Two men united by same daily struggle

Hung Pham and Edgar Morales came to Canada at different times, from different parts of the world. Hung is single and Edgar is married, and there is 20 years’ difference in their ages, but portions of their stories are not dissimilar. Both men fled danger and came here on the run, hoping to start over. Both men are looking for work. And they have become, in a way, allies in the search. They met — they continue to meet — at the Oriole Community Services Association, in the northeast part of town. Hung Pham is slim, soft- spoken and intense. He arrived in Canada in 1984. He came from Vietnam. He was one of the boat people.

“ I went from Saigon to Malaysia. I was in the refugee camp for six months, I think. It was pretty rough.” He does not elaborate; there is no need. He eventually landed in Belleville, which is a far cry from Saigon. He said, “In Vietnam, I worked in a factory. I was making barbed wire and nails. I was an equipment operator.” As soon as he got his feet on the ground, he moved from Belleville to Ottawa, and he went to university. “ I studied electrical engineering.”

That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Come here, look around, and find a way to fit in. So how’s it going? He paused. He sighed. He said, “ I have been unemployed since 1997.” What happened? “ I was a computer integrator. I did assembly and troubleshooting of PCs. But the company doesn’t exist any more.”

It was bought, and he was downsized.

This is a sad twist on the immigrant’s blues. He came here, adapted to the market, and the market threw him for a loop. If he can’t find a job in his field, it is not for lack of trying. But he also knows that the longer he is out of work, the harder it is to find work. He said, “My knowledge is rusty, I think, but at the same time, I play with computers a lot. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know several program languages, and I am a web designer.”

In case you’re curious, he designed the website for the Oriole Community Services Association (ocsa-toronto.org). The centre is open six days a week and handles some 5,000 clientvisits a year on a shoestring budget in the neighbourhood to the north of the Don Mills subway station. Of his ongoing search for work, Hung said, “ Things have changed. At one time you could get a job with benefits. Now almost everyone I know works for an agency. You have to pay part of your salary to the agency. You don’t get benefits. Sometimes I am upset.

“ For me, if I had a job, things would be different. The problem is the job.” And so he continues to help people learn to use the Oriole’s computers to search for work, which is how he met Edgar.

Edgar is the younger man by nearly 20 years. He is chipper and optimistic, happy to be getting a second chance. He said, “ I’ve been here about a year. I came from Colombia. We were escaping the guerillas.”

I asked him to explain. He said, “ My wife belonged to a political party. The guerillas did not agree with her party.”

It seems the guerillas in his country use poor peasants to spy or to act as lookouts, paying for this service with a few badlyneeded coins. Edgar’s wife was working with peasant women, trying to get them not to cooperate with the guerillas. He said, “ One day, she left for work at 7a. m. She didn’t show up for work. And she didn’t come home from work. They had kidnapped her. We were very worried. After three days, the policemen found her in a different city, two hours away, in a hospital. She had big hematomas. We don’t talk about this; she cries.”

I’d be surprised if she did not. But I was a bit surprised by his use of that word, hematomas, rather than, say, bruises. He smiled.

“ In Colombia, I was a paramedic. I’d love to be one here, but I have to improve more my English. I will try to study English and try to find a good job.” He likes ambulance work. He said, “ It’s nice to save the lives of people. My specialty was car accidents. I have already talked to an ambulance company, and I know I will have to upgrade my license.” And so Edgar will continue to work on his language skills, and then he will take the necessary college courses to be a paramedic here. And Hung will continue to volunteer, helping Edgar and others on the computers, while looking for a decent job of his own.

It is a daily struggle. Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@