Hearts of Freedom and Canadian arms open wide

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This article was published 21/03/2023 (1281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1979-80, more than 60,000 southeast Asian refugees came to Canada. Among them was Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe, then seven years old.

Today, Stobbe is one of five Canadian academics and researchers who have organized Hearts of Freedom, a travelling exhibit and website that documents how Canadians worked together to bring more than 100,000 refugees from Southeast Asia to this country from 1975-85.

The family’s escape from Laos was “pretty dramatic,” said Stobbe, a professor of conflict resolution studies at Menno Simons College, which is part of Canadian Mennonite University.

Her father had worked for the Laotian government, which was overthrown by the Communists in 1975.

Fearing for his safety, two years later the family crossed the Mekong River into Thailand, hiding from soldiers on both sides of the river determined to prevent people from crossing.

At one point their small boat was caught in a cross-current and almost swamped. “It filled with water and we were bailing,” Stobbe recalls. “It’s a miracle we made it to the other side.”

Stobbe and her family spent two years in Thailand before that government threatened to send Laotian refugees back to their country. Her parents decided to go to a refugee camp where they stayed for six months before being sponsored to come to Canada.

“We were one of the luckier ones,” said Stobbe.

The family arrived in Manitoba in December 1979. “It was very cold,” she said, adding they had never seen snow before.

They later moved to B.C. before Stobbe, a mother of two who is married to Karl Stobbe, associate concertmaster of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, moved back to the province to teach at Menno Simons College.

Stobbe’s story is included in Hearts of Freedom, which has been in the works since 2015.

“Some of the stories are really emotional,” she said of the 175 interviews, most of them with former refugees. “Some are terrible, horrible stories. It’s amazing the resilience they had, how they overcame trauma to become what they are today.”

The project itself came about from a request from the Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian communities in Canada to document their experience as refugees.

“They wanted to preserve their experience, and how Canadians opened their hearts and homes to them,” Stobbe said, noting the project was created in partnership with those communities.

The exhibition, made possible by funding from the Government of Canada and Winnipeg’s De Fehr Foundation, also includes information about the private sponsorship agreement created by the Canadian government to permit ordinary Canadians, working through organizations and places of worship, to bring refugees to this country.

That agreement — the first of its kind in the world — “is a really important part of Canada’s immigration story,” Stobbe said, noting it became a model for other countries.

Along with telling the stories of the refugees and those who helped them come to Canada, Hearts of Freedom also notes how they successfully integrated into Canadian society.

“It’s important to celebrate that,” said Stobbe. “Those stories can help dispel some of the negative stories told about immigrants and immigration today.”

The travelling exhibition consists of six panels, three in English and three in French, that tell the story of that refugee immigration experience. It opened in Gatineau, Que., in February. In April it goes to Vancouver and then to Halifax before coming to Winnipeg in January 2024.

Along with the travelling exhibit, Hearts of Freedom has a website containing interviews with former refugees and with government officials and faith leaders about their roles in helping refugees relocate to Canada. It can be visited at heartsoffreedom.org.

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