Ten years since hundreds of Syrian refugees came to N.B., the majority have stayed

10 years since coming to Canada, a refuge family from Syria is grateful for their home away from home.

Sulaiman Abazied remembers looking out of the airplane window as they flew over New Brunswick.

The land was blanketed in white.

He recalls his wife crying.

“What is this place?” he recalls her saying.

They both wondered if coming to Canada was the right decision.

It was Jan. 10, 2016, and the family of four had just spent four years as refugees in Jordan, after escaping the Syrian civil war.

Stepping out of the plane into the “cold, icy” winter, he remembers being welcomed inside by community groups who held up signs in English and Arabic and being connected with a Fredericton family who would help them get settled.

But the next day, a snowstorm hit the province. Abazied said they stayed inside their temporary accommodations for three days.

“I decided in my mind to come back to Jordan at that time because I have never seen, like, this weather before, “he said. “But when the snow melted, it’s like a heaven.”

Ten years later, he reflected in an interview with CTV Atlantic on what that time was like and how he and his family is doing now.

They all learned English. Abazeid received a diploma in business and now owns and operates a barbershop in downtown Fredericton. His children, 11 and 14, love their school.

Despite the winter still being a bit of a shock, he says, he’s glad they stayed.

“The people here is friendly. When we like, when you walk even, like, my neighbours, everyone smile in your face, welcoming you,” he said.

According to a report by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), between November 2015 and February 2016, the federal government had committed to welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees.

In the end, 26,172 arrived in Canada within those 100 days.

A total of 44,620 Syrian refugees arrived in Canada between Nov. 4, 2015 and Dec. 31, 2016, according to the Syrian Outcomes report, at a time when Canada usually settled 12,000 refugees a year.

New Brunswick welcomed over 1,600, according to IRCC.

“What we saw was a whole community approach and whole communities who wanted to be involved, to welcome individuals from Syria to Canada and really make sure that they felt at home and they felt as though they belonged,” said Ben McNamara, executive director of the N.B. Multicultural Council.

McNamara believes that effort has a lot to do with why the majority of those refugees have since stayed in N.B., ten years later.

According to research by DataNB, 74 per cent of Syrian primary applicants who arrived between 2015-16, were still in N.B. five years later.

The 10-year rate will be officially released next year, but McNamara anticipates the retention rate has remained stable.

He says there’s still work to do when welcoming newcomers to N.B., but the province learned a lot during the Syrian resettlement process.

“The encouraging part is we have communities who want to get that work done, who want to bring in newcomers because they see the value that having diversity within communities brings,” he said. “But also, we’re facing a demographic challenge over the next number of years. And communities have really stepped up to say, we want to make sure that we still have schools, we still have hospitals ten, 20, 30 years down the road.”

Abazied says his family stayed for one main reason.

“You are in a safer place. That’s the most important thing,” he said. “We came here for our kids.”

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