York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School will host a touring exhibit titled “Hearts of Freedom – Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees,” which commemorates the lives of those who resettled in Canada during the tumultuous war-torn period of the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Genocide and the Laotian Civil War.
The single largest resettlement of refugees in Canadian history took place when some 60,000 Southeast Asian arrived over the course of 18 months between 1979 and 1980. By the end of the decade, over 200,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees had resettled in Canada largely through the Canadian government’s private sponsorship program.
Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe, a professor at Canadian Mennonite University, and the current president of the Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, created and curated the exhibit which includes a documentary called Passage to Freedom that is based on interviews about the refugees’ experiences.
Following opportunities at the Senate of Canada in Ottawa, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, and the Canadian Immigration Museum in Halifax, the “Hearts of Freedom” exhibit will now be on display at the Osgoode Hall Law School Library main entrance from Sept. 13 to Oct. 14.
Additionally, the Passage to Freedom documentary will be screened at the official opening of the exhibit at Osgoode’s Helliwell Centre on Tuesday, Sept. 24 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The HOF exhibit and accompanying documentary notably feature a connection to York. The founder and head of project “Operation Lifeline,” which brought thousands of Southeast Asians to Canada during this period, was the late Howard Adelman, a prestigious member of York’s Department of Philosophy and the co-founder of the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS) at York.
For further information, reach out to Michelle Millard, coordinator at the Centre for Refugee Studies.