As a refugee, I learned what it means to be Canadian in a small Prairie community

This is a First Person column by Vien Huynh-Lee, who lives in Ottawa, and is part of a Canada Day series exploring what Canada means to people across this country. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.

One of the first gifts I received when I arrived in Canada was a red Air Canada blanket. I was one year old, and it was wrapped around me when my family landed at Montreal airport in November 1979. 

We were some of the 60,000 refugees brought to this country in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. 

We arrived in Canada with one bag each. My father had $100 in his pocket. 

After another flight to Winnipeg and a bus to Brandon, Man., our family's sponsors picked us up at the station and drove us away from the bright lights of the city and into a prairie landscape blanketed with snow, me still wrapped tightly in this blanket. 

My mother wept from the shock of being in a country so unlike the high-density, warm city she'd 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 destination was the tiny village of Birtle, Man. Population in 2021: 625, and I remember it being even smaller growing up.

We'd spent the last six months in a refugee camp and our family didn't speak English. 

Over the next year, our sponsors helped us adapt to life in Canada, taught my parents English and helped secure a job for my dad. We also became wrapped up in one another's lives — my mom exchanging spring rolls for cookies with the other moms 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. 

I had early memories of being different, surrounded by light hair, fair skin and noses with bridges. And there were times when those differences were made very apparent to me as classmates walked past me with their finger pressing down their nose while they muttered "flat nose" so the teacher couldn't hear. 

One day in Grade 3, a classmate yelled "Chink!" at me during class. I froze as my classmates laughed. 

Without hesitation, my teacher disciplined the perpetrator loudly and firmly. 

Although at times I felt alone, as members of my family 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 youth leaders from church making muffins in their home, when I was with our family friends at their farm, hopping on hay bales, or when I was making a piñata in my childhood best friend's kitchen. While ignorance and indifference could have isolated me in small-town Prairie life, it was the warmth of this community that kept me safe and secure.

These values are embodied in the Air Canada blanket I was wrapped in as a baby. It represents the generosity of Canadians who took a risk and extended their compassion to strangers, accepting them into their lives and hearts. It represents my parents' bravery and foresight in wanting and fighting for better lives for their children.

The maple leaf at the corner hasn't faded with age. 

Most importantly, it still represents love, generosity and bravery, which is what took me to the Ottawa airport in February 2016.

When Canada announced it would bring in 25,000 Syrians escaping the civil war, I knew I had to act. The image of two-year-old Alan Kurdi's lifeless body washed up on a beach in Turkey made me reflect deeply on the dangerous journey that my family took by boat across the South China Sea several decades ago. We were fortunate when most were not.

I knew I had to step up. It was my turn to welcome an unknown family.

Along with the sponsorship group from the Ottawa Chinese Alliance Church, I stood holding welcome signs in Arabic for a Syrian family of six. I greeted them with a Syrian welcome, "Maharbah," and a box of Timbits was passed around. 

It occurred to me that this moment speaks to what Canada is: A group of Chinese people holding Arabic welcome signs, greeting a Syrian family with Timbits.  

They are all now part of our community's fabric — like my family, they're woven into the bright red and white blanket that is Canada.

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