The first family member arrived in Canada!

What an exciting week – the first member of the family of eight we are sponsoring, 30-year old Anas, arrived in Toronto a few days ago, tired and very excited at the same time. He did not know what to expect when the plane landed at Pearson Airport – the family did not receive our welcome letter and was not informed that they are being sponsored by private people. The rest of the family is scheduled to leave Beirut in about a week.

Our group’s chair, Andrew, talked to the CBC’sThe Current about Anas’ first few days in Canada:

Various group members spent time with Anas this week to brief him about the next steps and how we will support the family, to show him the apartments we found, to take him to the dentist, shopping or just sight-seeing. He met most of the rest of us at a potluck dinner on Friday. Spending time with Anas has been a real pleasure. He is very sweet, open and warm – as appears to be the whole family, who sent us a heartfelt video message from Lebanon.

We have been overwhelmed by all the support we and Anas’ family have received. Everyone wants to help. Lisa, John and their children, a family we did not know before, offered their beautiful basement apartment to Anas until his family arrives and everyone moves into permanent housing. They treat him like a family member and even took him to their cottage for the week end where he will have a ‘real’ Canadian experience. 

The dentist of one our group members offered free dental work, as Anas arrived with a toothache. The manager of the building the family will move into has been very flexible and accommodating. And a great number of people have been extremely generous with their monetary or in-kind donations.

We can’t thank the interpreters enough who are helping us – most of all Ammar, but also Moustapha and Mahmoud from the Arab community center. 

Technology has been our friend. Smartphones have helped Anas share his first impressions of Canada with his family, and we found apps that have helped us communicate when no interpreter is around, such as google translate and ‘say hi’. 

Ripples are spreading

At one of our first meetings, a seasoned refugee sponsor came to talk with us about his experiences. In the face of our uncertainty about the path ahead, he told us that this process would affect our refugee family’s life, but it would enrich ours too, and change us in ways we can’t imagine. 

My husband Tony and I have already begun to reap those very personal rewards. Last week, arriving at Pearson Airport after a twenty hour trip from Asia, jet lagged by 13 hours, we staggered to the taxi rank at 2 AM, just wanting to fall into bed and sleep for as long as possible. In the middle of the night, there was no queue and we got into the first cab waiting, and logged onto the internet after a long period off line. We were delighted to find that citizens had quickly funded the repairs needed for the mosque that was set on fire in Peterborough, and we chatted about this and about our excitement that the first member of our Syrian family was arriving soon. 

Our driver, who wore the beard and white skull cap typical of Afghan or Pakistani Muslims, suddenly asked – who is arriving? And we told him a bit about ‘our’ family. Where are they coming from? We told him that they were in Lebanon, and how our Ripple Refugee group had worked to formally sponsor them to come to Canada. By this time we were approaching our neighbourhood. The cab driver, previously silent, quietly began a stream of “may god bless you – it is wonderful what you are doing – you are good people”. We nearly missed our turning, as he became more and more animated! 

And before we left the vehicle, we talked a bit more, establishing a warm bond with someone we might barely have exchanged a word with on previous rides. He welcomed us back to our home in the best possible way, and we hope that we, too, reaffirmed his place in our city and our country. Ripples are spreading!

(By Beth Savan)

CBC The Current: 'Ripple Refugee Group' in Toronto welcomes Syrian family of 8

Thank you very much to Piya Chattopadhyay for producing a great documentary about our group for the CBC's The Current!

Sweet discoveries

The hours are counting down until ‘our’ Syrian family arrives in Toronto. It has been quite a journey since the Mother’s Day meeting that Andrew and Claudia organized in their home in Riverdale and the idea of helping sponsor a refugee family was first floated.  In the months since then, there have been many meetings, much discussion and a lot of legwork. And funds have been raised through generous charitable contributions from many individuals to support the costs of sponsorship.  The 17 individuals in our group have grown into a strong and competent team, guided by Andrew’s strong leadership as Chair, with each of us involved in one or more of the complicated challenges of sponsoring and settling the family.

Along with Rebecca and Claudia, I am on the Housing Committee with the task of identifying both short-term, as well as longer term, accommodation. The best part of this task has been our scouting trips to vibrant communities on the east side of Toronto that I knew of but had never visited. 

Apartment buildings with affordable rents in Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park looked promising, as did their surrounding communities. However, we settled on the Victoria Park and Lawrence area when we discovered that there was a strong Syrian community already there.  The apartment building that we identified for the family is close to a public school, as well as a medical clinic, shopping and transit, and has abundant green space. It seems like a good spot to start life in Canada.

On one of our visits to Victoria Park and Lawrence, Rebecca took us to Crown Pastries, a Syrian bakery at 2086 Lawrence Avenue East that she had discovered the week before. Beautiful pastries reminiscent of baklava, but not quite, were arrayed before us and we stocked up with yummy treats for our upcoming meeting of the Ripple Refugee Group. 

In an effort to gain more information about the community, Rebecca approached a family who was also buying pastries in the shop. We learned that they were originally from Iraq and had traveled from Buffalo that day to come to the bakery!

These discoveries of community and food have been a wonderful side benefit of the housing work and a reminder to me to embrace Toronto’s diversity with gusto.  

They have also made me prickly to the backlash that has occurred in the city following the Paris attacks of November 13.  The assault of a woman wearing a hijab as she  walked to pick up her boys from school was shocking in its own right but struck close to home  because it occurred in Flemingdon Park, one of the communities that we had visited.  

Although much has been done to prepare for the arrival of our family, the journey is really only just beginning. Over the next year, the Ripple Refugee Group will be responsible for the health and well being of the eight family members as they settle into life in Canada. No doubt, there will be many discoveries ahead for all of us – family and group members, alike. It is an exciting and promising time to be embarking on this journey.  What a privilege to be on board.

(By Pegi Dover)

We saw our family on TV!

We could not believe our eyes when we watched the CBC's The National tonight: the family of eight we are sponsoring was interviewed in Beirut, before flying to Canada! They seem super-nice, we are excited to welcome them in Toronto soon!

From watching the report we are not sure if they know about us, if they received the letter (translated into Arabic) we sent them through Citizenship and Immigration Canada. We also still don't have the arrival dates for the rest of the family.

Update: The first family member will arrive next week

Great news: We have been informed that one of the sons of the family of eight we are sponsoring will arrive in a few days. The sponsorship agreement holder we are working with, Christie Refugee Welcome Center, has not been informed why the family is not travelling together and when the rest of the family will arrive - hopefully we will know more once he is here! Our arrival and post-arrival preparations are in full gear, and luckily we have been able to secure temporary housing for the first family member. 

Refugees should not pay the price for cowardly terrorist attacks

It only took a few hours after last week’s horrific attacks in Paris before a backlash against migrants and refugees started. Right-wing European politicians who had already claimed that incoming refugees present a security risk immediately asked that the continent should shut its doors. In the United States, more than half the nation's governors say they oppose letting Syrian refugees into their states. 

The Canadian government has thankfully remained level-headed and reaffirmed its election pledge to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this year, while Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has also confirmed the province's commitment to bring in Syrian refugees fleeing civil war. Some conservative politicians such as Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, however, have asked PM Trudeau to scrap his plan, and online petitions are making the rounds asking for the same. 

While most Canadians remain positive about bringing in more refugees to Canada, many online comments connected to articles about migrants and refugees are outright vitriolic, and there have even been a couple of attacks on Muslims in Canada. A Muslim woman was attacked by two men while picking up her children from a Toronto public school on Monday who called her a “terrorist”. Earlier, a mosque in Peterborough was badly damaged by a fire that appears to have been deliberately set. 

Let’s get the facts straight. Many Syrian refugees are fleeing the same people that committed the heinous attacks in France. They are victims of the war in their country, not perpetrators. Terrorists don’t risk their and their children’s lives on rickety boats on the Mediterranean, or walk for thousands of kilometers through increasingly hostile countries in Europe in the hope of finding a better, safer life, far away from their homes. Terrorists don’t spend months and even years living in deplorable conditions in refugee camps in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq or Lebanon.

Syrian refugees living in makeshift shelters in Lebanon's Bekaa valley (@MSF)

Most refugees are just as shocked about last week’s attack as people in Europe or North America. “They are devastated by what happened in Paris,” Paul Yon, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Lebanon, where more than one million Syrian refugees live, told Le Journal de Montreal . "People have Internet access and the backlash is very hard on them. People here aspire only to have a better life, and we close the doors.” 

Now, more than ever, is the time to show solidarity and compassion towards refugees, not mistrust or even hatred. We should bring in more, not fewer refugees. Otherwise, we will let the terrorists win. 

(By Claudia Blume)