Lifeboat tells story of rescued Sri Lankan Tamil refugees

A World Refugee Day event at Ryerson University in Canda will centre on one of the lifeboats that 155 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees arrived in off the coast of Newfoundland more than 30 years ago.

Accordign to theStar the boat, organizers say, is “an object of honour” for those who have sought refuge in this country.

It was tracked down by documentary filmmaker Cyrus Sundar Singh in the summer of 2016, and is now travelling through Canadian cities on a mobile exhibit that tells stories of those who arrived to Canada on the boat.

Siva Mehanathan left Sri Lanka in 1986 on a cargo ship, hoping he would make it to Canada, but having very little assurance that the journey would take him here. After 13 days on the ship, Mehanathan recalled he and the 154 others were abandoned in the two lifeboats in the Atlantic Ocean, without food or water.

They remained there for three days, firing a flare gun in hopes that they would be noticed, although they didn’t even know their whereabouts. A fishing boat captain named Gus Dalton noticed the lifeboats, and rescued the refugees.

“After the captain got us, we said ‘what is this place?’ He said ‘Canada.’ And after that, everybody was happy,” Mehanathan said.

Mehanathan says that he hopes people will actively engage with the refugees’ stories, now that the boat is on tour.

Sharing his experience as a refugee is not new to Mehanathan. He returned to Newfoundland six years ago with his wife and daughter for the 25th anniversary of the lifeboat rescue.

“I’m happy about that,” he said of the experience.

Sundar Singh says that the boat serves as a symbol of the experience of all refugees to Canada.

One of the lifeboats used to rescuse the 155 Sri Lankan Tamil refuguees in 1986. Pic courtesy thestar.com
-Cyrus Sundar Singh