Whats in a name? A lot if you ask Tammy Truong.
From her condo overlooking the busy Kingsway corridor near Fraser Street, the 34-year-old business owner watches cars hurtle down the street and right past what she contends is one of the citys best-kept secrets.
With transit at her doorstep and dozens of restaurants and coffee shops many open until 3am as well as doctors offices, nail salons, travel agencies and grocery stores steps away, Truong cant do enough to sing the praises of her neighbourhood. Yet most Vancouverites dont stop to explore the shops and businesses lining that stretch of Kingsway from Nanaimo to Fraser Street.
Truong hopes calling the area Little Saigon might change that.
There are lots of cars driving by, but its time to stop and smell the roses time to get involved at the street level, says Truong, president of the newly formed Metro 麻豆传媒映画Vietnamese Canadian Business Association.
The organization is seeking city councils support to start consultations on re-naming the area, home to a large population of Vietnamese immigrants. Truong says the step is just one aspect of a push to make the community more accessible for Vancouverites at large.
Along with the addition of street signs advertising the area as Little Saigon, Truong says the Vietnamese Business Association plans to support business owners to add English signage in businesses and better learn the language to serve non-Vietnamese clientele.
Councillor Kerry Jang, who is bringing the motion to council, says the desire to open the Vietnamese community is a sign of progress. Its a sign that mainstream culture accepts immigrants.
Jang likened the establishment of a Little Saigon to the same kind of evolution that saw Chinatown open up to non-Chinese in the 1980s when it adopted a lets speak English campaign. The gesture was a signal that Chinatown no longer felt the need to close ranks for fear of racism or prejudice, says Jang. People used to go there to protect themselves but you go down there now, everybody shops there, everybody uses chopsticks.
Beyond drawing in customers for a good bowl of pho or a Vietnamese coffee, Truong says establishing a Little Saigon would be a symbolic recognition of the contributions of Vancouvers Vietnamese immigrants, the vast majority of whom arrived as refugees in the late 1970s fleeing the Vietnam War.
Back then, the new arrivals made headlines as boat people, drifting ashore with little more than the clothes on their backs. The fact that 30 years later those same people are the backbone of a thriving community is a story Truong says shed like more Vancouverites to know. I want to show the world the will of these people.
While the name Little Saigon has raised some eyebrows in the non-Vietnamese community due to its colonial associations, the moniker was decided by referendum in August with a questionnaire published in Vietnamese media. The response overwhelmingly supported Little Saigon; Vietnam Town came in a distant second.
While Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war, Truong says many refugees reject that name and its association with the oppressive communist government they fled. And in the area around Kingsway, you dont have to look too far to find someone with a strong connection to the traditional name of the city. Even Truong, who emigrated with her family in 1984, has one.
We were sponsored by my aunt who married a Canadian soldier, she says. So I guess you could say Im the legacy of Miss Saigon.
