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by Rodney Barnes

CBC Radio's new summer series Promised Land profiles individuals who were forced to flee their home countries and who chose to come to Canada--and, in many cases, Toronto. Torontoist sat down with host and producer Natasha Fatah.  

(Photo by Christopher Dale)

Torontoist: Why do you think it's important to tell these stories?

The Berhane family reunited in Canada: (from left) Frieta, Aaron, Eiven, Miliete, Mussie. (Mark Ulster)

Monday, August 2, 2010

Coming to a new country, the price that children pay

by Natasha Fatah for CBC.ca Viewpoint

This summer I had the chance to have dinner with a remarkable family, the Berhanes, who are originally from Eritrea.

The mom, Miliete, set the table with a mouth-watering selection of delicious East African treats, including my personal favourite, injera, the spongy bread perfect for soaking up the lentils and spices on our plates.

Meanwhile, her husband Aaron and their three children passed around the dishes and filled glasses with juice.

It was only this summer, after nearly nine years of being apart that Aaron was reunited with his family here in Canada. And that is what made that dinner so remarkable.

While working on these stories of escape from around the world for CBC Radio's Promised Land, I am reminded again and again about the hardship that people go through to come to Canada.

The physical danger, the expense, the risk to their safety and, the greatest sacrifice for many, the separation from and the impact that has on their families.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/06/f-vp-fatah.html

                                                                            Alberto Lalli, speaking with Natasha Fatah, was imprisoned and tortured in Argentina. (Mark Ulster)

Friday, August 6, 2010

Our Promised Land

by Natasha Fatah for The National Post

Take a walk down any street in one of Canada's big cities, hop on a bus or subway train, and you never know when you'll find yourself sitting beside a former South American guerrilla fighter or someone who escaped war-torn Bosnia in the back of a UN truck.

One in five Canadians was born outside this country. And many of these six million people have remarkable stories. This country is filled with people who escaped their homelands to become Canadians.

Think of the thousands of American draft dodgers who came here opposing the war in Vietnam, and then place them next to the thousands of Vietnamese boat people who fled from the opposite side of that war. The two could be your next-door neighbours. There are Eastern Europeans who came to Canada to escape oppressive Communist states, and then there are Latin American communists who found refuge here to get away from right-wing militias in their home countries. From opposition leaders in Iran, to Holocaust survivors -all have found a new and peaceful home in Canada.

But it isn't always easy to get here. Many people trying to get to Canada take on false identities, devise elaborate plans, take big risks, and sneak out past border guards.

It's the stuff of Hollywood movies, except these stories are real. All we have to do is ask to hear them. Most of the time, however, we don't.

So, I've started asking. For the past few months, I've been working on a summer series for CBC Radio One called Promised Land. It's a 10-part documentary show. Each week, we bring listeners an escape story -- escapes that started in 10 different corners of the world, but always ended in Canada.

Most of the people I interviewed didn't originally set out to become Canadians. They're happy to be here now, but for the most part they just wanted to get out of the situation that hurt or oppressed them in the first place.

That's the tricky thing about a promised land: It's about the place you end up, but it's just as much about the place you fled. Be it the Jews in the Bible fleeing the Pharaoh's tyranny, or African slaves in the American south taking the Underground Railroad -- they all sought their own promised land. A vague idea of freedom, but a concrete desire to escape.

Canada became a promised land almost by accident.

Read the whole article: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/promised+land/3365338/story.html

                                   Max Eisen, survived the Holocaust , and he shares his story with Natasha Fatah (Mark Ulster)

Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett caught flack the other day when he wondered aloud why so much of the television programming his government (partially) funds turns into crap.

Hey, we didn't need the Culture Minister to figure that out. 

The thing of it is, he just looked in the wrong place for original, imaginative, thoughtful content.

He should have turned on the radio instead.

That's where he'd find a new batch of summer replacement shows on CBC radio, including the best of the bunch, the excellent Promised Land.

Created by, and hosted by Natasha Fatah, Promised Land tells a single story: how people got to Canada.

They are some of the most moving stories you will ever listen to.

I've heard two episodes so far. One was about a Vietnamese family of 19 who escaped Vietnam during the war of the mid-1970's. The other was the story of Iranian exile Shahram Tabe, who had a whole Turkish prison interlude to deal with as part of his journey to Canada.

That's the thing about the stories Fatah tells so well in Promised Land: none of them go as planned.

Propelled by desperation, political chaos and usually war, whole families set off on incredible journeys, often with nothing more than the belief that where they get to (Canada) must be better than the home they are leaving. 
The story about the Vietnamese family, who kept getting caught and detained in Vietnam, was simply some of the finest radio I have ever heard. It was astonishing. And Tabe's Iranian story was just about as awesome, except my Walkman's batteries died in the middle of the story, so I had to keep turning it off and turning it back on as I bladed to work last week. 

And that's only one of the shows CBC Radio puts on in the summer. 

There's also Re-Vision Quest, a marvellous show that deconstructs Canada's aboriginal culture, complete with comedy sketches. 

There's others I haven't heard (I suspect), and all of it is the summertime replacement of Terry O'Reilly's wonderful Age of Persuasion, which is to radio what James Cameron's movies are to Hollywood: completely irresistable.

If Lindsay Blackett just listened to the radio instead of watching Canadian TV, he wouldn't wonder why he funds so much crap. He'd wonder who to send the next cheque.

http://www.cbc.ca/promisedland/