Tet Festival Toronto - Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980

International Centre, 6900 Airport Road, Toronto, ON
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Join authors Michael J. Molloy, Peter Duschinsky, and Robert Shalka for a book talk and launch of Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980. The event will take place at the Toronto TET Festival at the International Centre. 

The fall of Saigon in April 1975 resulted in the largest and most ambitious refugee resettlement effort in Canada’s history. Running on Empty presents the challenges and successes of this bold refugee resettlement program. It traces the actions of a few dozen men and women who travelled to seventy remote refugee camps, worked long days in humid conditions, subsisted on dried noodles and green tea, and sometimes slept on their worktables while rats scurried around them - all in order to resettle thousands of people displaced by war and oppression.

Michael J. Molloy is an honorary senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and was senior coordinator of the Indochinese Refugee Task Force from 1979 to 1980.

Peter Duschinsky is a retired immigration foreign service officer and Immigration Canada’s former director of international liaison.

Robert J. Shalka, a retired immigration foreign service officer was one of two officers sent to Thailand to establish a new program for refugees from Thailand and Laos.

"Running on Empty is a compelling narrative about how Canada was able to resettle Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Hmong refugees during a time of international crisis. A valuable addition to Canadian immigration history." Vinh Nguyen, Renison University College at University of Waterloo