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Kim Phuc Comes to Listowel
Kim Phuc’s message to the Listowel audience was one of peace and forgiveness based on her own experience.
“Through my story I could help other people who are struggling,” said Ms. Phuc, who is an official Ambassador for a Culture of Peace for UNESCO, a division of the United Nations. Ms. Phuc said during the most difficult times in her life, it was her Christian faith that allowed her to forgive those who had caused her harm. “I asked God, how can I learn to forgive, to love my enemies who caused my suffering?” she said.
Ms. Phuc has returned to Vietnam once since defecting to Canada. “In Christmas 2004, I made a trip back to Vietnam to visit my family with my husband and my boys,” she said, stating that the trip required a lot of faith due to the danger she could have found herself in.
In 1986, Ms. Phuc was sent to Cuba to continue her studies there and met her husband. They married in 1992 and were given a honeymoon in Moscow. Returning to Cuba, their plane stopped to refuel in Gander, Newfoundland. It was there that they decided to defect and remain in Canada.
Ms. Phuc remembers hiding in an airport washroom and bravely stepping out to join a group of Cuban defectors that had already assembled. The couple handed their passports to an immigration officer. She said it was difficult at first to suddenly settle in a strange country. “I didn’t know Canada at all, very little, like I knew the weather is so cold and people spoke French and English.”
Ms. Phuc and her husband now are both Canadian citizens and live near Toronto with their two sons, Thomas, 13, and Stephen, 9. Her parents also reside with them.
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