Refugees who fled Vietnam in the ’70s band together to help Syrians

The three Vietnamese men, all in their 60s, meet for dinner twice a year. One recent evening in Burnaby, they discussed the news coming out of Syria: rickety boats, desperate people fleeing a war zone and bodies washing up on distant beaches. They knew they had to help. For the men, who were among the 60,000 Vietnamese refugees taken in by Canada in the late ’70s and early ’80s, such scenes represent a painful chapter in the past that can be overcome, but never forgotten.