Syria. It’s a place that often conjures up images of war, violence and refugees, but it hasn’t always been that way.
Few people know this better than Jasperite Rod Tower, who spent more than three and a half years working in the country for Petro-Canada.
He first arrived in Syria in February 2008, nearly two years before pro-democracy protests erupted in Tunisia and swept across North Africa and the Middle East, later becoming known as the Arab Spring.
“We watched the onset of [the Arab Spring] through Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, but there was never any thought in any of our minds that it would ever happen in Syria,” said Tower, who worked as an engineer in the Shaer gas field north west of the ancient city of Palmyra.
All of that changed in March 2011, when protests erupted in the southern Syrian city of Deraa following the arrest and torture of a group of teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall.
Security forces at the time responded by opening fire on demonstrators, which triggered nation-wide protests demanding the resignation of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.
The government’s use of force to crush dissent only hardened protesters’ resolve and by July 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were protesting on the streets across the country.
“We were generally unaffected by [the protests] until October 2011,” recalled Tower, who chose not to go back to Syria after his company asked him to leave for security reasons.
“We knew it was coming, we knew things were starting to ramp up in Syria, but there was still disbelief at that point just because of what we knew of the Syrian people and how we had been working alongside them all these years.”
One of those people was Omar Al Homosh, a Syrian engineer and father of three who worked with Tower.
The men got to know each other while Tower was in Syria.
“The Syrian people are very giving people, very kind, very social,” said Tower, reflecting on his years in Syria.
“You need to understand that these are just normal people like you and I. It doesn’t matter if they’re Muslims or Christians, they want security for their family and a good life. That’s all they want.”
Soon after Tower left Syria, things went from bad to worse as the country descended into civil war.
During that time Al Homosh and his family fled to Cairo, Egypt, to escape the escalating violence.
While in Cairo, Al Homosh contacted Tower asking if he could help his family flee to Canada.
“In 2013 Omar contacted me through email and said, ‘Look, I’m in Egypt, do you think you could help us get out of Egypt?’” recalled Tower.
“He said ‘Whatever you can do to get me into Canada, please do so,’ but once he got a job we kind of backed off because things were OK,” said Tower, explaining in 2014 Al Homosh managed to get a job with an oil company in Iraq.
Just as things began to improve for Al Homosh and his family, the Iraqi government cancelled his work visa, forcing him to leave the country in April 2015.
On his way back to Cairo, he went through Istanbul, the capital of Turkey, but officials wouldn’t let him into Egypt, leaving him in a state of legal limbo.
“He’s been in Istanbul since April,” said Tower. “He hasn’t seen his family since then.
“He’s been waiting for a visa to either go back to Iraq and go back to work or a visa to get back into Egypt to be with his family.”
Tower first heard that his friend had been separated from his wife and three young boys when he contacted him in October—soon after the Liberal government was elected—to ask if he was still interested in coming to Canada.
“It was just a quick call. I asked, ‘Do you still want to come to Canada?’ and he of course immediately said yes and started telling me what had been going on since then,” said Tower.
With a new government in power, Tower and his wife Beth began the arduous task of privately sponsoring a refugee family.
Within weeks, Beth was in contact with Nancy Addison, who has been actively helping to resettle another Syrian family in Jasper.
Addison put Beth in contact with St. Mary & St. George Anglican Church to ask the church if they would support bringing another Syrian family to Jasper. The motion was passed and Beth was then put in contact with the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, which has been sponsoring refugees for more than 30 years.
“Rod and I are responsible for one year for their successful resettlement—housing, food, clothing, everything,” said Beth, crediting Addison for making the process easier to navigate.
“We’re not going to rely on the group that they formed,” said Rod about the group responsible for resettling the other Syrian family coming to Jasper. Although, he acknowledged there will likely be some overlap to support both families when they eventually arrive in Jasper.
Beth said she and Rod are thrilled that both fathers—Al Homosh and Hassan, the father of the other Syrian family—are engineers and as far as she knows there’s at least one person in each family that speaks English.
It’s not clear when Al Homosh’s family will arrive in Canada because the family is separated in Turkey and Egypt, making the process a lot more complicated, explained Beth.
Despite the uncertainty, Beth and Rod both said they are looking forward to welcoming the family to Jasper.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in Syria, Iraq, Peru or wherever, they just want to have a safe place to raise their children, it’s that simple,” said Rod.
To find out more about the community effort to sponsor a Syrian refugee family, visit the Facebook page “Bring Syrian Family to Jasper.”
Paul Clarke
[email protected]
