The origins of Canada's Vietnamese community lie in an historical event, the "boat people crisis", that was of major significance to Canada and Canadians. To Canadians, it is a symbol of Canada's national identity as it was being formulated at the time and is understood today. As such, the event attracts a lot of interest, including the interest of people who want to change Canada's national identity.

That's what happened between 2006 and 2015. The history of the origins of Canada’s Vietnamese community was successfully rewritten by the Harper government because Harper rejected the national identity as it was formulated in that event.

Unless you specifically take measures to search out the true history, you will be reading, seeing, or hearing Harper's myth and propaganda. Even if you are a Canadian of Vietnamese origin yourself, you probably have heard only this myth and propaganda about why Canada admitted you or your ancestors.

The project to rewrite the history was managed and financed by the Government of Canada when Stephen Harper was in charge. His intent was hostile toward Vietnamese Canadians because in his view Canada admitted the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

The government was not pandering to the Vietnamese community, as the government deceived people into believing. That idea was set up to protect the revised history from criticism. It creates a hostile environment for people who would dispute the revised history. This betrays the former boat people and their descendants, who are deprived of part of their Canadian identity.

With all the government resources put to it, the project was remarkably successful. Even today's governments, no longer led by Stephen Harper, continue to distribute the myth and propaganda. Harper had several non-government allies, some of them Vietnamese, who also continue to support his version of history.

Because of this hostility and betrayal you, as a researcher and writer, have a responsibility to seek out the true story. If you do not make the effort, you will just be repeating the myth and propaganda, and helping to ensure its longevity.

The origins of Canada's Vietnamese community lie in a refugee event commonly known as the "boat people" crisis". Stephen Harper undertook to rewrite the history of the boat people crisis as a means to changing Canada's identity as a nation.

It was not hard for Harper to come up with a plausible story and convince Canadians that it was true. Harper simply took some familiar US history and declared it to be Canadian history. He wanted Canada to be more like the US.

If you see any of these flags in your research material, you are probably reading Harper's revised history:

• The boat people crisis ran from 1979 to 1996. The revised history has it starting in 1975 and usually ending in 1980.

• Canada admitted around 162,000 refugees from Vietnam in one single program. The revised history usually puts it at a much lower number, or subdivides them into "waves" of refugees and multiple programs (which is how the US did it).

• The people who left Vietnam had a variety of reasons for leaving. What triggered a response from UNHCR and Canada was a sudden and large exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam beginning in mid-1978. The revised history has it being related to the Vietnam war and the fall of Saigon (that was the US response).

• The other thing that triggered a response from UNHCR and Canada was the threat from SE Asian nations to push the refugees back out to sea. The goal of the boat people program was to resettle the refugees before they were pushed back out to sea and to discourage others from leaving Vietnam in boats. The program ended when that goal was met in 1996. The revised history has it being related to rescuing selected people from communists in Vietnam (that was the US goal).

• The boat people crisis involved refugees from all over Vietnam, and Canada accepted them all on a non-partisan basis. The revised history implies that Canada admitted only "victims of the fall of Saigon" on a partisan basis because of a moral obligation to rescue a former ally in the war (that was the US).

• Don't be distracted by the fact that Canada admitted a small number of Vietnamese outside of the boat people program. They were not admitted as refugees and it had nothing to do with the war or the boat people crisis, although the revised history suggests all of those. (It's hard to pin down the exact number, but it was on the order of 5,000 people).

When Harper revised the history, he also created an annual national day to commemorate the arrival of the boat people in Canada. He defined that commemoration in terms of his revised history, so it does not actually commemorate the arrival of the boat people. It commemorates Harper's revised history wherein, among other things, Canada was a military ally of the defunct Saigon regime and rescued them when Saigon fell.

The commemoration is exceptionally hostile toward the real boat people. In fact, some of the participants call the event "the national day of hatred", which is a reference to former boat people who refuse to re-define themselves in the terms prescribed by the revised history. The prescribed terms are to identify as "victims of the fall of Saigon", that is to say, aligned as an ally of Canada in the war as Harper re-imagined it.

The event is a political dog whistle. Many Canadians of Vietnamese origin can clearly hear this hostile message, while other Canadians imagine it to be an homage to a group of victims who received Canada's sympathy and support in a defining historical event. In this context, no one, particularly politicians, can criticize the event for its hostile content. If you do, you are either attacking some unfortunate victims or you are disloyal to Canada's past military exploits.

The government's entire pattern of communication with the Vietnamese community is structured around this dog whistle. This complex duality of messaging is triggered by a single word. That word is "Saigon".

If you pay attention to government communications, you will notice that any reference to Canada's Vietnamese community always contains the word "Saigon". This ranges from simple press releases for Asian Heritage Month, to tangible monuments such as street signs designating neighborhoods as "Little Saigon".

All of this communication does pander to a specific group of people, but it is not the boat people. But it does serve to prevent people from promoting the idea that Canada's national identity is tied up with a group of refugees who were not "victims of the fall of Saigon".

This is what you have to overcome if you want Canada to acknowledge the real boat people. You will need political support if you want to go any further than satisfying yourself about the true origins of Canada's Vietnamese community.

Canada's response to the boat people crisis began in mid-1979. By the end of 1980, Canada had admitted 60,000 refugees. Never before that or after that has Canada admitted so many refugees is such a short time

Such a large and rapid response was only possible because of the amount of public attention that the exodus from Vietnam was receiving. The media was full of stories and several books were published in Canada in this initial period. All of those books are out of print today.

In those days, everyone understood that the story was an exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. It had nothing to do with the Vietnam war or the fall of Saigon. The war was a US problem it it was all over years before.

After the initial influx of refugees, which was aimed at relieving the pressures in the SE Asian refugee camps, the program continued for another 15 years. The average rate of admissions over that period was around 6,000 people per year. It had become routine, so no one in Canada wrote any more books about it, and there was almost nothing in the media.

When Stephen Harper brought the story to everyone's attention again in 2015, it got another flurry of media attention and two more books (that we know of) were published, as well as a lot of material on the internet.

No one knew that Harper's version was a revised version -- he deceived people into believing that it was a celebration of the original story. Consequently, everyone repeats it believing that they are commemorating the story of the boat people when in fact they are expressing hostility toward them.

When you are looking for the story today, you have to both avoid Harper's version and find the true version in rare sources. That is not easy to do.

Following are some more tips you can use to help you find good resources and to avoid bad resources.

Publication date

Everything changed when Harper was elected in 2006. You need to use resources that were in print before that date if they were published in Canada. You can't use any web sites, not even government web sites. The exception is archival web sites that are reproducing pre-2006 Canadian material.

Canada is not the US

Canada never, at any time in history, followed the US lead on Vietnam. US events are, however, often familiar to us because of coverage in the media and Hollywood. It also happens that the rewritten history for Canada aligns with US history, so this history is going to sound familiar to many Canadians. That does not make it correct. It is best to use Canadian resources only because the Canadian story is unique.

Incomplete resources

Virtually all comprehensive Canadian resources were published around 1980-81 when interest in the boat people was at a peak, but the project was long from over. Only 25% of the boat people had been admitted by then.

These resources cover the most important part of the story, so they are valuable. The most important part of the story is the government of the day's motivations for taking the project on.

To get the complete story you will have to use some non-Canadian resources that were published later, or get it from government archives. (We do both on this web site).

Don't trust authoritative figures

Appeal to authority is a common propaganda technique and the revisionists use it. Some prominent Canadians who were involved in 1979 have been co-opted by the revisionists. Some are sympathetic to the project. You have to get their original pre-2006 story, not todays re-hash.

First person stories are not history.

First person stories may be interesting and truthful, but they are not Canadian history. They rarely have the broad context information needed to put together a meaningful history. The revisionists have made a point of supporting collections of first person stories, selecting ones that do not conflict with the rewritten history. This is a way of distracting you from the facts with emotion and sympathy and the revisionists are using it extensively.

It's not the Vietnamese community

The fact that a small political faction in the Vietnamese community supports the revised history has led observers to believe that the problem is a conflict within the community. It's not. Political differences within communities of any type are quite normal -- that's freedom of speech. The problem is revision, suppression of the community's diversity by outside forces.