One of three teenaged Chinese exchange students who went missing last week, has been found safe and sound, said Toronto police. But the search continues for the remaining two.
Const. Wendy Drummond said Qian Hu, 15, was found on Friday but would not elaborate further.
Hu, Zhiyong Chen, 17, and Kangjuun Fu, 13, arrived in Toronto on July 7 from Changsha City, in Hunan province, for a four-week English as a Second Language program run by the Toronto District School Board.
Thirty foreign students had registered for the Toronto District School Board summer exchange program.
The teens were last seen Tuesday at about 1:30 p.m. during an excursion to Woodbine Beach. A teacher called police when they did not rejoin the group.
The three speak Mandarin with limited knowledge of English and are unfamiliar with Toronto, Drummond said.
Fu's host home was in North York, and the other two were in Thornhill, she said.
Although police alleged that they had planned to go AWOL, they are still concerned about their safety. There were originally rumours that the trio had planned to apply for refugee status.
"They're 13 and 17-years-old in a foreign country," Drummond said. "We don't know if they have any means of support financially at such a young age. Without any means of support it is a definite concern for us."
Chen is described as Chinese, 5'7", 110 lbs., thin build, with short black hair. He was last seen wearing a white cotton T-shirt.
Fu is described as Chinese, 5'7", 110 lbs., thin build, with short black hair. He was last seen wearing a white cotton T-shirt and blue denim pants.
Interesting. So out of the three students, the girl has been found but the two boys are still missing.
Sounds like a poorly-planned defection gone wrong.
It has been almost 30 years since she left her native Vietnam.
But while she thrives in Ottawa — a city she’s happily called home since 1981 — lawyer Nhung Hoang remains active in the immigrant community helping people in refugee camps.
“I have been a refugee, so I want to help them,” she said. “They need a place that they can call home.”
Looking back on her arrival in Ottawa, Hoang said the first time she stepped out of the hotel she was staying in, it was so cold that she had to immediately run back inside. It was a sunny day, so she just assumed it would be warm.
After all, the 25-year-old had just flown to Canada after a six-month stay in a refugee camp in Hong Kong.
Before arriving in Hong Kong, Hoang had worked as an English as a second language teacher in Danang, Vietnam.
In July 1980 — unable to tolerate life under the communist regime — Hoang’s parents put her and her brother on a boat to Hong Kong.
They spent five days at sea before the Hong Kong Royal Marine Police escorted the boat to shore.
Because she could speak English, Hoang worked as an interpreter at the Red Cross clinic in the refugee camp until the Government of Canada sponsored her and her brother to move to Ottawa.
When she arrived, Hoang took a four-month course in electronics assembly at Algonquin College.
Despite a degree in education from a university in Vietnam, she could only find work in a factory. After one year in the factory, she enrolled at the University of Ottawa and got a sociology degree, which was followed by a law degree in 1988. Huang was called to the bar in March 1990.
“At the time, my mom and dad were still in Vietnam. My father worked for the former regime and they could hide some gold that they could sell to eat,” she said. “That’s how I could go to school. We were lucky that we didn’t have to work very hard to send money back home to them.”
She married Jonathan Chaplan in 1993; he’s learned to speak fluent Vietnamese. They have a son, 15.
“In Canada, to use the title of an exhibition at Canadian Museum of Civilization … we are Vietnamese Boat People: No Longer,” she said. “Many of us became engineers, computer programmers, medical doctors, dentists, pharmacists, professors, teachers and business people.”
It's a really good story about Vietnamese immigrants coming to Canada in the last 70s and early 80s with nothing and making a life for themselves.
Although the attitude in last quote in the article has always bothered me.
“In Canada, to use the title of an exhibition at Canadian Museum of Civilization … we are Vietnamese Boat People: No Longer,” she said. “Many of us became engineers, computer programmers, medical doctors, dentists, pharmacists, professors, teachers and business people.”
Vietnamese Boat People: No Longer bothers me. No matter how successful you become you're always a boat person. It is part of your identity and your bravery for escaping the ruthless communist regime.
Secondly, why it it always just engineers, computer programmers, medical doctors, dentists, pharmacists, professors, teachers and business people? I've never liked this elitist attitude. People who are these professionals often thumb their noses at the same boat people who aren't as successful, even people on the same boat. Obviously this isn't the case here as this lady has used her position to help other refugees to come to Canada. However I still don't like the quote.
There are just as many successful mechanics, restaurant owners, jewelers, electricians, welders, home designers/carpenters etc etc.
And if you are not aware of how boat people escaped Vietnam. Here's the late Ed Bradley's report on the boat people in 1979.
A good discussion on The Agenda about ethnic politics with the current issues going on.
They addressed many issues but one they sort of missed was block voting in the nomination process. I think in the general election, whether federal of provincial, there are too many voters and block voting wouldn't really work. For example all the Chinese wouldn't be able to get a Chinese candidate of the green party to win a seat in Alberta.
But at the nomination votes for each party, the numbers are very small and a community could get a person nominated. I know of one situation a few years ago where an person won a PC nomination in Alberta with 200 votes. 200! I think most people here could gather up over 200 friends and beat this guy. Bring a PC candidate in Calgary is nearly a slam dunk.
I always get a bit uncomfortable when I read stories that so and so has become the first ______ politician and it's cause for celebration. Often people block vote for someone and get nothing out of it because they go on to bigger and better things and ingore YOU.
Here are two discussion shows from The Agenda about Canadian citizenship.
First show is about dual-citizenship and second show is about Canadian citizenship in general.
In the second show, I always find it fascinating that the White panelists support multiculturalism and non-white panelists support assimilation.
So what do you think? Is it too easy to become a Canadian citizen? Are people abusing the system? Or do you think the government should to more to encourage people to become citizens?
The police and federal authorities have not ruled out possible human trafficking at a spa advertised as the Asian Fantasy Escort Service at 1550 B Post Rd. Police Maj. Joseph H. Tavares said U.S. immigration agents and Warwick detectives are continuing a joint investigation after seizing records and other evidence at that address Thursday.
Three Korean women, one of whom had an outstanding deportation order, were questioned at the scene, but no one was arrested, Tavares said. One woman gave a New Jersey address, another gave a Fall River address. Tavares said all three women are adults, but did not provide their ages.
A kitchen, cooking equipment, mattresses and personal items found in ground-floor rooms “were signs that they were sleeping there,” and may have been there “for some period of time,” Tavares said. While that could point to trafficking, “there would have to be further evidence” that the women were being kept against their will. “We’re looking into that possibility, but we don’t have that evidence at this time,” Tavares said.
Tavares said the upstairs area included “a waiting room and two working rooms, with massage tables, and a complete bathroom.”
No really? It wasn't really a SPA? I wonder what the beds were really for!?
A university professor from India, Vijay Bhosekar never thought he would don a security guard uniform and walk his beat in malls and condo buildings in Toronto.
But that's what the gregarious 49-year-old agricultural scientist has been doing since he arrived here in April 2005.
The pay, just above $10 an hour, is meagre but Bhosekar is taking it in stride while enrolled in courses to upgrade his skills and acquire credentials to be a certified environmental practitioner and earn a professional designation in agrology.
"My view is, relative to other survival jobs, this job can give me better exposure and networking opportunity to meet different people," said Bhosekar, who had taught at his alma mater, the University of Agricultural Sciences, Hyderabad, for years. "The job is quite interesting. The thing about Canada is, I don't feel I lose my dignity. People respect me for what I do."
Bhosekar and his wife, Vaishali, an elementary school teacher, came to Canada so their only daughter, Meghana, 19, could get the best education. She now majors in environmental science at York University.
"I felt I was well qualified for a lot of jobs with my line of work and expertise," he said. "But it was a horrifying reality when we got here."
It is unfortunate that people from other countries come to Canada and cannot qualify for the same jobs as in their homeland, mostly because of skill set and language. However this is the right attitude because the parents came to Canada for their daughter, not for themselves. Being a security guard in Canada may have a higher wages than a doctor in alot of other places. The goal is to work hard and get by so that the daughter has all the opportunities possible in Canada that she would not have in India.
Singapore, which is facing its worst recession in history, needs foreigners to survive in the long-term, founding father Lee Kuan Yew said.
The city-state is not reproducing itself fast enough and the government has in recent years opened its doors to attract more talented migrants to avert a serious population shortage.
"Without new citizens and permanent residents, we are going to be 'The Last of the Mohicans'. We will disappear," Lee, 85, told an audience at a local university late Friday.
Lee is the country's first prime minister and remains an influential figure. He is an adviser in his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's cabinet with the title minister mentor.
Singapore needs a fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain its population naturally but a string of incentives including monetary ones to encourage Singaporeans to have babies has failed to make an impact.
Interesting. While other places like Japan and Korea forbid immigration, Singapore needs more people to come. There's not enough baby-making going on! Most of the immigrants would come from China or Malaysia I would guess.
It's amazing that these letters are still around as they are very important. If you don't know where you came from, it doesn't matter where you're doing. You can't really track history unless you walk in that man's shoes. There's no room for hindsight. Hindsight is for the blind.
"I was surprised to know that a hundred years ago, the Chinese migrants, they are somehow having the same concerns that we now today have," said Wong, herself from Taiwan. "There's a lot of migrant families now in Canada. One member of the family has to earn the money either in Canada or, say, in China, and send the money to their family members... So I found wow, it's a little bit similar."
Not surprising at all. Money will always be an issue 100 years ago and 100 years from now.
All of us who are Asian that live outside of Asia lose a bit of ourselves day by day. We try and try to hold on to our culture but bit by bit through events that we can or cannot control we adapt to a new way of life and become a degenerate Asian.
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