A Syrian
Refugee Family
- Six Years Later
The third time Ahmed had to move his family after an Ottawa landlord sold the unit they were living in, he decided he needed to be a homeowner. He went to the bank and found out about down payments and mortgages and set to work. He worked 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week driving for Uber and doing other jobs he could get. In early 2020 he had enough saved to buy a house in Orleans (mercifully before the 40 percent increase in housing prices in Ottawa).
All of this within six years of arriving in Canada from Syria!
Ahmed and his family were sponsored by an organization I am part of, called FACES. We are a group of people from St. Matthew's, St. Giles and Glebe St. James churches together with a community group who have supported over 75 newcomers to Canada raising over $300,000 to finance the sponsorships.
Ahmed’s family were the first refugees FACES helped settle in Ottawa. They arrived in 2016 from a Turkish refugee camp where they had spent three and a half years after fleeing western Syria in 2012. Ahmed had been in the Syrian army which he deserted when he saw the atrocities he was expected to commit. (A cousin in Syria who shares his name was recently jailed for three months until he could prove his identity, so even in Canada Ahmed is wary of his name being known – Ahmed is a pseudonym.) At the refugee camp, Ahmed says he saw Prime Minister Trudeau on a TV news channel announcing that Canada would welcome 25,000 Syrian War refugees. He was very pleased when his application was accepted by Canada.
When Ahmed and his wife arrived with one child, Ahmed’s wife was pregnant with their second. FACES arranged for a furnished apartment in downtown Ottawa and helped them set up banking, medical care and the myriad of other things that need to be dealt with when you move to a new country. Ahmed says that before his arrival, he had no idea they were being sponsored or would get so much help until he saw the phalanx of volunteers at the foot of the escalator in the Ottawa Airport!
They have since gone on to have two more children and they say that this is their finished family. With very little English and knowing no one, they had to learn to adapt to the cold weather, the language and the job market. Ahmed quickly learned English, bought a car, and started working hard. Three years later he was ready to help integrate his extended family who arrived as government-assisted refugees. They include his parents, a disabled sister, another sister who is currently at school, and a 20-year-old brother who is also working as a delivery driver. Ahmed has leveraged the flexibility of being a driver as he often must be available to help them out.
He and his family have had a nightmarish time during the pandemic. They caught Covid last spring, a week before they were due to be vaccinated. Both Ahmed and his wife were very ill. His wife was hospitalized twice, and Ahmed also sick had to manage on his own with a new baby screaming for his mother. Because they were afraid to infect anyone else, they could not get any help. They both had long Covid and Ahmed was unable to work for months. In addition, he had a cancer scare that has only recently been resolved. A year later they are beginning to feel normal again – two of the children have returned to school and things are looking better.
Despite these difficult times, Ahmed says that he feels very lucky to be in Canada and is deeply grateful for all the help that FACES was able to give his family during their first year here. Canada has helped them have a life and a future. Ahmed and his four kids are very happy to be Canadian citizens. He hopes one day to have a business, perhaps selling Middle Eastern foods. In the meantime, he is saving up for a trip to Turkey so that his wife can see her parents and have them meet their grandchildren.
FACES is very proud of this couple, and we know that they and their children will be strong contributors to Canada’s future.
By Marjorie George
FACES Community Representative and Volunteer
PICTURED ABOVE – Ahmed's kids are Canadian citizens growing up in Ottawa. L to R: Maya, Riyad and Mariam. Adam (not pictured) is the youngest of the four.