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When the Vietnam War ended, Vietnam came under the control of a communist regime, and many Vietnamese people fled in fear of persecution. Some refugees left the country by land through perilous jungle, but most travelled by water and had to contend with the dangers of the sea, piracy, and Vietnamese authorities who were trying to stop the exodus.
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Fall of Saigon, capture of Saigon, the capital of the Republic of South Vietnam, by North Vietnamese forces, which occurred from March 4 to April 30, 1975. It was the last major event of the Vietnam War and effectively signalled the bitterly contested unification of Vietnam.
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The first wave of immigrants consisted mostly of middle- class people who were welcomed to Canada for their professional skills after the fall of Saigon in 1975. -
Approximately 6,000–7,000 Vietnamese people arrived in Canada.
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Government of Canada committed to accept 50,000 refugees from Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) -
Overall view of the interior of an aircraft with refugees enroute to Canada, 1979. -
Refugees board first flight of CF707 from Hong Kong to Canada, 1979.
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January 1978: Under a “metered approach,” Canada begins to accept 50 families of boat people per month.
1979: The Canadian government makes its historic announcement setting a target of admitting 50,000 Vietnamese refugees to Canada by the end of 1980. -
In April 1980, the In April 1980, the government revised the target number of refugees it would admit and announced that Canada would accept 10,000 more. This brought the number of refugees to 60,000 for the year 1979–80.