Tam Nguyen grew up surrounded by death and danger. Born two years into the Vietnam War, Nguyen was raised against the backdrop of major violence in southeast Asia. His childhood and adolescence were marked by a strong desire to escape and make a better life for himself.
“During Vietnam War...
you don’t know you’re still alive tomorrow or not,” Nguyen said. “You just know you’re alive and you have food today. That’s all we were.
“Sometime people die beside me, I still running. Me and my brother, my sister, we watch fighting like you watching a live show sometime. You get numb, sometime you don’t know what the danger because everywhere is danger, anywhere.
” That’s how Nguyen describes life in Vietnam’s countryside in the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s a far cry from his life as a refugee in Canada, working as a successful tailor in Winnipeg with the occasional encounter with big-name celebrities. It’s also what led him to change the lives of hundreds of families in Vietnam by starting a charity.
But to get there, it all started with a harrowing journey, a promise, and a three-word mantra. “My parents, farmers with no land,” Nguyen recounted. “Poor family.
We’re poor, we live just day by day, whatever. And my parents have nine children. My name, Tam, that mean number eight kid in the family.
” It was during the war that Nguyen realized his passion for clothes. One day, he walked nearly a dozen kilometres to Quảng Ngãi City, with the help of his n.