An Important Anniversary – Did you miss it?

By Brian Buckley, Circle of Friends

Recently an important, if largely unnoticed, anniversary took place.

On June 27, 1979 the late Marion Dewar, Ottawa’s 52nd mayor, called together community leaders to discuss the plight of refugees then pouring out of Southeast Asia in unprecedented numbers. The outcome was Project 4000, the largest peacetime mobilization Ottawa has ever seen, which ultimately led to the successful resettlement of several thousand Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees in the National Capital region.

Project 4000 was very much a local initiative, arising from the compassion and concern with which our citizens responded to an unfolding humanitarian disaster, and offering them a means to do something practical about it. As such, it was part of a vast national wave of local community responses in 1979/80 as Canadians everywhere organized to try and alleviate the suffering. Project 4000 however was also of national significance as it strongly encouraged Canada ’s adoption of a leading role in the broader international response to the crisis. Thanks in part to the very ambitious resettlement target quickly adopted by the minority government of Joe Clark, other countries stepped up to the plate and the outlines of a solution gradually began to appear.

Holy Rosary Parish played its part in these historic events. A group of parishioners, some of whom happily are still with us, came together to welcome a family of five, – father, mother, and three children – and ease their transition into their new lives in Canada. In doing so the Parish acted in full conformity with the longer, older tradition of the Catholic community of Hintonburg/Parkdale in reaching out to those in need. It bears noting that Holy Rosary’s current Rectory building was constructed in 1905 to shelter child migrants (the Home Children) from Britain.

“When I was homeless and strange in this land, searching for kindness you held out your hand” the hymn has it. After the Parish was formed, many refugees and newcomers from Thailand, Poland, Italy, and other countries, made Holy Rosary their home parish. In the years since Project 4000 Holy Rosary has continued to hold out its hand, helping newcomers find their bearings. In 2012-13 the Parish helped to resettle a family from the Middle East, as part of a broader diocesan program and welcomed another family in 2012. In 2015, with the participation of non-parishioners, members of Holy Rosary established a “Circle of Friends” to assist new arrivals in rebuilding their lives in Ottawa. Over the past few years it has helped people from the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.

Looking ahead, we anticipate that the Parish will continue to help newcomers, as resources and circumstances allow. Globally, the magnitude of the refugee problem is so great that that it is impossible to envisage an early solution to it. Still, it is the goal that counts. As Mother Teresa once said, “If you cannot feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”