Raya Sleka was with her friends at High Park when she heard something fly over her head, instinctively she ducked for cover, afraid.
Her friends laughed. “You’re in Canada now, it’s safe,” one said.
For Sleka, it was a dreaded reminder of what she escaped.
“It ended up being an air show, but I almost wanted to cry,” she said. “It wasn’t a joke. I just came from Syria.
“I struggled a lot with just the idea of feeling safe, there is a lot of trauma,” Sleka said.
Statistics Canada reports immigrants made up about 22 per cent of the Canadian population in 2017 and a 2020 report to Parliament indicated one in four workers are immigrants. The report to Parliament also stated that 341,180 new Canadians settled in the country
COVID-19 has also complicated the process because of travel and entry restrictions.
But throughout the process, refugees seeking an escape from war-torn regions have added the number entering Canada. The Russian invasion of Ukraine will add to the refugee requests.
Canada has accepted more than 1,088,015 refugees between 1980 and 2017, and the goal for 2021 was to accept 81,000 refugees.
It’s been five years since Toronto Metropolitan University psychology student left As Suwayda, Syria, about 111 kilometres south of the capital Damascus. She remembers her childhood fondly, times long gone but never forgotten.
“I remember never feeling lonely, my cousins and my friends were always around me. There were so many activities to do,” Sleka said. “This is what I miss the most.”
It’s very different from the Syria ravaged by civil war since 2011. Amnesty International concluded a 2021 report in a total of 12.3 million Syrians were displaced since the start of the civil war.
“I can’t tell you how bad it is, people don’t have money, everything has become so expensive,” Sleka said. “Even a piece of pita bread costs around $120.”
Before moving to Canada, she was an English literature major, taking a train to a city two hours away from her hometown to attend classes. In her second year, things became more complicated.
“I decided to study law alongside my major and it was in a totally in a different city as well,” Sleka said. “Moving across three cities to attend classes — I did that for six years.”
She eventually came to Canada on a scholarship. It was her ticket out of a Syria she no longer recognized.
“My credits that I earned back home didn’t count when I came here so I was starting from scratch,” she said. “I had to start working the second week so I quickly isolated from everybody.
“I didn’t contact anyone because I was just trying to survive,” Sleka said.
She has felt distant from her community in the city, as she struggles with her battles.
“We came from war, even if we thought we were okay back home, when we came here, all the trauma comes in a different form,” Sleka said. “Even now I don’t have many friends around me — It’s hard.”
Ahmed Moneka is a performance artist from Baghdad. He studied theatre for nine years in Baghdad, performing in many productions. In 2015, one of those productions almost cost him his life.
“When I came to Canada, I had to stay here in order to save my life,” he said.
Moneka co-wrote and starred in a 2015 short film called “The Society.” It tackled the topic of homosexuality through the lens of two gay men living in Baghdad. The film became wildly controversial in Iraq, and Moneka received death threats from a militia associated with the government.
“It was shot in 2011, but we were scared to screen it until 2015 until we got an invitation to screen in Cannes Film Festival and TIFF,” Moneka said. “Around this time is when it started to make the news back home.
“They threatened me by going to my father and telling him I’m not allowed to come back or else they will kill me,” he said.
It wasn’t much of a choice. But he got one where many friends of Moneka weren’t so lucky.
“As artists in a war zone our jobs were to uplift and reflect our community, no matter what, we had to provide a light in the darkness — hope,” he said. “I was exiled but many of my friends were killed.”
Since arriving in Canada, Moneka, among his many projects, serves as lead singer for two bands, Moneka Arabic Jazz and Moskitto Bar. Music has become his saving grace.
“When I came to Canada, music healed me. It was my opportunity to share who I am and to have the privilege to connect with a lot of people and communities,” he said. ““I’m grateful because I’ve been blessed, I work with two bands now, and they’re both talking about multi-culture and diversity.”
It wasn’t war or exile that pushed Siem Tekie to leave Eritrea. It was the excitement of the Western dream.
“I was in my first year of college and I kept hearing from all my friends living overseas how great their lives were,” he said. “So, I thought why I’m stuck here alone, I want that great life too.”
Tekie grew up in a big family in Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea. As the oldest, he always felt a responsibility to his siblings and parents, a responsibility that made the separation much tougher.
“It was extremely difficult to be away from my family, but when you’re young everything in front of you seems brighter,” Tekie said.
“I had regrets every day, I kept seeing my mother’s face in my sleep,” he said. “But if I returned, the shame of being seen as a failure — I didn’t want to return empty-handed.”
Tekie has lived in Toronto since arriving in Canada, he worked minimum wage jobs and eventually graduated from George Brown College’s heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning technician program.
After many years of being unable to secure a job in the field, he now works as an Uber driver.
“When I first came to Canada what I noticed was the lack of time, it was all about going from work to home and vice-versa,” he said. “I didn’t have much back home but I had community — I had conversations.”
In the long-term Tekie plans to move back home, although he is grateful for Canada, he sees the dream he once had, as simply a dream.