Retrieved lifeboat carries tales of Tamil migrants
Siva Mehanathan left his war-torn home country of Sri Lanka in1986 on a cargo ship, hoping that he would make it to Canada, but having very little assurance that the journey would take him here.
After 13 days on the ship, Mehanathan says he and the 154 others were abandoned in the two lifeboats in the Atlantic Ocean, without food or water.
They remained there for three days, firing a flare gun in hopes that they would be noticed, although they did not even know their whereabouts.
It was a fishing boat captain named Gus Dalton who noticed the lifeboats, and rescued the refugees.
“After the captain got us, we said ‘what is this place?’ He said ‘Canada.’ And after that, everybody was happy,” Mehanathan said.
AWorld Refugee Day event at Ryerson University Tuesday will centre on one of the lifeboats in which Mehanathan and 154 other Sri Lankan Tamil refugees arrived off the coast of Newfoundland more than thirty years ago.
The boat, organizers say, is “an object of honour” for those who have sought refuge in this country.
It was tracked down by documentary filmmaker Cyrus Sundar Singh in the summer of 2016, and is travelling through Canadian cities on a mobile exhibit that tells stories of those who arrived to Canada on the boat.
“The boat had been forgotten, disappeared, lost for 30 years, ” said Sundar Singh, who discovered the boat’s location after he participated in media interviews about his film on the Toronto Tamil Diaspora. “And then immediately the boat coming back caused its own kind of waves within the community.”
Sundar Singh arranged the Ryerson University leg of the tour, which is the only stop the boat will make in the city of Toronto — home to the world’s largest Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.
“I call it ‘Strange Cargo’ and I say ‘this time the lifeboat carries their stories,’” he said, explaining the title of the event.
One of those stories belongs to Mehanathan, 54, who now has a jewelry store in Scarborough, where he lives with his wife and children.
When he first arrived in Toronto, Mehanathan said that he felt welcomed and liked the people. He worked long hours at three jobs, rather than seeking out welfare.
“That’s why I’m a businessman now,” he said.
Mehanathan says that he hopes people will actively engage with the refugees’ stories, now that the boat is on tour.
An outdoor presentation will accompany the boat’s display on Gould Street at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Three former refugees will speak: one Tamil refugee, one Vietnamese refugee, and one Syrian refugee.