Our families fled their homeland by boat, risking everything to find hope and a new home across the ocean.
The year was 1975, and the Vietnam War had been devastating the country for 20 years. Our parents were born and raised during conflict, and after the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, when the northern Vietnamese communist army overtook the southern democratic republic and the war was declared over, our parents and grandparents could not see a future for their families in this new, post-war Vietnam. So they fled.
Linh Vu was just six years old when she stepped onto a small wooden boat with her mother to escape Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon. After being rescued at sea, then immigrating to and growing up in Edmonton, Linh, who owns Mai Mai Viet Street Kitchen, is now beginning to write her family story. She’s collecting old photographs and even connecting with some of the people who helped rescue her family all those years ago.
Linh’s family story is incredible and shares many similarities with many Vietnamese-Edmonton families.
In Edmonton today, the majority of Vietnamese community members are either immigrants themselves or children and grandchildren of immigrants. Many left the country by boat and, after miraculously surviving this journey, ended up settling nearly 12,000 km away in Edmonton.
To mark Lunar New Year, the Year of the Horse, Edmonton Community Foundation invited the co-founders of Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau, a new non-profit focused on celebrating and preserving Vietnamese-Edmonton culture and heritage, to reflect on their family’s immigrant experience and explore how children of refugees are carrying their family stories forward.
I’m Linda Hoang, one of Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau’s co-founders. Alongside my co-founder Jessica Truong, we formed this new community group to create spaces that explore, honour, and carry shared journeys, lived experiences, and stories forward.
Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau addresses a lot of feelings we were having as adult children of Vietnamese immigrants who grew up between two cultures. Our conversations began during the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon in 2025. We both have a growing desire to connect more deeply and intentionally with our heritage, especially as our parents get older and before they pass.
As Jessica and I started to share Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau’s mission among the Vietnamese-Edmonton community, we realized that many of our family histories, stories, and feelings on Vietnamese identity are so connected and similar, like Linh’s.
But often, they’re not discussed.
We’re talking about them now and encouraging others to do the same. What do you really know about your parents? Who they were and how they got here? What do they still carry with them from their past? How does knowing these stories inform or shape your own identity? Your path forward?
When we recorded our Lunar New Year 2026 guest episode for the Edmonton Community Foundation’s The Well Endowed Podcast, we brought in Linh and David Thao-Nguyen of AGNT to explore these questions and reflections with us in greater depth.
We all had the same realizations around identity and preservation of culture and family history, actions that we’re spearheading through our group’s initiatives.
For instance, it was only recently that David decided to interview his uncle, the one that led their family’s escape by boat. David’s uncle shared freely and openly, which isn’t always the case with immigrant families recounting painful past memories.
After their conversation, David felt compelled to share his family’s story more openly with others while recording this piece of history.
“I think it’s important for us to write down these stories, talk to our elders, talk to parents, our aunts and uncles, your grandparents who keep this history, this memory alive. I’m writing the story about my family now for my kids, my nephew, nieces, because I want them to understand,” David told us.
We’re moved by the idea that you never know what stories will be shared if you simply do not ask.
Jessica’s dad passed not long ago, and that loss is felt every day. Calling up a parent to ask them a random question is something we take for granted until we can no longer do it.
So many questions are left unanswered because we don’t think to ask them in the first place.
I’m intentionally learning my mother’s Vietnamese home recipes and appreciating that I can call her to ask about ingredients, process, or memories related to dishes while I still can.
We believe the themes Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau is exploring, like family sacrifice, resilience, identity, legacy, growing up between cultures, and the immigrant Canadian experience—resonates across many communities.
Thinking about where we came from and where we go from here is universal. Each of us can choose to reflect on our family history, our identity and our path forward whether you’re an immigrant or not.
We encourage readers and podcast listeners to make a bold commitment to documenting your family’s stories, better understanding their experiences, and defining their legacies to share with future generations.
At ECF, building meaningful relationships with communities across Edmonton is central to our work. Our connection with Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau is one we’re proud of — we have supported the organization through granting, including to the Edmonton Viets Association, and have had the privilege of joining the community at a Chúng Ta Cùng Nhau event in November and at the New Year Tết celebrations on February 7. These connections help us better understand the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of diverse communities so we can support what matters most to them.
If you’re part of a community you’d like us to connect with, or want to explore how ECF can support your work, please reach out to Sherilyn Trompetter, our Manager of Equity Advancement. We’d love to hear from you.
