With Cree drums and Arab beats, our city welcomes refugees to the land of poutine and hockey
Youseff Salamah, 13, has only been in Edmonton and only speaking English for three months. But the Grade 7 student at John D. Bracco junior high school already sounds like a Edmontonian.
What does he like about his new city? “Every, every, everything.” But what does he like best? “The hockey. I like the hockey. It’s a new sport,” Youseff says with a wide smile.
Youseff and his family are from Homs, one of the cities hardest hit by Syria’s brutal civil war. It was once a beautiful place where Christian families like theirs lived happily with their Muslim neighbours, says Youseff’s father Misheel, 45. War changed everything. After the relentless bombing began, Misheel and his wife Jalila fled Syria with Youseff and his little sister Anjelina, now seven. In Lebanon, they found a small apartment. But rent and food were expensive and Misheel could only find occasional work as a day labourer.
The family was sponsored to come to Edmonton by the Lendrum Mennonite Brethren Church. The congregation put in a sponsorship application last summer. It was told to expect a long wait. But after Justin Trudeau became prime minister, the process was suddenly expedited.
The Salamahs arrived in time for Christmas.
They’re among the 28 refugee families — Muslim, Christian and Druse — who’ve arrived in Edmonton since Dec. 21 through private sponsorship.
The Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, together with the Islamic Family and Social Services Association, organized a party Thursday night at the Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre to celebrate the refugees’ safe arrival and to thank the families and community groups that sponsored them.
It was a perfectly Edmonton event, an expression of the best of our community’s values and ideals.
It began with the Thundering Spirit Drum Group performing a traditional Cree honour song, followed by a series of dances, welcoming these newest of Edmontonians to traditional Treaty Six territory.
“Just open your ears and feel the song,” Thundering Spirit drummer Lonny Potts told the refugees with the help of an interpreter.
“We understand that you come from hardship. May you come here and find comfort and solace among our people.”
Volunteers from the Portuguese community set up the tables and chairs, arranged the floral centrepieces and made playdough for the kids. Northlands provided corporate sponsorship and chafing dishes, while Edmonton Emergency Relief Services handed out teddy bears and other stuffies to the little ones.
The halal buffet, prepared and donated by a half-dozen local chefs, featured shout-outs to Italian, Indian, French and British cuisine, along with Arab comfort foods: chicken shawarma, fatayer spinach and cheese pies and kabsa rice pilaf.
For dessert, guests ate baklava and maple butter-cream cake with saskatoon berry compote, while listening to a multicultural choir sing in Swahili, Tagalog and Arabic.
It has been a hard journey for all these families. And challenges lie ahead as they learn a new language and find ways to support themselves. But these families are also lucky to have private sponsors helping them adjust. In some cases, the sponsors are family members who were already living here. But many sponsors are strangers who’ve opened their homes and wallets to create sanctuaries for those fleeing the horror of war.
The enthusiasm of sponsors has been extraordinary. Just this week, federal Immigration Minister John McCallum, responding to complaints, announced plans to expedite current sponsorship applications and to loosen the cap, somewhat, on future ones.
Basel Abou Hamrah, 27, arrived in December with his mother Laila, his brother Rani, 20, and his little sister Sabrin, 18. The family fled a home near Damascus after it was destroyed by shelling. “We’d had enough,” he says. The Druse family spent two years in a refugee camp in Lebanon before an aunt here was allowed to sponsor them. Basel has been volunteering at the Edmonton Public Library and working hard on his English.
He was an accountant in Syria. He’s hoping to start university here this fall to re-qualify to work here.
“I ate poutine, also,” he said with a grin. “It’s very delicious. They tell me it is a very Canadian food.”
He was moved Thursday night by the Cree musicians.
“When I hear them, they take me to another world. It’s amazing.”
After dessert, the Mennonite Centre had planned a series of roundtable discussions about the challenges of integration. But no one seemed in the mood for that. Problems and challenges weren’t on the agenda. Instead, Arab party music with its pulsing beat set the hall dancing as everyone, toddlers to seniors, new arrivals and longtime Edmontonians, took to the floor in a celebration of old traditions and new beginnings. Comfort and solace. Friendship and joy. This rocking Mennonite party in a Portuguese hall with Cree drumming and Arab dancing was as perfectly Canadian as hockey and poutine and maple syrup. As Edmontonian as hope itself.