Ordinary People, Extraordinary Actions

Abstract

A book of this type relies on the willingness of people to tell their stories, and we are grateful especially to the members of St. Joseph's Refugee Outreach Committee (ROC) for their openness in doing so. We are even more grateful for the opportunity to learn about, and share with our readers, the tremendous good they have done over many years.This book would also never have been written without the meticulous records and notes kept over thirty years by dedicated members of St. Joseph's ROC. In particular, we are inspired by Louise Lalonde's foresight in maintaining a tradition of record-keeping. We will never think of meeting minutes as trivial again. Without them, meaningful details of the ROC's efforts and refuge-seekers' stories would have been lost.To our interviewees: the time we spent learning from you was precious and we are so grateful that you welcomed us into your confidence. We hope that you will love this book. Many more volumes could have been written about St. Joe's Committee members and the lives of the newcomers they served.To our reviewers: thank you for sharing your time during a global pandemic and finding the bandwidth to provide kind and constructive feedback.We would also like to thank Evan Murtadha for her work on the beautiful cover image for this book; Madeleine Berry for formatting the manuscript to prepare it for publication; the friendly and encouraging staff at University of Ottawa Press for supporting the publication of this book; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding this project.The events in this book and our research work took place primarily in Ottawa, which is the unceded and traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe. We respect and honour their rights as traditional guardians of this beautiful land. Section 115(I)(k.I) of the Immigration Act 1978 states that the Governor in Council can make any regulations "where a person or organization seeks to facilitate the admission or arrival in Canada of a Convention refugee … establishing the requirements to be met by any such person or organization including the provision of an undertaking to assist any such Convention refugee, person or immigrant in becoming successfully established in Canada…." 1 * * * At the time of writing, in 2021, if we had asked Canadians what they know about Canada's support for refuge-seekers, they would probably recall the harrowing image of three-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi's body lying lifeless on a Turkish shore on September 2, 2015.