10 p.m.

I’m too excited to wait. I’ve been reading up on where most asylum-seekers have been crossing into Emerson. There’s a place not far from my hotel by the railroad tracks where families were found last week. It might be a bust, but I want to plan a bit of a stake-out to see if I can talk with some of them just as they’re arriving. It would be incredible footage for the radio story, and quite the tale to tell back home.

10:30 p.m.

Everything is ready. I have potato chips and trail mix, water, my audio recorder and a camera. Plus some books to pass the time.

I used Google maps to scope a spot that’s near the tracks but far enough from town that I would see any migrants before the police found them. Let’s see what happens.

11:15 p.m. 

It’s strange to be here. I feel like I’m breaking the law, but there’s no indication that this is a 
restricted area. The only thing designating the border line is the dirt road in front of me and a 
metal pole to my left with the Canadian and American flags on their respective sides.

It’s already 10 degrees, so I’ve kept my car running for the heat.

2 a.m.

It’s nearing subzero temperatures outside now. I’ve been waiting for hours, but nothing so far. The cop left a few minutes ago, so I took his spot on the small hill. I’ve been looking out in the darkness trying to see a light or bodies shuffling in the snow. Nothing.

2:30 a.m.

I took one last drive down the border-lined dirt road until it disappeared into a frozen field. Something tells me to stay, but it’s been a long day and I need to get some sleep.

3 p.m.

I drove to the local fire station, where Chief Doug Johnson greeted me at the door. He doubles as the paramedic and has helped families who get stranded in blizzards as they make their way over the border. I asked him about the migrant situation.

“The town is usually so quiet,” he said. “But at night it comes alive.”

He has gotten more than 200 emergency calls to rescue migrants since January. He said numbers have never been that high before. Many come from African countries and aren’t used to the cold. Some are wearing nothing but sweatshirts when Johnson and his team find them. Two Ghanaian men who crossed a month ago lost most of their fingers from frostbite.

We drove to the local golf course and took a service road. Johnson stopped the truck in front of an old barn with a crowd of footprints etched in the snow.

“We found a group of families here a week ago,” he said. “They were huddled here in the cold for hours before we got to them.”

We drove back to town in silence. At the station, I asked whom I should talk with next and he mentioned Sharon Cory — she runs the art studio downtown. He described her as “very opinionated.”

5 p.m.

Sharon Cory may be my favorite person in this entire town, even if she is “very opinionated.” Her studio was a literal breath of fresh air thanks to all of the tropical plants in her window.

Cory is Lebanese — her grandparents came to Canada as refugees, so she cares deeply about those needing a new home. She has helped Syrian families displaced by their civil war at aid centers in Winnipeg. She strongly supports the refugees and wants softer borders with the U.S.

After speaking firsthand with people displaced by the crisis and seeing horrific images on the news, she started an abstract art series on the migrant crisis unfolding in her own backyard.

“I’m processing the influx of dark skin because I know that’s affecting a lot of people here,” she said, mentioning racist comments she’s heard from her neighbors.

She said something else that struck me about the importance of her art.

“The only way I can deal with these emotions is to paint them out,” she said.

I know what she means — writing has always been my way of coping or expressing something intangible, a feeling or memory that nags at me until I get it on paper.

Others in the town, like mechanic Wally Turton, do not share Cory’s opinion on the migrant situation.

“I don’t want to be an ogre but enough is enough,” he said, worried that the refugees will take Canadian jobs and overburden the welfare system.

1 p.m.

Ahlam Jasim just gave me a tour through the Institute. She is its only paid staff member.

“We’ve been existing on a shoestring,” she said.

The rest of the more than 10 volunteers— asylum-seekers themselves— get nothing but a résumé boost for future employment in Canada, given that their applications for asylum are approved.

Jasim, born and raised in Iraq, fled her home after her husband was executed by the Saddam regime. When she arrived in Winnipeg, the women here became her support group. She’s been with the Institute since its founding in 2006. Now, she said she wants to be the one to help others.

She does seem like a mother to the families and volunteers of the CMWI. Everyone here knows her by name, and she stops to greet each person by theirs.

6 p.m.

The last families just left the food drive. This has been one of the most fulfilling days of my life. Just like the waiting room, there was a constant line of people from all over the world.

Most spoke Arabic but English came through sometimes, French others — other native languages, too. It was such a beautiful blend of cultures helping each other. A Syrian father gave potatoes to a Somalian family, two young Libyan girls helped an old woman from Ethiopia.

I talked with some of the families, often with the help of an interpreter. Their reasons for fleeing their home countries — war, persecution, threats of torture — were painful to hear. Still, they greet one another warmly. They smile and make jokes.

Despite all the visitors, there are leftovers, and these the volunteers take home to their own families.