VANCOUVER — The final lines of The New Colossus, by 19th century American poet Emma Lazarus, are synonymous with seeking a better life in a new country.

The poem adorns a plaque at the Statue of Liberty in New York City's harbour, a welcome for immigrants arriving in the United States looking for a new life:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, thousands of Americans - not necessarily tired, poor or wretched, but many tempest-tossed - left their country and came to Canada to avoid the military draft and the Vietnam War.

Early next month, those draft resisters, or draft dodgers, will be honoured at a reunion in Castlegar, B.C., about 600 kilometres east of Vancouver.

The four-day event also will honour Canadians who assisted the draft dodgers.

Organizers of the The Our Way Home Peace Event and Reunion, July 6-9, want to bring draft dodgers together to talk about their experiences and acknowledge their contributions.

"The immigrant group that came from the U.S. during the Vietnam War is the largest outward migration from the U.S.," organizer Isaac Romano said in a recent interview from Nelson, B.C.

"Their contribution over the last 35 years to the fields of medicine, education, the sciences, and all areas, has been very important to Canadian life."

Planning for the event has been underway for two years and ran into controversy early over the organizers' desire to erect a large sculpture to honour the resisters' legacy.

The Welcoming Peace sculpture created an international kerfuffle two years ago and has since been shuffled between municipalities who found it too controversial. It's home now is in a private gallery in Nelson.

The statue depicts a Canadian welcoming with open arms two Americans.

"An opportunity to honour this immigrant group that chose a path of coming to Canada, as opposed to going off to a distant land to kill people and perhaps get killed themselves, is really a model at a time when we want to look for non-violent solutions to conflicts in the world," said Romano.

Most events take place at the Brilliant Cultural Centre in Castlegar, where the local Doukhobors meet for community events.

It's fitting that many of the reunion events are there, said Romano.

Thousands of Doukhobors came to Canada from Russia at the end of the 19th century.

They were pacifists who rejected the institutions of militarism and wars.

Former U.S. senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972 who lost to Richard Nixon, is keynote speaker.

"I'll talk about the lessons of the Vietnam tragedy and why I'm pleased that some Americans stood up against it, including myself," McGovern said in a telephone interview from his home in Mitchell, S.D.

"They were as patriotic as any of the young men who went to the war."

McGovern, 83, is part of a long list of well-known peace activists attending, including Tom Hayden, a student leader in the 1960s, a civil rights activist and former California senator.

Arun Ghandi, the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, will speak on non-violence and the path of war resistance.

McGovern said Americans who fought in Vietnam "deserve our respect for doing what they believed in but we also need to pay our respects to those who stood up on grounds of conscience against the war."

War resisters and veterans will come together on the event's opening day, participating in a workshop called Healing the Effects of War Together.

Similarities and differences between Vietnam and the current conflict in Iraq will form part of the event.

"We're now seeing a time in history when Canadians are called again to assist Americans being called to go off to a distant land to kill in Iraq," said McGovern, whose mother was Canadian and who lived in Calgary for a few years as a young child.

Some panel presentations will include American deserters from the war in Iraq and their lawyers, said Romano.

McGovern agrees there are parallels.

"In each case, we were misled by our government into getting involved. In each case we went into countries that were no threat to us and had done nothing against us."

Americans were "propelled" into the Iraq conflict because of the "emotionalism" stemming from the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he said.

The U.S. administration led Americans to believe that the attack in the U.S. was related to Saddam Hussein and his government, said McGovern.

"Saddam Hussein is a big enough s.o.b. without blaming him for something he had nothing to do with," said McGovern.

Bob Lerch, who left the U.S. in the early 1970s just before he was to be drafted and now lives in the reunion's area, said participants should celebrate "the positive aspects of those people who chose not to go into war."

"Some people think war is the answer and I don't think war is the answer. War leads to more war," said Lerch, who now operates an auto repair shop called Organic Mechanix in the tiny community of Crescent Valley.

He moved from New York City and has had no regrets.

"This is the best country in the world."

It's not clear whether the reunion will attract protesters opposed to honouring draft resisters the way the statue did.

Some offended veterans got a sympathetic ear from the U.S. ambassador to Canada at the time, Paul Cellucci.

The City of Nelson initially supported the statue and reunion but withdrew its support in the face of the controversy.

In May, reunion organizers announced the statue would be placed in the Doukhobor Village Museum in Castlegar, a half-hour drive from Nelson, but that city subsequently rejected the plan.

The bronze statue finally found a home in the art gallery of Nelson artist Ernest Hekkanen.