One-time `hippie’ helped bring over spiritual leader
Meeting 30 years ago led to lasting personal bond
By DANIEL GIRARD
WESTERN CANADA BUREAU
VANCOUVER — Victor Chan was a self-confessed, 20-something “Chinese hippie” making his way across Asia in a Volkswagen van when he tagged along with a girlfriend to meet the Dalai Lama in the northern Indian village the Buddhist monk called home.
Now, more than 30 years later, Chan, 59, will today welcome the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet to Vancouver, his city, at the start of a 19-day visit to Canada.
From Vancouver, the Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a non-violent approach to solving conflict, will travel to Ottawa and then on to Toronto.
While confessing “if I’m a Buddhist, I’m a very poor one,” Chan has since that initial meeting in Dharmsala developed a strong, personal bond with the Dalai Lama, regularly travelling with him and co-authoring a book that will soon be released. It’s that status as “old friends” that he says enabled him to approach the Dalai Lama to come to the West Coast for the inauguration of Canada’s first contemporary Tibetan studies program.
Not only did he accept Chan’s invitation, his appearance helped attract such luminaries as fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi for a roundtable discussion entitled “Balancing Educating the Mind with Educating the Heart” at the University of British Columbia.
It has also attracted a flood of public interest. More than 25,000 tickets for a pair of spiritual talks at hockey arena tomorrow were gone in 20 minutes and all other events, including a musical tribute emceed by actress Goldie Hawn, are also sold out.
“He affects people in very profound ways,” said Chan, chief organizer of the Dalai Lama’s Vancouver visit and a research associate at UBC’s Institute of Asian Research, which is launching the Tibetan studies program.
Chan, a married father of two, said while he “wasn’t really bowled over” by his initial visit with the Dalai Lama long ago, he has since developed a tremendous appreciation for him. It began when he went to Tibet 11 times in the 1980s and saw virtually every house with a picture of the man who had left in 1959. It has increased as he’s heard him speak about compassion and harmony to people of all religions around the world.
“What he says cuts across all religious boundaries,” Chan said. “Whether Buddhists, Christians or Muslims or Jews, people of all faiths look to him to give them meaning.”
While much of the visit in Vancouver and Toronto is designed to be spiritual, the Dalai Lama’s time in Ottawa will have a decidedly political tone to it.
Paul Martin ended several months of speculation this week when he announced that he will become the country’s first Prime Minister to meet the Dalai Lama. Despite warnings from China that such a get-together could undermine trade between the two countries, officials in Ottawa said the talks will be of a “spiritual” rather than political nature.
But members of Canada’s 3,000-strong Tibetan community and their supporters said the meeting with Martin is “monumental” and could lead to Canada brokering discussions aimed at achieving genuine autonomy from China for the region’s people.
“We’ve always felt that the peaceful movement of Tibet is very in line with the values that are fundamental to all Canadians,” said Tenzin Dargyal of the Canada Tibet Committee, a coordinator of the Ottawa leg of the visit. “It’s really a nice match here.”
The committee has won the support of 162 MPs for a meeting between Martin and the Dalai Lama, who has visited Canada three times — Montreal in 1980, Ottawa and Vancouver in 1989 and Montreal in 1993.
