Best of Vancouver 2010 communities: Flourishing far from Vietnam

Lam Dang was a 19-year-old refugee in search of a new country when he arrived in Canada in 1980.

Now 49, Dang has returned to his native Vietnam a few times, but only for short visits. There’s no doubt in his mind where he belongs. As the genial father of one noted, he has lived in Canada longer than he lived in the land of his birth.

“It’s my home now,” Dang told the Georgia Straight, speaking about his adopted country in an interview at the offices of the East Vancouver–based Multilingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities.

As a settlement worker with MOSAIC, Dang helps newcomers integrate in their new land. He teaches them the basics, from finding a house or a job to getting their kids into a school.

Dang’s personal story reflects the narrative of a community with a recent history in Canada. Until the early 1970s, according to Dang, there were few Vietnamese in Canada, and most of them were students.

That changed in the years following 1975, the year the Vietnam War ended. Thousands fled from the new Communist regime, often braving the perils of the South China Sea in rickety boats.

Many were resettled in Canada. The community has grown. According to latest census figures, there were more than 180,000 people of Vietnamese descent in the country in 2006, making them the fourth-largest Asian-Canadian group.

Census figures also indicate that in 2006 there were about 31,000 Canadians of Vietnamese extraction in British Columbia. An overwhelming majority of these—26,115 people—are in Greater Vancouver. They’re the sixth-largest Asian-Canadian community in the Lower Mainland, after the Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Korean, and Japanese communities.

Many are in professions in the private and public sectors, while others are prospering as entrepreneurs, according to Dang. “The opportunities are here, and they very much belong to this place,” he said.

The echoes of the Vietnam War continue to ring in the ears of many former refugees. But, according to Que-Tran Hoang, such memories are distant to the younger generation.

Hoang arrived in Canada as a three-year-old girl. Now in her 30s, she belongs to the so-called 1.5 generation who were born in Vietnam but raised in Canada.

She says that many in her peer group, as well as among second-generation Vietnamese Canadians, have other concerns.

“We focus much of our energies into our current society,” Hoang told the Straight in an East Vancouver coffee shop. “Just like all different Canadians, we want to be successful in our careers, have a family. Canada is our homeland.”

Hoang, a constituency assistant for a B.C. MLA, has a keen interest in Vietnamese history. She also has big plans for herself and her family. For one thing, she intends to pursue a master’s degree in community studies.

As members of the younger generation find their place in mainstream society, conflicts arise in some families, as they do in immigrant communities grappling with what Toan Lai describes as cultural and generational gaps.

A former refugee, Lai is a multicultural liaison worker with the Vancouver school board. “You can challenge your superiors whenever you think that they’re not right,” Lai told the Straight in a phone interview. “But in our culture, maybe as in yours, too, maybe we just sit and listen and accept what we are told by the elders, by the parents.”

Vi Nguyen is familiar with how past allegiances sometimes trigger these clashes. She worked with Vietnamese-Canadian youth until 2007, and she recalls an art exhibit she organized in 2003. For a dash of fun, she asked the participating young artists to paint something on the shirts they were going to wear to the event. One 16-year-old showed up in a shirt painted with a yellow star on a red field, the current flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The former South Vietnam’s flag is a yellow field with three red stripes.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Nguyen said that this caused some raised eyebrows. But the artist wasn’t even making a political statement. “That’s his artistic expression, and he’s proud of being Vietnamese,” Nguyen related.

Nguyen arrived with her family in 1982, when she was three years old. According to her, her parents believe in letting the past go. “They just feel like it’s not their battle to fight anymore,” she said. “And they just prefer to move forward.”

Major annual events in the Vietnamese Canadian community

Que-Tran Hoang identified four events, the biggest of which is Tet, or Vietnamese new year, which occurs in either January or February, according to the lunar calendar. The community also celebrates an ancestor day in either March or April. And depending on one’s ideological standpoint, April 30 is the day Vietnam was either shackled by communism or liberated by a people’s revolution. The war ended on April 30, 1975. The community also marks a children’s moon festival, or harvest festival, which traditionally falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar.

Where to get a taste of Vietnam

There are plenty of Vietnamese restaurants and stores along Vancouver’s Fraser Street and Kingsway. Hoang’s favourite noodle places are Café Xú Hue (2226 Kingsway) and Pho Tau Bay (10782 148th Street, Surrey). For groceries, she recommends the Dong Thanh Supermarket (1172 Kingsway), and Henlong Market (14357 104th Avenue, Surrey).

People to watch in politics

Lam Dang’s sister-in-law Trang Nguyen is the first Vietnamese-Canadian in B.C. to win a federal nomination contest to run as MP. A local community-media figure, court interpreter, and therapist, Nguyen is the Conservative candidate for the Vancouver-Kingsway riding, currently held by the NDP. According to Dang, another person to take note of is Tammy Dao, who ran for city council in Surrey in 2005. The president of the Lac Viet Public Education Society, a prominent local group, Dao was a recipient of a B.C. Community Achievement Award in 2008.