A HERITAGE MOMENT
Family’s journey from Vietnam an inspiring tale
Judy Trinh is not much of a hockey fan.
When she was a child in Lethbridge, Alta., she remembers receiving a Montreal Canadiens jacket. Trinh said her little sister was fascinated by the bright red, blue and white colours.
They asked their father what the ‘C’ and ‘H’ stood for, but he didn’t know. So, he made it up. He said ‘C’ stood for Canada. But what about the ‘H’? “He had no idea,” Trinh recalled. “So he said, ‘I don’t know … home?’
“I’m like, ‘OK, home.’ So we really took that at face value. For the longest time, ‘C’ and ‘H’, it’s Canada and home.”
Trinh was disappointed to find out the letters had nothing to do with her new home country, but rather the Club de hockey Canadien. And no, she didn’t become a Habs fan.
But the meaning behind those two letters remains symbolic.
Trinh and her family fled Vietnam in 1979 during the Chinese invasion, known as the Sino-Vietnamese war.
Their story inspired Historica Canada’s most recent Heritage Minute, about the more than 100,000 Vietnamese boat people — refugees — who came to Canada.
Trinh, now 42 and a freelance journalist with the CBC, acted as a consultant for the video.
Leaving everything behind to face a world of uncertainty was difficult for Trinh’s parents, but they felt they had little choice.
The family lived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in southern Vietnam.
Her father, Sam, briefly served in the South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War from 1954 to 1975, putting him at odds with the Chinese who supported North Vietnam in that conflict. South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975.
Trinh added that her family belonged to an entrepreneurial class, making them bigger targets for Communist Chinese re-education camps, “which is a really kind way of saying a prison camp in the countryside,” she said.
“It was now or never,” Trinh said of the decision to flee.
Trinh was four at the time — too young to remember the journey to Canada. But her parents have shared their memories with her and her sister, Helen.
Trinh was told they first travelled to Rach Gia, 250 kilometres southwest of Ho Chi Minh City on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand, part of the South China Sea.
There, they boarded a small fishing boat with about 300 others. The idea was to make their way to a refugee camp in Malaysia.
“By that time, we had to liquidate all our assets, so we just carried with us pieces of gold to use to bribe officials to pay our way out of the country,” she said.
Trinh said they travelled for five days on the South China Sea.
Pirates on board were armed and dangerous, so Trinh’s family did their best to cause no trouble.
Trinh, however, recalls making a fuss one day, crying because she was hungry.
“And so here I am, four years old, not understanding what’s going on but just wailing. And my mother is trying her best to hush me up, but there’s no food to be found,” she said.
Her mother, Rebecca, frantically tried to appease her daughter, and found a taro root bun.
“It’s flat and it’s mouldy and there for days, but it’s enough to just shove in my mouth and just keep me quiet for a bit,” Trinh said.
After arriving at the refugee camp in Malaysia, Trinh immediately set about exploring her whereabouts, like any curious child.
Through slabs of wood and cardboard laid out to protect against the hot sand, she found something round and red.
Thinking it was candy, she put it in her mouth. Luckily, her mother was around to remove the copper penny she was about to swallow.
The bigger problem was that the refugee camp was full.
After five days at sea, the new arrivals were told they would have to refuel and leave.
Indonesia was an option, but the captain felt the voyage would be too perilous. He came up with another plan. That night, after steering the boat far enough to be out of clear view of Malaysian officials, he instructed the others to destroy the vessel and swim back to shore.
Everyone jumped, taking slabs of wood to help them swim.
But Trinh — who said she has no recollection of this — was terrified and refused to follow.
Trinh paraphrases what her mother told her: “No matter what we did you didn’t jump because you were so scared because you were four.
“So I put down your sister and I basically grabbed you and threw you overboard.”
Her mother told her she was haunted by this memory for a long time.
“She had recurring nightmares about this, about the expression on my face, for more than 10 years.”
Malaysian officials had no choice but to take them in now.
Trinh and her family stayed at the camp for three months — until Canadian immigration officials arrived. Her father had lost the family documents by now, except one: a letter from his sister, Esther, who at the time was studying as a foreign student in Alberta.
That one document was enough for the Canadian official to allow the family to come to Canada.
“It speaks to how these officials had to make these character judgments, and had to use common sense or just their gut emotions to assess individuals, whether or not they should be allowed into Canada,” Trinh said.
However, after arriving in Canada, the family learned Esther was no longer there; she had left to pursue a career and raise a family in Taiwan. Trinh was told her aunt believed the family might have died, after having lost contact with them during the turmoil in Vietnam.
They settled in a two-bedroom apartment in Lethbridge to begin their new life with the help of volunteers, some of whom became long-lasting family friends.
One woman offered to drive Trinh’s father to his English as a second language classes.
Another would give Trinh and her sister toys.
“We had this carousel of volunteers who were strangers and who became friends,” Trinh said. “And my parents would tell you they could not have managed without that group in the early years.”
Trinh’s family currently resides in Calgary.
Her parents have visited Vietnam a few times; she hopes to go back for a visit in the near future.
Her father, now retired, made his living as a translator and welder in Alberta. Her mother works as an accountant, while her sister is a hospital pharmacist.
The family’s experience inspired the Heritage Minute but some details differ. For example, in the segment, the girl is given a Habs tuque, not jacket. And the scene plays out in Montreal, not Lethbridge. Trinh believes she got her knack for storytelling and journalism from her mother, who did freelance work for newspapers in Vietnam.
Growing up shy and quiet may also have helped Trinh develop her writing skills. She says she was selfconscious about her teeth because they were crooked, and preferred to express herself on paper rather than vocally while growing up.
Once her father became a fulltime welder, he got dental benefits that allowed Trinh to get braces, which came off in Grade 9.
“I could be wrong, but I was told from a teacher who emailed me years ago from my elementary school that they still have the book I wrote about the monkey murders in Grade 5 in the library. I wrote a lot!”
Trinh, who is married and has two kids, volunteers her time with refugee groups in Ottawa.
“I think for me, I just want them to be able to communicate their concerns to us because they are going to have fears and they are going to experience things they may not understand and I want them to have this open channel of communication.”
She said the values her parents instilled in her and her sister continue to resonate strongly.
“Growing up, it was very clear to us that we had an opportunity that we couldn’t squander, that you lived life with gratitude,” she said.