Getting there, bit by bit
Home is where the heart is. The phrase is a bit worn and maudlin, to be sure, but it’s been encouraging to see how well Pictou County has grown on the people who immigrated here from the Middle East just a year ago.
It’s been a good fit – for the newcomers, the welcoming communities and the province in general. When efforts began well over a year ago with groups in small towns helping to bring people desperate to flee strife in Syria, or temporary refugee camps, many mused how well rural Nova Scotia areas would be embraced by people of a different culture.
With great happiness and gratitude, it turns out. And now, the CAiRN group in Pictou is getting set to help another family originally from Syria relocate to that town.
The Casim family in Pictou has been undergoing a trying set of circumstances. Lema Casim’s sister, Nada, her husband and young family have been waiting in a refugee camp in Algeria for the opportunity to start a new life elsewhere. Happily, things have come together and, with CAiRN in the position to assist another family, they hope to help them make the trip in perhaps a month’s time.
It marks another chapter in a continuing success story. As CAiRN co-chairperson Stephen MacKenzie notes of the Casims, father Abdulkadir is working at a job in Pictou, the elder child Omer is fluent in English and attending school. Lema is selling Syrian food at the New Glasgow farmers market and the family has plans to open a restaurant in Pictou.
Talk about a welcome addition to the culinary options in Pictou County. Much has been made over the years of the early European settlement in the area and the relative homogeneity that’s persisted for quite some time. Word is the Syrian food available at the market is quite popular. No doubt it would stack up nicely against haggis, neeps and tatties in a cook-off.
The Safe Harbours group in New Glasgow also helped two Syrian families to make this their home, with members working and another food operation underway. The group in Westville hopes to follow suit helping another family.
Down the road, in Antigonish, the experience of the Hadhads runs parallel as a wonderful success story: a Syrian family coming to Nova Scotia and, despite their origins in Damascus, loving the small town life. Mutual support between the town and family has seen the rapid growth of the Hadhads’ Peace by Chocolate operation, plus their advocacy of constructive immigration policies in Canada.
The concern has long been that so many people immigrating will head off to the huge urban centres – Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver – much to the chagrin of places like Nova Scotia that desperately need a population boost. It’s looking like the welcoming attitude is paying off and we’re turning a corner.