Settlement

The longest trip we ever took was 535 days long between several countries until landing in this great country, Canada. My family was one of the lucky families to immigrate here. From the moment we took our first step in the airport of P.E.I Canada, we found people who surrounded us with love and gave us support and help until we ended up in our new home in P.E.I Canada.

It is very difficult to immigrate to a new country when you are forced to, but our country was not safe anymore with all the bad circumstances surrounding us (bombings every day, lack of all sources of basic necessities, like water, oil, power, bread and even a difficulty to send our kids to school).

I don’t want to talk too much about what we went through during our trip, but I want to share here parts of my story; we were waiting for hours at UNICEF to register ourselves and finally someone showed up shouting our number. I didn’t realize at first, but that was our number, and, my family was lucky to have this great chance to be one of 25,000 people who were allowed to come to Canada. When we arrived here, I was surprised to see people who were waiting for us, carrying signs with our names written on them. At that point, we were not numbers anymore.

My husband and I arrived here with two kids, an 8-month-old boy and a 4-year-old girl.  It was difficult to start a new life in this new country and also hard to overcome  language barriers, but we were happy to be part of a great community that surrounded us with their love and showed  us how to start up again and build our life looking for a better future for us and enroll our kids in this great, safe education system.

Part of my life here in P.E.I.  includes a lot of involvement in the community, saying and sharing my story, participating in different events, celebrating, and enjoying the beauty of this small island. Even though my first job required me and my husband to drive for 90 minutes one way to get to work, it helped us build confidence and gain Canadian experience. 

In March 2017 I started working in my profession as a Civil Engineer with the P.E.I. government where I was  welcomed and supported by friendly and nice people who are still helping me succeed. Prince Edward Island  is such a great beautiful island, and as such, I don’t mind it as much when I have to work outside in the cold weather inspecting my projects.

I was excited to be asked to put my photo in the 2018 government calendar representing my profession. We love and miss our home country Syria, but we are grateful to be here because Canada gave us a lot and we’d love to return the favor.