Perched on the back of an outward-bound truck in his small African village, then 12-year-old James Madhier wailed as his uncle tried to pull him down, begging the boy not to leave.

Madhier cried tears of frustration at his family members, who could not see a world beyond their farm in what was once the south of Sudan following generations of civil war, who did not understand “the magic of reading.”

“I was looking for a way to actually go to any place where there is school,” he said.

For Madhier and 1,700 other young refugees in the World University Service of Canada’s (WUSC) Student Refugee Program, that place was Canada.

Since its 1978 beginnings, the program has recruited student refugees from 39 countries of origin, promising an opportunity to pursue a post-secondary education at one of 80 partner campuses in Canada and eventually even sponsor their families.

Looking back, the 28-year-old Madhier credits his childhood naiveté for helping him get to where he is today, a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto. But though he’d lived under the ever-present threat of bombings, famine, or being swept up by militiamen, this naiveté also exposed him to unforeseen danger.

The truck Madhier fought his family to travel away on was headed to a camp for demobilizing and rehabilitating child soldiers.

Madhier understood it to be a place of potential, where he may be able to get an education.

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