TORONTO - The first of 65 Vietnamese "boat people" who languished for years in refugee camps after the West slammed the door landed in Toronto Friday, 18 years late for the start of a new life of freedom.

Thai Van Nguyen is just one of a lost remnant of 2,200 refugees, all uprooted by a war that ended more than a quarter of a century ago. They were left stranded after the United Nations declared in 1990 they were no longer in need of protection.

The declaration led the West to slam its doors, leaving people like Nguyen out of luck.

But Nguyen's luck changed when he landed at Pearson, joining a welcoming community of 150,000 Vietnamese-Canadians who settled here long ago.

One of them was Trung Phu Tran, who waited nearly 20 years to be reunited with Nguyen, a church brother he last saw after they fled Communist Vietnam in 1990.

Tran, now an assembler at an auto parts factory, ended up joining his family in Canada, marrying and fathering two boys and a girl.

Nguyen, 56, arrived at a refugee camp alone in Palawan in the Philippines and ended up stuck; the former seminary student languished there as a stateless person for 18 years.

"This is like a dream, a dream that I have had since 1976, to have arrived in a democratic country," said Nguyen as he arrived. "But I never thought I would have my feet touch on another country's land," said a weary Nguyen, his voice choking.

Tran said his friend hasn't changed "a bit."

"It was a miracle that we reconnected through a friend in France. It's a second miracle that he's here in Canada today," said Tran. "I have four sisters and no brother, so he's like a big brother to me. I always wondered where he was, if he was still alive. This is a very good Good Friday for both of us."

Six other former boat people arrived earlier this month in Calgary and Vancouver, with 300 in total expected in the next few months.

All are supported by small sponsor groups who responded to last year's "Freedom at Last" campaign by Canada's 150,000-strong Vietnamese community.

Almost one million refugees fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon to the Communist regime in 1975, and most of the refugees in the Philippines have been there since 1988.

They were at the tail end of the exodus, when the United Nations declared the Vietnamese were no longer in need of protection.

After years of political lobbying, the worldwide Vietnamese community finally got the United States, Australia, Norway and Britain to take in the majority of the remaining 2,200 boat people in the last two years, mainly at government expense.

In May, Immigration Minister Diane Finley announced that Canada, too, would accept some of them on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, though the community must come up with $400,000 to pay for their processing fees ($1,700 for a family of four), medical exams ($100 a pop), landing fee ($475 each) and airfare (roughly $1,100 each).