Project leader Can Le says it cost $1,600 to cut down two trees on the site of the Vietnamese Boat People Museum.
In the vacant lot at a major Centretown intersection, behind a wire fence, there is nothing much to see besides gravel, sawdust and a sign displaying an artist’s vision of the museum-to-be.
The Vietnamese Boat People Museum has been four years in the making, and the project recently got a few small steps closer to completion by preparing for construction and applying for funding.
On Oct. 16, two trees that were posing dangers to surrounding neighbours were cut down. Can Le, the project leader, says they had wanted to do it since May, but a new city bylaw had postponed the process.
Starting Sept. 1, under the Municipal Trees and Natural Areas Protection Bylaw, anyone who wanted to cut down a tree on municipal property had to get permission from the city first.
Le said that as a result, the contractors were booked up as people tried to remove trees before the bylaw came into effect.
Le has been helping refugees over the last 30 years and was the first president of the Canadian Vietnamese Federation. He says the next steps will be to build a better fence around the area and to get a more elaborate sign.
Construction of the three-storey building, which will house small stores and Vietnamese Canadian Centre offices along with the exhibitions, is scheduled to begin in May, 2010.
However, this depends on the availability of funds. Since they began raising funds in 2006, the project has received a total of $355,000.
To complete the project, $4.3 million is needed.
Le has applied for $2.9 million from the Canada–Ontario Infrastructure Stimulus Program currently offered by the government. If the funding is approved then construction must be completed by March 31, 2011, as a condition of the grant.
“You need two letters of recommendation [to apply for the fund]. We have 18,” Le says.
Yasir Naqvi, the MPP for Ottawa Centre, is one of the many politicians who have supported the project.
“They are extremely professional and organized,” he says.
Naqvi says that it is important to recognize the contribution the Vietnamese community has made to Ottawa.
Support from this community is one thing that the project is not lacking.
Hoang Nhung is one of the original boat people. She left Vietnam as a refugee in July 1980 when she was 24 years old.
In a boat the size of three canoes, she and 46 other people fled to Hong Kong and weathered two typhoons on the open South China Sea. Nhung reached Canada with her brother when she was 25.
She now lives with her husband and son, and has been a community lawyer for 18 years.
Nhung says while the Vietnamese community was very small 30 years ago and life was hard, Canadians opened their doors with compassion and care.
“People were so nice to us – something that Canada should be proud of … Show it off,” Nhung says.
Valerie Bach, chair of the Vietnamese Youth and Culture Group, wrote a master’s thesis on the formation of cultural identity through history.
“We don’t look at the past and then when we do, it’s not there for us anymore,” she says.
“So with the museum, when we’re ready to explore our history, it will be there for us. It’s a beacon of hope for the future.”