Landings

The media sounds the alarm as ­asylum seekers descend upon Quebec in unprecedented numbers. The federal government promises to step in. But how to balance Canada’s ethical and legal obligations toward refugees with control over the border? No, it’s not 2016, when a wave of people began arriving via Roxham Road. It’s 1986, the year Caroline Dawson’s family decides to flee Chile.

This compelling debut begins with seven-year-old Caroline on a plane on Christmas Eve. Too young to understand the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet but terrified of the unknown, she suffers shame-inducing diarrhea and worries about missing Santa Claus. Such memories are filtered through Dawson’s current perspective as a sociology professor at CEGEP Édouard-Montpetit, in Longueuil. She explains that her family was among 2,300 asylum seekers who arrived that month thirty-five years ago and that Ottawa responded...