugees brought to this country after the Vietnam War.
We arrive in Canada with a bag each. My father had $ 100 in his pocket.
After another flight to Winnipeg and a bus to Brandon, man, the sponsors of our family picked us up at the station and moved us away from the bright lights of the city and towards a landscape of the snow -covered meadow, still wrapped in force in this blanket.
My mother cried for the shock of being in a country, so, unlike the warm and high density city, she had been forced to leave due to war. My dad comforted her, assuring her that our family was safe and pointing out that at least we didn’t have to worry about mosquitoes!
Our destiny was the small town of Birtle, man. Population in 2021: 625, and I remember that it was even smaller growing.
We had spent the last six months in a refugee camp and our family did not speak English.
During the next year, our sponsors helped us adapt to life in Canada, they taught my parents English and helped ensure a job for my father. We were also wrapped in the lives of others: my mother exchanged spring rolls for cookies with the other mothers in our sponsorship group, while I played with their young children.
In 1982, we moved to Rossburn, Man., Another small community, to launch my parents’ restaurant.
He had early memories of being different, surrounded by light hair, light skin and noses with bridges. And there were times when these differences made me very evident when the classmates passed me with me with my finger by pressing my nose while “flat nose” murmured so that the teacher could not listen.
One day in grade 3, a classmate shouted “Chink!” To me during class. I froze while my classmates laughed.
Without hesitation, my teacher disciplined the author out loud and firm.
Although sometimes I felt alone, as my family members were some of the few racialized people in our village, that teacher made me feel seen and protected.
I felt it when I was with young church leaders doing muffins in their home, when I was with our family friends on their farm, jumping on hay bundles, or when I was doing a piñata in the kitchen of my childhood’s best friend. While ignorance and indifference could have isolated me in the life of the Prairie of Small Peoples, it was the heat of this community that kept me safe and safe.
These values are incorporated into the Air Canada blanket in which he was wrapped as a baby. It represents the generosity of the Canadians who risked and extended their compassion to the strangers, accepting them in their lives and hearts. It represents the courage and forecast of my parents in wanting and fighting for better lives for their children.
The Arce sheet in the corner has not faded age.
The most important thing, still represents love, generosity and courage, which is what led me to Ottawa airport in February 2016.
When Canada announced that it would bring 25,000 Syrians who escaped from the civil war, I knew it had to act. The image of the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, two years old, washed on a beach in Turkey, made me reflect deeply on the dangerous journey that my family took by boat through the South China Sea several decades ago. We were fortunate when most did not.
I knew I had to step forward. It was my turn to welcome an unknown family.
Together with the Sponsorship Group of the Church of the Chinese Alliance of Ottawa, I stood up with welcome signs in Arabic for a Syrian family of six. I greeted them with a welcome Syria, “Mahabah”, and a timbits box passed.
It occurred to me that this moment talks about what Canada is: a group of Chinese who have welcome signs in Arabic, greeting a Syrian family with Timbits.
Now all are part of the fabric of our community, as my family, they are interwoven in the brilliant red and white blanket that is Canada.
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