#History – idonthaveacoolname

September 9, 2025September 16, 2025

From Flight to Belonging: Refugee Testimony and the Canadian Imagination

Hearts of Freedom: Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees.
Peter Duschinsky, Colleen Lundy, Michael J. Molloy, Allan Moscovitch, and Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe. Foreword by Joe Clark. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025. Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, no. 20.

Northrop Frye observed that Canadian sensibility is less perplexed by “Who am I?” than by “Where is here?” (The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination). Hearts of Freedom resonates with this insight, as the refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be, showing a nation aspiring to generosity, inclusion, and humanitarian engagement.

Hearts of Freedom is both a book and a wider public history initiative dedicated to preserving the voices of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees who arrived in Canada between 1975 and 1997. Drawing on 173 oral history interviews, the final one conducted with former Prime Minister Joe Clark, the editors have created an invaluable archive of lived experience that complements existing institutional accounts of the Indochinese resettlement program. Whereas earlier works such as Michael Molloy and Peter Duschinsky’s Running on Empty (2017) traced the diplomatic and bureaucratic machinery of resettlement, this volume turns deliberately to the refugees themselves; it foregrounds their voices and memories as the central historical evidence.

The book is organized thematically and by national origin, with chapters devoted to the experiences of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees. Early sections recount the violence, persecution, and dislocation that prompted flight—civil war, invasions, genocide, and perilous journeys by land and sea. Many of the interviewees tell their stories of being refugees through temporary camps in Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, before tracing their arrival in Canada. The narratives detail first impressions of climate, language, and cultural difference, alongside encounters with both the generosity of sponsors and the challenges of prejudice. The editors preserve the cadence of testimony, allowing survivors’ voices to remain central, while photographs, maps, and timelines situate these stories in their historical and geographic contexts.

The central contribution of Hearts of Freedom is to the social history of immigration and refugee settlement in Canada. The oral histories reveal not only personal trauma and resilience but also the crucial role of private citizens and community organizations in facilitating integration. Frequent mentions of “church ladies” highlight how ordinary Canadians, particularly women in faith communities, provided everyday care and advocacy that were essential to the refugees’ resettlement and sense of welcome. Readers are reminded of the transformative significance of Canada’s private sponsorship program, recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees with the 1986 Nansen Medal. These accounts reveal the program’s practical challenges and occasional failures; they also show its capacity to foster belonging and to reshape Canadian multiculturalism in the late twentieth century.

The volume’s strength lies in its breadth of testimony and the affective immediacy of the narratives. The stories convey in intimate detail what was at stake for families who risked everything to flee; they also reveal how newcomers encountered both welcome and exclusion in their new country. If there is a limitation, it lies in the difficulty of sustaining analytical coherence across such a wide range of experiences; the oral history format necessarily fragments, and at times readers may wish for more interpretive synthesis. Yet this very openness is also a virtue; it resists the tendency to impose a single, homogenizing narrative on a diverse refugee population.

For historians, Hearts of Freedom is indispensable as both a research source and a teaching text; it exemplifies the methodological rigour and interpretive nuance that oral history can bring to the study of migration. By centring refugee memory, the book extends the historiography of Canadian immigration beyond policy and institution centred narratives; it shows how first‑person testimony captures the lived experience of liminality, displacement, and adaptation, revealing social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of migration that conventional archival sources often overlook. For scholars of migration and liminal studies, the collection offers a model for integrating oral history with broader historical, sociopolitical, and cultural analysis, demonstrating how voices at the margins convey both individual agency and structural forces. For policymakers and community practitioners, it provides hard earned lessons about the critical importance of listening to those most affected by refugee regimes; the book shows how human experiences can shape program design, foster empathetic engagement, and deepen understanding of the complex dynamics of resettlement.

Crucially, Hearts of Freedom also prompts reflection on Canada itself. The resettlement of people from Southeast Asia was never only about those who arrived; it was also about those who received them. The unprecedented scale of private sponsorship, the debates in Parliament, and the work of immigration officials who designed and implemented new programs were matched by the readiness of thousands of Canadians to open their homes. Together, these efforts marked a political moment in which the country tested its aspirations as a humanitarian actor on the world stage. As the book notes, “[i]n Canada, we can live with and celebrate fluid identities” (p. 75). The refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be; they show a nation striving toward generosity, inclusion, and global responsibility. It is this dual legacy; of refugees remaking their lives and of Canadians aspiring to embody their highest ideals; that gives Hearts of Freedom its enduring political and historical resonance.

August 17, 2025September 16, 2025

More thoughts On the Calculation of Volume

James Joyce’s Ulysses transformed modern literature by distilling the immensity of lived experience into the span of a single day. June 16, 1904, becomes in Joyce’s hands a universe unto itself: a temporal container vast enough to hold myth, politics, history, desire, and the smallest gestures of the everyday. The novel’s radical gesture was not merely narrative compression but the demonstration that the totality of modernity, its anxieties, its fragmentations, its pleasures, could be staged within the ordinary hours of a single date. Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume undertakes a similarly ambitious project, though refracted through a contemporary sensibility that is both ecological and philosophical. In Balle’s work, November 18 is not only the date around which Tara Selter’s consciousness circles but also an emblem of how time itself can collapse, repeat, and be lived otherwise.

The significance of November 18, especially in its Danish context, underscores that this is no arbitrary choice. It suggests a historical memory and collective atmosphere imprinted onto the present. Yet in Balle’s rendering, the repetition of this day becomes less about history as event and more about the possibility of inhabiting duration differently. Where Joyce excavates the myths and archetypes lying beneath the surface of modern Dublin, Balle turns to the structures of temporality itself, showing how repetition might create not stasis but a heightened awareness of interconnection. November 18 becomes an aperture through which the density of life (ethical, social, ecological) can be perceived.

As I noted in my other article about these books, the temporal compression of November 18 finds a parallel in the sestertius of Antoninus Pius that Tara Selter contemplates. The coin, depicting Annona with the modius, grain, cornucopia, and ship’s prow, condenses the Roman system of provision into a single, graspable unit, where the measurement of grain enforces both nourishment and governance. The modius standardizes abundance, making it calculable, equitable, and socially legible. In reflecting on this coin, Tara apprehends the ethical and material stakes of measurement, just as the recurring day crystallizes human experience into a disciplined, perceptible unit of time. Measurement, whether of grain or hours, becomes an ethical practice, an engagement with responsibility and the limits inherent in sustaining life, much like the gathering, interpreting, and distributing of data and algorithms, where each unit carries moral weight, shaping outcomes with both insight and consequence.

The resonance with Walter Benjamin’s notion of history as constellations of fragments is strikingly evident in Balle’s work. Perhaps its because his work has been on my mind lately but Benjamin posits that history is not a continuous progression but a montage of moments, objects, and dates that can illuminate the totality of a system when apprehended with insight; each fragment, each artefact, carries the potential to reveal the hidden structures of power, social relation, and human intention. In Balle, both the sestertius and November 18 function precisely as such fragments. The coin, with its depiction of Annona and the modius, condenses the economic, administrative, and symbolic machinery of the Roman Empire into a single tangible unit; November 18 compresses the ethical, temporal, and ecological stakes of modern existence into a recurring day. Together, they operate as microcosms, each having its own aura, carrying within it a dense network of dependencies, obligations, and consequences, where the material, social, and natural orders intersect.

Yet Balle’s use of repetition diverges from Benjamin’s messianic impulse toward redemption. The recurrence of November 18 is not a promise of liberation or fulfilment but a careful interrogation of limits and attentiveness. The reader, following Tara Selter’s consciousness, is invited to inhabit a temporal loop that foregrounds responsibility, patience, and the ethical weight of observation. Each repetition becomes its own sphere or container: an opportunity to measure, to account, to confront scarcity and abundance alike, compelling a sustained focus that parallels the meticulous attention the Roman administration had to give to the distribution of grain. In this sense, Balle transforms Benjamin’s fragmentary flash into a disciplined experience: repetition illuminates the structures and stakes of life not by producing transcendence but by demanding care, precision, and a continuous negotiation with both the natural and social orders. The coin and the day together suggest that understanding the whole is inseparable from attention to the smallest units (whether of grain, of time, or of ethical action) and that these units carry their own weight as sites of reflection, responsibility, and moral reckoning.

In this respect, I was reminded of Byung-Chul Han’s reflections on the exhaustion produced by late-modern temporality and how this provides a counterpoint to Balle’s literary experiment. I find his work to be quite challenging but worthwhile. Han diagnoses contemporary life as dominated by relentless acceleration, the ceaseless expansion of tasks, information, and digital stimuli, and the consequent erosion of coherent narrative or ethical orientation; meaning is dispersed across a multitude of fleeting flows, leaving the individual fatigued, overstimulated, and disoriented. Balle, by contrast, deliberately inverts this condition. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 is not a day among many but a temporal loop, a durational container in which events repeat and attention must be sustained. The temporal compression forces a confrontation with the minutiae of existence and the limits of endurance, compelling both protagonist and reader to recover subtle distinctions, relational patterns, and ethical nuances that are ordinarily lost in the acceleration of ordinary life.

Where Han describes exhaustion as the product of constant motion and dispersal, Balle depicts a different form of fatigue: the strain of repetition, the psychological and ethical labour of inhabiting a single day over and over, attending to the consequences of each gesture, thought, and measurement. Yet this repetition is paradoxically generative rather than purely oppressive. By arresting time, Balle opens space for new modes of perception: the attentiveness to measurement, to the ethical distribution of resources, to the interplay of human action and ecological consequence becomes possible precisely because the temporal horizon is constrained. The fatigue here is not a loss of agency but a crucible for intensified awareness, a disciplined encounter with the ethical, temporal, and material stakes of ordinary life. The volume of it all. Through this temporal inversion, Balle stages a critique of modernity’s over-acceleration, showing that slowing, repeating, and attending can reveal dimensions of experience that rapidity conceals, and that the act of returning, calculating, and noticing can itself become a mode of ethical and perceptual renewal, much like meditation or the disciplined rhythm of pranayama cultivates awareness, patience, and a conscious engagement with the flow of breath and time.

The concept of vast, interconnected phenomena that defy easy comprehension resonates with Balle’s text in profound ways. These are occurrences whose scale and duration extend beyond the grasp of typical human understanding—events like climate change or global environmental shifts. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 serves as a miniature version of such an overwhelming phenomenon. Though it appears as a single day, its repetition gives it a temporal and ethical magnitude that challenges simple linear understanding. Each recurrence builds upon the previous one, adding layers of consequence and action, creating a sense of accumulating significance that mirrors how large-scale ecological changes unfold over time. Just as these crises stretch across generations and ecosystems, the repeated presence of November 18 compels the reader to engage with time and consequence in new, complex ways.

The hyperobject-like nature of November 18 compels Tara Selter (and, by extension, us, the readers) to inhabit temporality differently. One must attend simultaneously to the immediate, tangible realities of action and measurement and to the broader, often imperceptible consequences that unfold across the infinite loop of the day. This dual awareness mirrors the ecological imperative imposed by climate change: human agency operates within systems whose scale is difficult to grasp, yet it remains consequential. Tara’s recognition that she can “overuse” objects, whether by drinking too much coffee at her usual café until supplies run low or finding something missing from the grocery shelf, further emphasizes how small, individual actions reverberate through larger systems. In these moments, she becomes acutely aware of the fragility and limitations inherent in the cycles of consumption, a reflection of the broader, often invisible systems that govern availability and scarcity.

Balle dramatizes this tension in literary form, using repetition to make perceptible the otherwise invisible structures of responsibility, scarcity, and ethical consequence. In doing so, the novel cultivates a sensibility or an affect attuned to both temporal and ecological depth, encouraging readers to recognize that living responsibly entails not only action but careful, sustained attention to the interplay between the measurable and the immeasurable. In this light, Balle’s work offers a subtle critique of the prevailing data-driven narrative, suggesting that while the rise of algorithms and metrics promises clarity, it often oversimplifies the complexities of human experience. The novel’s focus on repetition and attention to the limits of measurement reminds us that not everything can be quantified, and that some truths, especially those that lie in the realms of ethics, ecology, and human relationships, elude the grasp of data.

Taken together, the coin, the day, and the novel itself function as material arguments about how humans orient themselves in worlds of overwhelming density. Joyce taught us that one day could be all days, that the everyday was vast enough to hold mythic significance. Balle takes up this challenge for our contemporary condition, showing how repetition, stasis, and recursion can equally serve as apertures onto the totality of our lives. November 18 becomes a new “Bloomsday,” not for Dublin but for the precarious world we now inhabit: a world where administration, ethics, ecology, and philosophy converge upon the smallest units of experience, compelling us to ask not only how to live through time but how to live in time differently.

August 17, 2025September 16, 2025

The Theology of Measurement: Annona, the Modius, and Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Volumes I and II)

Sestertius (Coin) Portraying Emperor Antoninus Pius from the Art Institute of Chicago

I have just finished reading the first two English-translated volumes of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. In these volumes, the protagonist, Tara Selter, reflects on a single object whose significance extends far beyond its material form: a sestertius of Antoninus Pius showing Annona enthroned, holding grain and a cornucopia, with a modius and a ship’s prow at her side. Though small and utilitarian, the coin, embodies a dense convergence of administration, ethics, and philosophy. It is not merely a medium of exchange; it functions as a material argument, condensing political, social, and theological reasoning into a tangible and accessible object. This object is a totem used by the author to explore the larger theme of how measurement structures human understanding and moral responsibility, showing that quantification (like that of the temporal unit of the “day” of November 18), is never purely technical but always entwined with ethical, political, and social dimensions.

Through her reflection on the coin, Tara confronts the central concern of the book: how measurement, here represented by the modius, structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. The image of Annona transforms a technical act into a reflection on governance, obligation, and the translation of natural abundance into regulated, distributable form. In the books, Tara becomes Annona. The coin demonstrates that quantification is never purely instrumental; it is simultaneously practical, ethical, and theological. By situating Tara’s encounter within the intellectual and administrative context of imperial Rome, Balle foregrounds a broader meditation on the nature of measurement, its consequences, and its moral significance.

The protagonist encounters not merely an ancient coin but a compressed meditation on the very nature of measure. The sestertius of Antoninus Pius depicting Annona, holding grain and cornucopia, with the modius and a ship’s prow beside her, is never treated as incidental ornament. It functions as a text in its own right, a statement in bronze that carries the weight of theology, administration, and mathematics all at once.

The choice of a sestertius is deliberate. This denomination offered a broad metal disc suitable for allegorical images and political messaging; it was more than a medium of exchange, it was a medium of thought. The Annona type of Antoninus Pius, struck in the 150s, is precisely the kind of object that the protagonist seizes upon: an artefact whose apparent banality conceals a dense weave of symbolism, administrative practice, and philosophical resonance. The coin passes hand to hand, but it also passes idea to idea, translating the act of provision into a language of images.

On its surface, the sestertius stages a double drama. The obverse presents the emperor’s portrait, a carefully chiselled symbol of enduring authority and serenity untouched by war. The reverse depicts Annona, the embodiment of Rome’s sustenance, ensuring that grain reaches the populace. The protagonist recognises that this duality conveys a compact theology of rule in which sovereign power and the material well-being of the people are inseparable; governance is not merely the issuing of decrees but the assurance that bread will reach citizens. Holding the coin is to grasp a microcosm of the empire’s bargain, where loyalty and obedience are repaid with sustenance and order.

This reflection opens into the larger meditation of the narrative. If Annona represents provisioning and the modius is her attribute, then measurement emerges as the hinge of both empire and ecology. The protagonist sees that imperial authority is exercised not only through images, ships, and laws but above all through measure; translating abundance into equitable portions parallels her own understanding that the sustainability of her world depends upon attention to limits and careful accounting of resources. The coin crystallizes a deeper truth: authority, provision, and action, whether imperial or personal, are inseparably bound to measurement and consequence.

The modius occupies a complex space at the intersection of the practical and the symbolic. In everyday Roman life, it was a standardized container for grain, essential to ensuring that the cura annonae, the administration of the city’s food supply, functioned effectively. The emperor was responsible for guaranteeing that each measure distributed to the populace was neither deficient nor excessive, yet on the sestertius, the modius assumes significance beyond the utilitarian; it signifies the translation of nature’s unbounded fertility into a quantity that is comprehensible and governable by human standards. The coin communicates that grain, harvested across distant provinces and transported across the Mediterranean, is made intelligible, distributable, and ultimately just through precise measurement.

Measurement carries a moral and symbolic weight. By resting her hand upon the modius, Annona conveys that volume is not a simple numerical abstraction; abundance must be managed, scarcity moderated, and the gifts of the earth integrated into the social order. The bronze of the coin makes this promise tangible and enduring, circulating among citizens as a reminder that imperial authority extends not only to law and territory but also to the sustenance of life itself. In this way, the act of measuring, ordinarily performed in granaries, is elevated on the coin to a gesture that combines technical exactitude with moral and quasi-theological significance; it prepares the protagonist to reflect on measurement as an act of justice and obligation.

The protagonist comes to understand that the act of measuring is central to the ethical and conceptual framework of the text. The calculation of volume is inseparable from questions of justice and responsibility; every measure carries consequences for the distribution of resources. The modius on the Antoninus Pius sestertius becomes a concrete representation of this principle, demonstrating that the management of abundance requires precision and accountability. The protagonist recognises that excesses of nature can be translated into ordered, comprehensible, and equitable forms only through careful calculation.

She observes that measurement enacts a moral and social contract; to quantify is to mediate between potential chaos and structured provision, between natural plenitude and human need. The modius functions as both a mathematical device and a symbol of responsibility, revealing that human comprehension and moral stewardship are inseparable, and that the act of measurement becomes a disciplined, quasi-theological exercise through which the natural and social orders are harmonized.

Annona is not merely a figure on a coin; she serves as a conceptual lens through which the protagonist understands the relationship between nature, measurement, and human obligation. Unlike Ceres, who embodies growth and fertility, Annona translates the boundless potential of the harvest into a regulated, measurable form that sustains society. Her posture, the placement of the modius, and the presence of the cornucopia and ship’s prow signify governance, order, and provision rather than mere abundance. She mediates between the natural world and human society, demonstrating that volume, when measured, becomes both a material and ethical instrument.

The protagonist notes that mediation operates across scales; from individual granaries to the imperial logistics network, Annona embodies the principle that measurement structures relations between humans and nature. The sestertius communicates that abundance must be mediated through calculation, that provision requires oversight, and that human responsibility is embedded in the act of measurement. Annona thus emerges as a symbol of the theological and moral dimensions of measurement; to quantify is to act within a framework of obligation and care, to convert natural plenitude into ethical order, and to recognise that human intervention is necessary to transform potential into practical sustenance.

Her encounter with the Annona sestertius crystallises the central argument: measurement is never purely technical but always imbued with ethical and quasi-theological significance. Volume is both a mathematical and moral category; it governs physical substances and social relations alike. The modius becomes a point of reflection, showing that quantifying is inseparable from human responsibility and oversight.

Through this encounter, she interprets measurement as a disciplined engagement with the world. To set grain into a modius is to convert potential into ordered provision; to calculate volume is to exercise judgment that mediates between abundance and scarcity. The sestertius demonstrates that the logic of measure extends beyond granaries into broader moral and civic understanding, where precision, accountability, and stewardship are intertwined. It embodies the convergence of human comprehension, ethical responsibility, and governance, making abstract principles tangible and situating the protagonist within a system where mathematics, obligation, and moral reflection are inseparable. Tara’s choice and agency are rife with meaning.

The Annona sestertius, seen through Balle’s lens, encapsulates the text’s exploration of how measurement structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. Calculation is never neutral or purely technical; it is a deliberate act through which abundance is rendered comprehensible, ordered, and ethically distributed. The coin, combining imperial portraiture with symbolic imagery, reveals the intersection of human governance, natural plenitude, and moral obligation. Volume functions as a medium in which mathematics, ethics, and theology converge. Measurement becomes a mode of care; an affect: it is simultaneously practical, moral, and a form of stewardship that binds the natural and social orders. The protagonist’s reflection affirms the central thesis: the theology of measurement, articulated through the modius and Annona, demonstrates that human calculation is a conduit for order, justice, and the harmonization of nature and society.

Further reading: These two books are both valuable resources for understanding how Roman imagery communicates political, ethical, and symbolic meanings, making them especially useful for the analysis of the Annona sestertius in this essay and the book. 
- Paul Zanker – The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus
- Richard Brilliant – Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Roman Art

May 16, 2025May 17, 2025

From Da Nang to Canada: The Precursor to the Boat People Exodus

The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series provides an essential window into the internal deliberations of American policymakers during moments of global crisis. Compiled by the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian, FRUS volumes contain declassified memos, transcripts, and cables that reveal in real time how U.S. officials assessed and responded to unfolding events. In the case of South Vietnam’s collapse in 1975, these documents offer an unfiltered look at the rapidly changing military situation, the breakdown of civil authority, and the early contours of a refugee crisis that would eventually reach Canadian shores. Drawing from these records, this article traces how the fall of Da Nang marked the beginning of the boat people migration—one of the most significant humanitarian movements of the late 20th century. These excerpts are from Collapse and Evacuation, February 26–July 22, 1975 - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume X, Vietnam, January 1973–July 1975

By the spring of 1975, the Republic of Vietnam was in freefall. While the world would later fixate on the iconic images of helicopters lifting evacuees from rooftops in Saigon, the real beginning of the humanitarian crisis—and of the Vietnamese diaspora to countries like Canada—can be traced to earlier moments, particularly the collapse of Da Nang.

In March 1975, Da Nang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city and a key northern stronghold, descended into chaos. As one U.S. official noted in a high-level conversation, “the political situation now is radically different,” with Communist forces gaining ground and establishing what many viewed as a legitimate revolutionary government. Ambassador Martin tried to argue that Da Nang might still hold or link to the south, but his view was challenged by others who insisted that the South Vietnamese forces were stretched too thin and facing imminent collapse.

This was not an overstatement. By late March, military analysts predicted Da Nang could fall “within a few days” due to overwhelming North Vietnamese pressure, disorganized South Vietnamese defenses, and mass civilian panic. One internal memo noted, “the situation in DaNang is chaotic,” and that “its defences could simply collapse”. President Thieu, then still in power, was reportedly considering pulling forces from the city entirely—a strategic retreat that left the civilian population vulnerable.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Gerald Ford and his advisors were receiving dire updates. CIA Director William Colby predicted that Da Nang would fall even if elite Marine units remained in place. “It should fall within two weeks,” he said, “even if the Marine Division stays”. When asked about the evacuation of civilians, Colby described “terrible mob scenes” at both airports and ports, where thousands tried to flee. Soldiers were firing their way onto ships. Law and order had broken down entirely.

What emerged in Da Nang was not just a tactical withdrawal or a city lost—it was the collapse of an entire civic order under the weight of war. The distinction between military personnel and civilians dissolved as desperation overtook discipline. Refugees overwhelmed the last remaining points of escape, creating a humanitarian crisis that left even U.S. officials stunned by its speed and scale. These early signals from Da Nang, echoed in classified briefings and policy cables, began to shape how allied governments would later understand their responsibilities—not just in geopolitical terms, but as urgent moral imperatives. In Canada, although formal resettlement programs were still years away, these early images and reports laid the groundwork for a new kind of foreign policy conversation: one that placed refugee protection at the heart of international engagement. The seeds of Canada’s eventual leadership in refugee resettlement were sown here—in the failure to protect, and the dawning realization that the world would soon be asked to respond.

This was more than a military failure. It marked the first wave of what would become a global humanitarian emergency. The fall of Da Nang was the beginning of a refugee crisis that would swell into the exodus of the thuyền nhân—the boat people—fleeing Vietnam by sea. Canada’s eventual involvement in resettling these refugees has become one of its most important modern migration stories, but the roots of that response lie in the scenes of terror and flight that emerged in places like Da Nang weeks before Saigon itself fell.

What distinguished the collapse in Da Nang was not just the loss of territory, but the unraveling of social and institutional fabric in real time. Unlike the images of orderly withdrawal sometimes projected in official narratives, the reality on the ground—documented in these U.S. diplomatic cables—was of disintegrating command structures, mass panic, and a population abandoned by any sense of coordinated response. It was in these moments that survival became individualized. Families fractured at airfields, children were separated from parents, and decisions were made with no time, no plan, and no guarantee of safety. The trauma of that sudden collapse carried forward into the boats, camps, and eventual resettlement pathways that followed.

The stories of those who would later arrive on Canadian shores—traumatized, stateless, and often separated from loved ones—began in these early, chaotic weeks. While many Canadians remember the arrival of the boat people in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the seeds of that journey were planted in the final weeks of the Vietnam War, when the international community was still struggling to comprehend the scale of what was to come.

For Canada, the fall of Da Nang and the refugee flight that followed posed both a moral and logistical question: how would the country respond to a new, mobile, and vulnerable population created by geopolitical collapse? The answer, forged in policy rooms and across civil society, would help redefine Canada’s refugee policy and multicultural identity in the decades to follow.