[LINK] "The long road from Syria to Peterborough"

[rfmcdonald]

Aaron Hutchins of MacLean's looks at a Syrian family set to be resettled in the small Ontario university town of Peterborough. It's a nice place, I can say having visited it years ago.

The last leg of the long road from Syria to Peterborough, Ont., will be travelled in the back of a family van. At 8:30 p.m. on a Thursday night, Abeer Falah and her six children are walking through the parking lot at Toronto’s Pearson airport with a group of five strangers. She gets her three youngest, two girls and one boy, into a Toyota Highlander, with whom she’ll ride. Her three eldest daughters will travel separately, and they quickly climb into a gold Honda Odyssey van.

The trio of girls finds their seats in the back, where winter coats are wedged between the seats. What did they know about Canada before? Nothing. Ask them what they want to know—and they smile. When the 12-year-old Raniem struggles to put on her seat belt, she looks at her two older sisters. They’ve travelled this far; only 150 km to go.

In early 2011, Falah was living in Daraa, Syria, with her children when the government launched a siege on its own people in response to growing protests. The army came in with tanks and snipers. Soldiers and civilians were killed. Homes were destroyed. The city was reduced to rubble. Falah’s family, meanwhile, escaped and found shelter at a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. It was a temporary dwelling for nearly five years—until today.