Welcome home
Newcomer settlement co-ordinator shares about role, life in Pictou County.
Pictou County is becoming known for its impact in refugee sponsorship and resettlement over the past few years and no one is happier than Kailee Brennan. Brennan moved from Ottawa to the county a little over a year ago to become Pictou County Safe Harbour’s newcomer resettlement co-ordinator. Last week she attended Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement in Ottawa. “Ed Shapiro of the Shapiro Foundation spoke of the innovative work being undertaken in Pictou County and used our area as an example of what can be accomplished in a small, rural community,” she said, adding partners from all over the world were told about the Pictou County experience in hopes it can be replicated in other places. The Shapiro Foundation assisted with sponsoring the most recent refugees to settle in the county so representatives have made several visits to assess local efforts. Brennan grew up in Moose Jaw, Sask., population 35,000. As far back as she remembers, her small city had a resettlement agency. Her first involvement came at eight years of age when her family worked with a Somali family. “It was not sponsorship but we were involved in helping them settle into the community.” From age 16 to 24, she ran a summer program for immigrant children. “I thought I’d be a teacher and I taught history for one year before deciding I‘d rather be an English second language teacher.” She moved to Ottawa to study and certification as an English second language teacher led her to do an online master’s degree from University of London on refugee protection and forced migration. She also worked in a refugee shelter and support centre as well as in the University of Ottawa’s refugee hub which connected her to the Shapiro Foundation. “I was dealing with applications for sponsorship when I first talked to Sarah MacIntosh of Safe Harbour. She was trying to get sponsorship support for five families which really caught my attention.” Brennan had been happily settled in Ottawa for six years, expecting that she would eventually return to teaching in Saskatchewan but MacIntosh’s story interested her deeply. When she learned Safe Harbour was looking for a resettlement co-ordinator, she was hooked. “It was a big leap for me to take a job on the East Coast. Coming from Moose Jaw, I was not concerned by the size of the community but there were lots of unknowns. I told my boyfriend I was going for just one year, for the experience, and I’d be back.” That year has passed with big changes for Brennan. “We got married, my husband has a job working for the Town of New Glasgow and we bought a house that is great for us. It is a house we couldn’t afford in Ottawa or many other places,” she said. Like the newcomers she works with, Brennan has had to find ways to fit into a new community, though her challenges have been miniscule by comparison. “Refugees have so many challenges and the language issue is huge, particularly as it is so closely tied to employability. It has been much easier for us and we’ve met many welcoming people,” she said. She has found people in her age group quite open to making new friends. “My husband coaches soccer so that helped him. We’ve met people at the gym or yoga, through community events or through Safe Harbour. We’re lucky to have made a great circle of friends in a short time.” To date, Safe Harbour has brought 47 refugees to Pictou County and Brennan noted other organizations have resettled additional families. “All our Syrian families are employed and doing well since their sponsorship ended. We look at that as a success story for them and for the community,” she said. Two families from Democratic Republic of Congo arrived in the summer of 2019 and another couple, with a son and daughter, are expected to arrive in March. “We’re also expecting another Syrian family, a couple with one son, to arrive from Lebanon in the spring. They are relatives of one of the families already settled here.” As is usually the case, the adjustment has been easiest for the young children in refugee families. “Settling the families within one school area has been really helpful and we’ve had tremendous support from New Glasgow Academy,” said Brennan. Shrouk Al Rawashdeh, a teacher in Syria who had also studied English, was resettled to New Glasgow with her husband, Mohammed Alzarzou, an Arabic teacher, and their three children, in 2018. She has since received a conditional licence to teach in Nova Scotia and frequently substitutes at NGA. Brennan credited the Y Reach programs, which provide language training and a variety of other services for newcomers, with being invaluable in resettling families. “Safe Harbour began as a refugee sponsorship group but it has grown to be more than a traditional sponsorship group,” she said. Sponsorship is both expensive and labour intensive, she added. “It is hard work raising money, especially if the process is ongoing. It can also be hard work collecting furnishings and everything that is needed to equip a family and household and then find employment.” Safe Harbour’s board, now headed by Debra McNabb, is assessing what directions it can move in, having built considerable infrastructure in the community. “There are various streams of immigration that can be pursued by working with the provincial and federal levels of government. One of those streams is economic immigration where people are able to come specifically to fill jobs a community is unable to fill. There is another government supported stream where people are directed to specific areas,” Brennan said. She believes Safe Harbour will continue to find ways to have a positive impact on the lives of new immigrants and on the county. “Safe Harbour has been a grassroots, communitydriven initiative and volunteers have helped in so many ways to provide much needed support. That has been so beneficial to the resettled families but also, I think, to the community.” Immigration and drawing people from other areas will benefit rural communities in the long run, she added. “When you can get people here to look around, they’re very impressed. There’s no traffic to speak of so no lengthy commutes to work and back. The dream of home ownership is quite possible here while it is increasingly less possible in many urban areas. I think we’ll see a revival in interest in rural life over time.” Rosalie MacEachern is a Stellarton resident and freelance writer. She seeks out people who work behind the scenes on hobbies or jobs that they love the most. If you know someone you think she should profile in an upcoming article, she can be reached at rosaliemaceachern4@gmail.com.