This first-person article is the experience of Tiffanie Tri, writer, political leader, entrepreneur and community builder in Ottawa. For more information on CBC’s First Person Stories, please see frequently asked questions.
If you asked me when I found out my family was refugees, I couldn’t tell you. There hasn’t been a single moment of realization – just memories scattered like puzzle pieces that don’t always seem to fit.
When we were children, my parents would tell my sisters and me about their harrowing journey to escape soldiers and pirates, how they survived the stormy waters of the South China Sea and arrived in Hong Kong.
After nine days at sea, they waited another three days on the ship just outside the city before the United Nations intervened and they were finally allowed to disembark. They stayed in a refugee camp for four months before being sponsored to come to Ottawa in 1979.
Hearing these stories always felt like new adventures somewhat removed from my life in Canada. As a child, I didn’t have the historical knowledge or understanding to anchor their meaning.
In school, little was taught about the Vietnam War – just a few sentences sprinkled here and there in history textbooks. Vietnam War films have always been told from the perspective of American soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam ripe for cinematic shots of mud, blood and glory.
None of these Oscar-worthy performances resonated with the stories I had heard from my family, who retained sparkles of hope and humanity despite the melancholy.
I guess it was no surprise that my passing interest turned into easy ambivalence.
ask my grandfather
My maternal grandfather was the driving force behind our family’s move to the other side of the world. My parents were dating at the time and my father joined my mother’s family on the perilous journey, leaving behind his own parents. They gave up their destiny to the ocean and the immigration system.
Although my parents shared their stories of what happened, it was important to hear my grandfather’s perspective. He didn’t talk much about his past. Maybe it was the loss of my grandmother just a few years after arriving in Canada, or maybe the stifling humility of starting over robbed him of the desire to talk about his life.
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At family gatherings, I used the obligatory greeting “Hi gong gong!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he would say back, nodding in recognition as he waved us off.
The first time I heard him share his story was when he was baptized at the age of 89. The slightest trace of emotion crept into his voice as he spoke of how life changed dramatically during the war, his imprisonment and the many attempts he made to get his family out of the country. .
With their savings depleted by extortion and the exorbitant prices charged by smugglers for a chance at freedom, my family made one last attempt to leave Vietnam. Moving like shadows, they boarded a boat with several hundred people. After nine days at sea, a violent storm shakes the boat and many passengers lose consciousness.
When he came to himself the next morning, still alive, my grandfather couldn’t believe it. “Even after all that, we still couldn’t die!” he sang in disbelief, still puzzled after all these years.
pandemic time
More and more, I began to feel an attraction, a nagging feeling that I needed to document these stories and to honor this determination and resilience.
I would push those feelings aside to prioritize the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It wasn’t until the pandemic put a stop to all the events and activities that I felt I had enough time.
I decided to try to capture this story, after meeting a film producer and director whose family also moved to Canada during the Vietnam War.
The process was not easy. We reached out to my grandfather on Zoom to find out more about his history with my parents acting as translators across language and generations.
Dotting him with our list of prepared questions, we waited, sometimes impatiently, as he searched his memories, stoic as always.
Towards the end, we asked him what he missed the most in Vietnam. He took a moment to think and said, βIt’s hard to remember. Life is like a dream.
I had more questions but I could see he was fading as his answers got shorter and shorter. We said good evening and ended the call.
It was the last time I spoke to him. Four weeks later he was gone. Just when I had begun to break down the walls he had built around his memories, and perhaps his grief, I found myself with the ashes of what could have been.
I spent months berating myself for waiting so long to document his story, for waiting for the perfect conditions to come together and now it was too late.
Shedding and disentangling
As I grieve, one question rings in my mind, the one posed by director Han Nguyen during our first conversations. “When do past and present meet before they part again?”
I think of it as I stroll through Ottawa’s Chinatown where my grandfather lived for the last decades of his life, where Chinese herbal and acupuncture shops are slowly being replaced by hip storefronts of microbreweries and cannabis dispensaries.
A new build will cover my grandfather’s footprints even as I cling to the past. And I realize that there may not be a single moment when the past and the present meet. Instead, every step we take is a collision, every breath an interaction between past and present, a laconic negotiation of our future.
It’s either a trivial parody or a huge privilege, depending on how you see it.
My message is now simple. Talk to your living ancestors. Discover the stories of how they moved mountains, crossed oceans and looked sideways.
And know that the same force resides within you.
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