A family of refugees changed my life story

TORONTO STAR TOUCH • PUBLISHED OCTOBER 17, 2015

On a hot, sticky day in May 1980, I trudged up Wilson Ave. from the York Mills subway station.

I was mad. I was 22 and had just emerged from three years of journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute. My intention had been to become an arts journalist and, specifically, a film or music critic.

But none of the newspapers I approached took me on. So I accepted the only job offered to me — as a reporter and photographer for The Catholic Register. Starting salary: $6,000 a year.

The Register was (and still is) a good weekly newspaper. But covering religious matters was light years away from what I had wanted to do, which was to interview Bruce Springsteen and review Raging Bull.

“Well, you’ve got to start somewhere,” my dad told me. And so there I was, camera bag slung over my shoulder, a cast on my left leg (I had tripped over my dog a few weeks earlier), clambering up a big hill, sweating profusely.

My destination was Loretto Abbey, a convent and high school. My editor had sent me there to take a picture of a family of Vietnamese refugees who had been sponsored by the nuns.

I was certainly aware of the Vietnam War. But my knowledge about the refugees of war was limited. I assumed, from films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, that the Vietnamese would be rural people who waded through rice paddies.

Then I met the Nguy family: dad and mom Ty and Huoy, in their 30s, and their four children, Buu Nhu, 9, Cuong Tuan, 9, Lan Nhu, 6, and Phuoc Tuan, 3. I was amazed. They looked like a family from a city. They dressed like me; the kids tore around playing tag as kids anywhere do.

They were smiling and obviously happy to be here, and they each shook my hand excitedly. We sat down to talk, but neither the nuns nor I could speak Vietnamese. Mr. Nguy, who knew only a few words of English, ran back into the convent and came out with a book.

It was a collection of photographs of the family in their hometown of Saigon before everything fell apart. The pictures showed the Nguys doing the things a family does — a day at an amusement park, a celebration at a restaurant, birthday parties.

And that’s what got me.

When I compared those happy scenes with the knowledge that they had to leave their home, live in makeshift camps in Malaysia and cram into boats to travel thousands of kilometres to sleepy Willowdale — it was an eye-opener.

I had known nothing like their plight. I was pampered compared to the Nguys.

After I took their picture, we were about to say goodbye when Mrs. Nguy saw me limping and motioned to my leg with a questioning look.

I knocked on the cast. They were surprised at the hard sound. I pulled my pant leg up a bit to show them. The kids got a big kick out of that and proceeded to knock on the cast, too.

But Mrs. Nguy gave me a look of deep sympathy and patted me on the back.

I was touched that this brave woman would feel bad for me.

I had torn the ligaments in my knee by tripping over my dog. They, on the other hand, had escaped a war zone, lived like nomads and were now in a completely foreign country.

I realized right then that this was unlike anything I had written about before. As I limped down the hill to the subway, I started writing the story in my head. I stayed up late that night and handed it in the next day. I suddenly felt older than my 22 years, and the weight of the responsibility of telling this difficult story gave me goosebumps.

The Register published my story and it launched me on a writing career I hadn’t planned.

While I am still very much a film buff and rock aficionado, I’ve never written about either subject since.

The experience with the Nguys sparked a fascination with marginalized groups.

I’m not long from retirement now. I’ve had a marvelous career writing mostly about the work of not-for-profit organizations focused on helping people. For the past 17 years I have specialized in writing about the role of university research in moving global society forward.

I’ve often thought of that Register story, but only from the perspective of it being my first news article and the unlikely way it came about.

But the day the photo of Alan Kurdi, washed up dead on a beach in Turkey, was published and seen worldwide, something shifted in my mind.

I saw that photo and remembered the Nguys and their journey. A revelation hit me hard: It wasn’t just that I wrote the Nguys’ story 35 years ago. It was that they gave me my career. If I’ve ever done any good in my work, it was because of a refugee family who gave a pissed-off Toronto boy a new path.

I haven’t seen the Nguys since that day 35 years ago. If you’re out there and you’re reading this, thank you.