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(Executive Director, Enhanced English Skills for Employment) PDG Nancy introduced our speaker as the Executive Director of a not-for-profit English language school for newcomers at the Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). Louise is also a member of the Faithworks community that meets at CMU. Prior to this, Louise worked as an Employment Equity officer at the University of Manitoba and as Director of Diverse Workforce Development at Palliser Furniture. She is passionate about welcoming newcomers and finding ways to bridge language and cultural gaps between people. Louise began her presentation by expressing her delight at being at Breezy Bend again – where she had spent a lot of time as a teenager (her father was a Breezy Bend member for 40 years) and then as a young mother who would come to pick up her two children who worked at Breezy Bend). She then proceeded to describe her father’s life as a hungry, barefoot boy in Stalinist Russia, then as a refugee fleeing the Russian regime, then being drafted into the German army as a 15 year old, then as an 18 year old DP (displaced person) in Canada, where he arrived on May 1st, 1948 with his parents and siblings. He washed taxi cabs after dark, stuffed wieners at Manitoba Sausage at daybreak and learned English at Kelvin High School in between so that he could continue his education. It was her father’s story that instilled in his family a respect and responsibility to help refugees. While working at Palliser Furniture as manager of diverse workforce development in the 1990s, Louise was supported by owner Abraham DeFehr (himself a former refugee) and worked in communities from countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Congo, southern Sudan and the like. Initially, refugees from South Sudan arrived as individuals and one such individual (James) worked at Palliser Furniture in the photography department. James always wore long sleeve shirts to hide the scars on his arms, neck and back he got from being tortured in prison in Sudan. James suggested that Louise hire a few of his friends to work at Palliser. She eventually hired about 200 of those friends. Meanwhile, back in Sudan, young children began migrating to Ethiopia after their villages had been bombed. Upon arrival in camps in Ethiopia, many of the children were taken to be trained by the Sudanese Liberation Army to be soldiers. The death rate was very high and eventually the army’s leadership realized that if all these children were killed, there would be no one available to provide leadership to a new government. So what they did was select the brightest children and sent them to schools in Cuba funded by Russia to be educated in areas like Economics, Agriculture, Medicine, Pharmacy, etc. The children lived in army-style barracks and received high school and then university education – until Russia pulled out of Cuba. Unable to support these youths, Cuba asked the United Nations to find a home for them. Many young men and some women with incomplete university degrees, who spoke both Arabic and Spanish, came to Canada. Sudanese already living in Canada were socially and culturally very different and couldn’t understand them. Louise hired about 60 of them and treated them like family, hosting at least 30 Sudanese young men on Sundays for dinner, barbecues, or playing basketball at the Roblin Park Community club with her young sons. Every so often one of the young Sudanese would learn that a parent or sibling had been found in a refugee camp in Uganda, Kenya or South Sudan and there was then a need to send money to the refugee camp. Gabriel was one of these youths who was responsible for 5 young children who were hiding in a border town between Uganda and Sudan. Tribal groups were trying to poison the children because of their family’s political affiliation. Their “brother” Gabriel in Canada, sick with AIDS and unable to have regular employment, was their only support. Unable to send money to them in over a month, he was concerned about their survival. A friend in Kampala took a bus to that border town, found the children, and set them up in a small apartment close to the friend’s family home in Kampala. Gabriel subsequently informed Louise that these 5 children were her responsibility now. She refused to accept that role, but after Gabriel returned to Sudan and met a violent death there, she, together with a number of communities over a period of more than 10 years, have provided food and education to those 5 orphans. Two are finishing secondary school, two are finishing primary school and the oldest has taken a course in Tailoring. Lou ise’s small church community provides monthly support. A Hutterite colony donates chickens and eggs as well as blankets for the group to sell and use the funds to support the children. Louise ended her presentation by mentioning other individuals in the community who help out others – like a woman who knits mittens for Winnipeg’s homeless, another who volunteers her time for conversational English classes with newcomers, a teacher couple that builds schools around the world with teachers in Winnipeg. She closed with the following words “We are surrounded in our community with people like you who use their time and resources to support needs within our world – be it local community or around the world”. From Q & A discussion: Louise has travelled to Ethiopia but not to Uganda. COVID has prevented her from travelling to Uganda but she hopes to travel there in the next year. When Deborah – the eldest of the 5 orphans – made her way to the market two weeks ago to buy a sewing machine so that she could do sewing and mending projects at home, she encountered bombings and people fleeing from the direction she was heading. Deborah is even afraid to go out to buy food. When Louise left Palliser the company had 2,200 employees and there were at least 18 languages spoken there. Louise’s father started a construction company – engineering was his thing and bought out the construction end of Maple Leaf Construction. His company was the first company that did work in the former Soviet Union. Quilts – all for single beds – that Louise sells as the fundraiser for her projects - can be bought for $50 each directly from Louise by calling her on her cell phone (204-770-6298). Glenn thanked Louise for her presentation. |
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in April.