Syrians gather in celebration days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government at Umayyad Square in Damascus, Dec. 12.Leo Correa/The Associated Press
Bashar al-Assad was going down, and almost 9,000 kilometres away, Ahmad Bakjaji scrambled to find a TV in Montreal. He wanted to watch this.
A refugee from Mr. al-Assad’s brutal regime, Mr. Bakjaji didn’t own a set, so he bought a basic one for $200 – before realizing the news channels were all in French, which he doesn’t speak.
Still determined, he contacted a Moroccan friend in the city and offered him a case of beer to translate. The two of them drank and watched for hours as the stunning news flickered across the screen.
Nearly a decade after the Syrian refugee crisis began, Canada remains transformed by its response
It was a moment of overwhelming jubilation for the father of four who was forced to flee a decade ago over mounting political repression.
“I didn’t know that we would be happy to that level,” he said, laughing. “I’ve never, ever been happy like the 8th of December.”
Ahmad Bakjaji’s son and daughter were arrested in Syria in 2012 and 2013, before the entire family fled Syria in 2014. He has been in Canada for the last six years.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Bakjaji had plenty of reason to celebrate. Two of his children had been imprisoned in 2012 during the crackdown on political protest in the country amidst the Arab Spring uprisings. Although he was a successful engineer in Damascus, involved in building telecommunications towers and oil storage facilities, he didn’t want to wait around for another child to be arrested.
His family moved to Istanbul while Mr. Bakjaji went to work in Bahrain, and all of them applied for refugee status in Canada, where they finally arrived in 2019. He works as a builder in Montreal and has appreciated his time here, but Syria is still home and now it’s “free,” he says.
He plans to move back when he can get his Syrian passport renewed; his sisters and countless friends are still in the country. He hopes the experience of living in Canada can help the Syrian diaspora improve their homeland.
“We are not able to copy and paste these Canadian programs or laws, but we have learned a lot. We can apply it, and we can adjust it to fit in Syria,” said Mr. Bakjaji.
He has concerns about some of the Islamist groups involved in the overthrow of the Assads, and would like to see a secular government, but for now he’s just revelling in the end of the dictatorship.
“I feel this is my Syria now, not Assad’s Syria.”
-Eric Andrew-Gee
Mayson Al Misri, a former journalist and White Helmet rescuer, spent years using a nickname to hide her identity. But now that the Assad regime is gone, she says she can speak to her family in Syria without any fear.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
The first call Mayson Al Misri made once Bashar al-Assad was finally thrown from power was to her mom and siblings.
Ms. Al Misri had spent years as a famed White Helmet rescuer, pulling her fellow Syrians out from under the rubble and rushing them to the hospital after Russian and Syrian air strikes pummelled their homes. She joined the rescue group after a sniper killed her brother. The regime ended up killing many of her relatives.
Ms. Al Misri, now 49, wanted to help people. She remembers vividly an attack on civilians gathered at a market, and the faces of children who were wounded. She also remembers Russia’s double-tap air strikes that targeted their work as rescuers.
She and her husband left Syria in 2018 when it became too dangerous to stay. First, they spent some time in a refugee camp in Jordan, and later they came to Canada.
But even as she began to start her new life in Canada, she and her family still were not free from the Assad regime.
“They watched us – especially the White Helmets,” she said.
She has only been able to speak with her family members two or three times over the past few years, when they have been able to get onto a Jordanian network.
Ms. Al Misri said her brother had told her not to call them directly because the Syrian police had taken him and questioned him about her work, including what she was doing in Canada.
Now, she can freely call, text and even FaceTime her relatives, she said, which has revealed that some of her nieces and nephews who were just babies when she left, have grown.
“Everyone was crying and they keep asking me ‘When are you coming back to Syria?’ And I just cried. No one believed it,” she said
For years, she used a nickname in Syria, and even on social media, to hide her identity from the Assad regime.
“I can use my name Mayson Al Misri in Syria. It’s an amazing thing.”
Ms. Al Misri said she will visit her family in Daraa as soon as she can, but now that her life is in Canada, she will do her best to straddle lives in both countries.
“Finally, he’s gone. We can talk with our family without any fear. It’s an amazing feeling.”
-Janice Dickson
Syrian barber Mohammad Al Nabelsi fled Syria after family members and friends were killed and arrested by the Assad regime. After Syria's liberation, he gave free haircuts for 12 hours.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Mohammad Al Nabelsi was a teenager living in the southwestern Syrian city of Daraa when the civil war broke out.
At 15, his world collapsed – people were imprisoned for being in the street, his friend was killed in front of him for protesting outside a school, his neighbours were raped and executed by soldiers of Bashar al-Assad, and his cousin disappeared a decade ago and no one has heard from him since, he said.
With his parents and five siblings, he fled to Jordan where they lived as refugees, unable to work, drive cars or open a business. But in 2019, he and his family arrived in Halifax as permanent residents of Canada.
Anxious to work, Mr. Al Nabelsi opened a mobile barbershop, gaining local media attention for providing free haircuts to people living at shelters. He said he wanted to give back to those who had so readily accepted him and his family.
“It’s a different life,” he said, describing the help he has received to learn English and the permanent resident status he has been afforded to start anew here. “There’s no racism. Everything is good.”
In August, he opened a brick-and-mortar location decorated in faux Damask roses and twinkling blue LED lights in downtown Halifax.
Last Sunday, the same day he learned that his new bride was finally approved to come to Canada from Jordan, the Assad regime fell.
Mr. Al Nabelsi, now 27, said he felt so uplifted about the liberation of Syria that he and his other two barbers worked for 12 hours giving free haircuts on Monday. They celebrated with crunchy buttery slabs of the Syrian dessert kunafa and hung Syrian flags up around the shop.
Holding out a flag he said, “Maybe I be the first one to visit Syria when the airport is open.”
-Lindsay Jones
Mohamed Eldaher was a vegetable farmer in Syria. The Eldaher family first arrived in Canada as refugees in 2016. Since then, they have expanded their farm northeast of Calgary, adding seven greenhouses, but Mohamed still longs to return to Syria.LEAH HENNEL/The Globe and Mail
Mohamed Eldaher could only sleep for an hour or two at a time as Aleppo, Hama and finally Damascus fell under the control of Syrian rebels. He and his wife, Nahima Mohamed, watched the insurgency unfold on television and checked in daily with their families in Syria. They were awake, watching the culmination of 13 years of civil war.
“Just waiting for Assad to be out,” Mr. Eldaher said in an interview from his home in Calgary.
He longs to return to Syria, which he fled in 2011 before coming to Canada in 2016, now that Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship is over. But first, more waiting.
“If you did surgery, it takes time,” he said. He expects it will take about a year for Syria’s wounds to heal enough so he feels safe visiting with his wife and six children. “Right now, it will be difficult days.”
Mr. Eldaher is desperate to hug his mother, who pleads with him and his siblings to return.
“She’s crying. She’s saying: ‘Mohamed, I birthed you to be around me. Why are you out [of Syria]? I want you to be around to help me.’”
The family matriarch is pushing for a reunion in Syria now that Mr. al-Assad is gone. She is in her 60s and her husband died about two years ago. “I’d like to see her before she dies,” Mr. Eldaher said. “I’d like to hug her.”
Mr. Eldaher, who farms vegetables in the warmer months and renovates in the winter, joined other Syrian refugees at Calgary City Hall on Sunday to celebrate Mr. al-Assad’s downfall. “I’m feeling proud,” he said. And so are his friends and family. “They will start to build a new country.”
-Carrie Tait
Syriana Restaurant & Catering owner Safaa Naeman says she intends to stay in Canada, but hopes Syrians will finally find peace with the fall of the Assad regime.Chad Hipolito/The Globe and Mail
When Safaa Naeman arrived in Canada in 2017 with her family, she never expected she would open a restaurant.
Like most of the more than 100,000 Syrian refugees Canada has resettled in the last decade, Ms. Naeman fled her country and its brutal civil war, in search of a better life.
“The Canadian people were willing to help. They were, like, just very empathy with the Syrian people,” she said.
Ms. Naeman is thankful for the support she has received and says she has “learned a lot from Canadian people,” but her first years were challenging.
“It’s different language, different culture. There is no, like no friends, no family,” the 43-year-old said.
She focused on building a life, sending her two children to school, learning English and finding work. But food always played an important role.
“In our culture, we like to eat with the group. We like to invite our friends,” she said.
When Ms. Naeman would meet with the sponsors who helped bring her to Canada, she would cook for them. One of her sponsors, Lynda Raino, encouraged her to sell her baklava pastries and fatayer savoury pies at local farmers’ markets.
She first started a catering service, which lead to her biggest leap – a restaurant.
Syriana Restaurant & Catering opened in April, 2023, the first Syrian restaurant in Victoria. It has been so popular that they are considering opening a second location.
Ms. Naeman says she now feels like a part of the community and it seems the feeling is mutual. When news of the fall of Bashar al-Assad broke, members of the community sent flowers to the restaurant.
Although she intends to stay in Canada for good, she hopes Syria will finally see peace and looks forward to a time when she can visit her family.
-Majenta Braumberger
