SfC In The News
 
March 1985
Escape down a river leads
to a new country, new life
By staff writer
The Canada Life Assurance Company
 
[Ed. note: This article was recently discovered in the SfC archives. "Toronto Office Skills Training Program" was the original organizational name for SfC.]
 
As the aircraft touched ground, her first thought was "I'm free". It was four years ago that Lisa Do arrived in Canada to start a new life. She was alone, spoke little English and had just risked her life to flee communist tyranny in her native Vietnam.
For the past few months, the Company has had two highly motivated and grateful members on board its Home Office team. Emily Truong, Policyholder Tax Services, and Lisa Do, Policy Value Payments, are two well-educated Vietnamese refugees who found themselves stuck in an ‘underemployment ghetto’ until they started working for Canada Life.
 
Her father had always warned her he would die under communist rule. When that rule became reality, he took his life. It was the shock of that event that propelled Lisa, then 32, to commit herself to a three-day, nightmarish escape from Vietnam by boat down the Mekong River. The boat was 12 metres long. There were 84 people aboard, 24 of them children. The group managed to avoid the coastal Vietnamese Police looking for prospects to send to 'Re-education Camps' but were attacked by pirates and robbed of food, money and jewellery. Fortunately, Lisa says, they left the women alone and the boat with its human cargo safely reached Pulau Bidong, a small Malaysian island where thousands of refugees took temporary shelter en route to a new home.
 
Pulau Bidong was also Emily Truong's destination after a similar escape by boat along the Mekong. Under the new communist regime, Emily had found she could no longer continue her studies in Dentistry because her father was a political prisoner. Her mother, anticipating "a lot of trouble", sold their possessions and arranged for some of the children to leave Vietnam. Emily was one of them. She was 20 and her desire for "a better life" was stronger than her fear of the unknown.
 
When a United Nations Delegation on Pulau Bidong Island approached the two women with several options for relocation in a new land, both chose Canada. "I had no idea about Canada but I said OK because life in the refugee camp was so bad," explains Emily. Lisa says she made her choice because "I knew that in Canada there isn't a big problem with discrimination
 
After several months of waiting while immigration regulations were being met, Emily arrived in Canada in October, 1980. Lisa followed in November of that year.
 
Emily remembers her first few months in Canada with the words: "It was great for me but I was also thinking about my family back home and that I had no money, no friends around me and I knew I had a lot of catching up to do in my schooling."
Lisa, after spending a year in Montreal, moved to Toronto because "I preferred to speak English". A qualified accountant, she couldn't find employment in her field for lack of Canadian work experience and settled for a job as sewing machine operator. Emily was similarly underemployed.
Last summer, Emily Truong (centre), Policyholder Tax Services, and two of her sisters were able to fulfill a three-year old dream to sponsor the rest of her family's immigration from Vietnam to Canada. December, 1984 was a special celebration as her father (released from an eight-year jail term as a political prisoner) her mother, grandmother, sister and in-laws gathered around the Christmas tree in their new home in Toronto.
A federal government program provided an alternative. And it was through this program that Canada Life had the opportunity to offer Lisa and Emily employment more suitable to their education and needs.
 
Both women are now graduates of this program called the Toronto Office Skills Training Program. "The school," explains its coordinator Janis Galway "is intended for Indo-Chinese women who have potential, a basic knowledge of English and some office skills but who need a bit of help to get going in the job market". With a population of 31,000 Indo-Chinese in Toronto and more arriving each day from overseas and from smaller centres within Canada, Janis anticipates a long and useful life for her school.
 
The program is 45 weeks long and teaches life skills, basic accounting, typing, general office procedures and data entry in its own, small data centre. One month of the program is spent in a temporary placement with a Toronto Company.
 
"We've had a long good connection with Canada Life," says Janis. "We originally contacted you as one on a list of 100 companies for input on what jobs would be available in the insurance industry for our graduates and I've been in touch with Nancy Farrell several times since.'' In September, 1983, a group of trainees toured Home Office and when Emily graduated from the program as the top student in her class, an interview was arranged with Heather Hutchison, Personnel.
 
Heather was impressed with Emily's presentation. She also believes that "corporations have a certain social obligation to help with employment opportunities for those people who have little Canadian work experience but are willing to work hard and learn on the job". Heather adds that Canada Life has a solid tradition of doing just that. Some time later, when a temporary job opening came up in the Policyholder Tax Services Department, she referred Emily to Nelda Miller, Manager in that area.
 
Emily was hired and started with the Company on October 15, 1984 to work on an eight-month tax project. Her manager Nelda is delighted with the work of her new staff member whom she describes as "a lovely person who is nicely spoken, bright and eager to learn
 
Emily is just as enthusiastic about her job and Canada Life so when she heard about an opening in Policy Value Payments, she told her friend Lisa who had also completed the Office Skills Training Program.
 
Lisa was hired as a part-time employee by Karen Wilson who finds her to be "intelligent and able to easily adapt because of her personality". Two weeks ago, Lisa was offered full-time employment in that department. She is ecstatic about the turn of events in her life. "I love it here. Everyone's been so kind and friendly, especially Karen. I'm already planning for the future. I'm going to get a Canadian diploma in accounting and take LOMA courses so I can learn more about the insurance business."
 
Emily echoes Lisa's resolve. "When I came here, I had little Canadian experience but I work hard and I'm learning".
 
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