Operation Lifeline: Canada's Refugee Revolution

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2017

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1979, Canadians launched a revolutionary private sponsorship scheme to aid thousands of Indochinese refugees fleeing Vietnam. Under the scheme, groups of ordinary Canadians could pay for a refugee to be resettled in Canada. Thousands of Canadians took part, and supported the resettlement of 34,000 refugees in a year. Alex Last speaks to Professor Howard Adelman who set up Operation Lifeline - the first private sponsorship campaign in Canada. Photo: A Vietnamese boat crowded with refugees runs aground on the Malaysian coast. 1979 (BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds.
0:36.4	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:40.9	My name's Linda Davies and I commissioned
0:43.0	podcast for BBC Sounds.
0:45.0	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality,
0:49.0	featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:54.4	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
1:00.9	poltergeist, cricket and conspiracy theories, and that's just a few examples.
1:06.4	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
1:11.6	Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.
1:18.0	And today we go back to the late 1970s when ordinary Canadian citizens came to the aid of tens of thousands of
1:25.6	Indo-Chinese refugees who were fleeing communist Vietnam by launching the
1:30.8	world's most successful private sponsorship program for refugees.
1:39.4	The minister in the Christian Reform Church got off in the meeting and he gives me a hug and says
1:44.5	Howard isn't it wonderful when a Christian believer can hug a Jew for sponsoring
1:51.2	a Vietnamese Buddhist and that sums it up for me.
	...

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