Bill King and Draft Dodgers

Chris Young: King father, a Second World War veteran who landed at Normandy, helped negotiate a deal with the agents, who had been travelling around the United States looking for Vietnam War draft dodgers. "If I agreed to go in the military, agreed to drop the charges of draft evasion," King, 68, said in an interview from Toronto ahead of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war on April 30, according to Winnipeg Free Press. King spent the next 10 months at two army bases before fleeing the night before he was to be sent off to Vietnam. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young Related Items Articles Forty years on, Vietnam war orphans express thanks for Canadian adoptions MONTREAL - When 22-year-old Bill King returned home to Indiana in 1968 to visit his parents after a stint as Janis Joplin music director, the FBI was there waiting for him. He then hitchhiked to Canada, joining thousands of other draft dodgers between 1965 and 1975 who made the journey north of the border. Most stayed after the war, "making up the largest, best-educated group this country ever received," says an archived report on the Citizenship and Immigration website. While it is still unclear how many men and women sought sanctuary in Canada — the country labelled draft dodgers as immigrants, as opposed to refugees — the federal government estimates up to 40,000 made the journey. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.