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LETHBRIDGE — This windy, Prairie city is a world away from Sunita Rai’s mountainous South Asian birthplace and the crowded refugee camp where she grew up.

But it’s here that 23-year-old Rai feels at home. It’s here she can build a life for herself while celebrating the culture of her native Bhutan.

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And she’s far from alone.

At about 1,300 strong, Lethbridge is home to the largest Bhutanese community in Canada.

Photo by Ted Rhodes / Calgary Herald

Rai was just a baby when her parents were expelled from the tiny, landlocked Himalayan country of Bhutan in the 1990s amid religious and cultural tensions.

Alongside thousands of others, the Rais fled their home, livelihood and country, and sought protection in one of seven U.N.-established refugee camps in eastern Nepal.

More than 100,000 expelled Bhutanese lived in the camps for two seemingly interminable decades before a handful of countries, including Canada, finally agreed to accept the stateless refugees in 2007.