Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada, seen on Wednesday holding a photo on her phone of her and her grandfather, arrived in Canada in 1979 and worked hard to adapt to life in the working-class neighbourhood of Montreal.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada carries a photograph of her late grandfather, along with his favourite handkerchief, in her handbag everywhere she goes.
Choking back tears, the Montreal MP said the mementos remind her not only to do what is right but “to have the courage of who you are, and not to be scared.”
Ms. Ferrada is no stranger to fear. As a young child in 1970s Chile living under Augusto Pinochet’s military regime, she remembers seeing soldiers chasing protesters, family members hiding, and learning that her aunt’s sister had been shot dead by the military during a demonstration.
Her grandfather René Ferrada, a regional organizer for Salvador Allende’s socialist party and a journalist, was on a blacklist of people the junta was targeting. As more supporters of the deposed president “disappeared,” her grandfather fled to Montreal in 1977, and Ms. Ferrada and her mother followed him in late 1979.
In an interview about her experiences as a refugee, on the eve of World Refugee Day, she said her mother’s prime motivations when she came to Canada were to find safety, a better life and just to pull through.
“I remember the struggle of being an immigrant and trying to survive. That’s a common story for refugees everywhere,” she said.
Her mother, Maritza, had to leave university in Chile where she was studying to become a math professor, and take a job in Canada as a seamstress. The single mother worked all hours to make ends meet and Ms. Ferrada helped her finish piece-work she had taken home to earn extra money.
Arriving in Canada at age 8, Ms. Ferrada worked hard to adapt to life in the working-class neighbourhood of Montreal that she now represents as an MP.
The Canadian elementary school she went to, where she did not understand enough French at first to be able to ask to go to the bathroom, was a far cry from her school in Santiago.
There the military even had a presence in the classroom. When she refused to sing a new verse of the national anthem added by Mr. Pinochet, a soldier struck her on the head to bring her into line.
“I remember military everywhere with guns, and I remember military trucks and the collective emotions on the street,” she said. “I remember my mom always being so scared for me to go out.”
Her aunt, who was 10 years older than her, was sent to her grandfather’s house to burn the membership cards of Mr. Allende’s socialist party, which as a regional organizer he had on file, so they didn’t fall into the junta’s hands.
Mr. Pinochet had ordered the military to round up tens of thousands of political activists, students and workers, incarcerating them in Santiago’s national stadium.
Ms. Ferrada’s uncle was among them, and he was held in the stadium, notorious for executions, rape and torture, for a month.
When he was released, he was the first in Ms. Ferrada’s family to flee to Canada. Her grandfather followed in 1977, fearing for his life after learning he was blacklisted.
“He actually never went back. He would have been arrested going back to Chile,” she said.
In Montreal, her grandfather continued his activism, producing a monthly newsletter about the situation in Chile, from contacts he spoke to anonymously by phone, for Canada’s large diaspora community.
When Ms. Ferrada returned to Chile decades later as an MP she donated his newsletters to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which commemorates those persecuted during Mr. Pinochet’s rule from 1973 to 1990.
She had previously gone back at 18 with “the intent to stay,” but after discovering she was pregnant, she returned to Canada to have a termination, as abortion was illegal in Chile. Later she entered municipal politics, worked as a Liberal staffer and was elected to Parliament. She was promoted last year to the federal cabinet.
In 2022, Ms. Ferrada represented Canada at the inauguration of Chilean President Gabriel Boric. She remembers watching people gathered outside La Moneda Palace where Salvador Allende died and Augusto Pinochet ruled.
“It’s very difficult to explain the emotions attached to that,” she said. But she took a photograph and sent it home to her mom.