The Molloy Bursary is offered by the board of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society (CIHS) to students studying Canadian history at the undergraduate level in Canada. It aims to shed light on the stories and immigration patterns of refugees and permanent residents by way of financially supporting the studies of Canadian history among immigrants or those who come from immigrant families.
While only undergraduate students in their second year or beyond studying Canadian history at a Canadian university can qualify, new Canadian residents are encouraged to apply by submitting an essay in either French or English. In Madeleine Le’s case, she qualified as a first-generation Canadian student majoring in Canadian Studies and minoring in Political Science. As a McGill undergraduate, she was introduced to the scholarship by the professor of her Canadian Political History class (HIST 370). Edward Dunsworth is an assistant professor in History and Classical Studies, concentrating on the history of Canadian immigration, labour, and politics. After hearing Le’s family history of her father’s immigration to Canada, Dunsworth saw her as an ideal candidate for the bursary.
His premonition proved true as Madeleine Le was awarded the prestigious Molloy Bursary on November 30, 2024. Le dedicated her 1000-word essay to the sacrifices her father made to establish himself as a Canadian citizen and raise his family here. Her father, Hieu Le, was a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee who fled the Vietnam War at the age of five. During his escape, he was separated from his family at a refugee camp where he remained until the Anglican Church of Canada sponsored his immigration to Ontario. In her essay, Le explains how winning the bursary would mean more than fulfilling her financial needs to further her studies: her efforts are dedicated to her father, especially as he has been supporting her post-secondary education.
Le’s essay also details the relevance of Michael James Molloy’s project “Hearts of Freedom and Flight to Freedom” to the story of her own family. Molloy’s project was based on research into Indochinese immigration in the 1970s and 1980s, with a particular emphasis on Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees. This diaspora would have included Le’s father. In other words, by sharing her father’s biography with CIHS, Le was able to preserve Vietnamese stories of settlement in Canada while honouring the intersectionality of her heritage with Canadian identity. The latter is especially important to Le and has inspired her to become involved in extracurricular initiatives such as the Canadian Studies Arts Undergraduate Society (CSAUS), the McGill Pre-Law Society, and McGill’s North American-born Asian Association, through which she investigates history’s role in precedents pertaining to Immigration Law.
As the former president of the CIHS, a non-partisan organization composed of immigration history academics, Michael Molloy has greatly expanded the ability for stories of Canadian immigration to be shared, through his independent work, such as that in “Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980,” as well as partnerships with the Hearts of Freedom project, the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, the Indochinese and Ugandan Asian communities, and the Flight to Freedom conference held by the Hungarian community. In light of Molloy’s significant contribution to the resettlement of Indochinese and Ugandan Asian diasporas in Canada, the CIHS bursary was named after him to further honour the promotion of Canadian immigration history in today’s political scholarship arena. For Le, Molloy’s work intersects heavily with both her field of study and familial history. She finds this dual significance reflected in the bursary, one of the few available that promote the undergraduate scholarship of immigration history in Canada.