Decision to Come to Canada - Richard Allon

They advertised in one of the American journals and this was a job for a researcher in their clinical investigation unit. And I applied. And they accepted me. So, the second pull, as I say, I had some familiarity with Toronto from my childhood, I was looking for a job and the Canadians offered me one when my own countrymen didn't. And, also, the United States, at that point, was—this is 1970, heavily embroiled in Vietnam, not yet having extricated itself. Actually, very similar parallels to what's going on right now with the situation in Iraq. And I had kind of given up on the United States. When I was in the navy, it was only five years earlier, this is the Kennedy era, and it was quite appropriate to be patriotic and Kennedy, you know, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your county." And it had gone very quickly from sort of the sense of the United States being the leader of the free world to the United States being sort of an imperialist power. And so I—in my youth, my youthful look at things, there was some disillusionment about U.S. foreign policy. I knew Canada well from my childhood, the Canadians offered me a job. And that's ultimately, those factors combined to get me here.

Oral History 07.03.02RA with Richard Allon
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21