Syrian refugee photo exhibit portrays 4 families’ new life in Montreal

It’s been almost a year since the first Syrian refugees landed in Montreal and to mark the anniversary, Montreal City Hall is displaying a poignant photo exhibit called “I’m not from Space.”

“It’s a quote from one of the participants,” Guillaume Simoneau, the photographer, said.

“We all felt right away it reflected quite accurately what this exhibition portrayed, in a sense that these people are like us, they’re not from space.”

There are 13 photographs and accompanying texts, capturing the story of four Syrian refugee families in their new home, Montreal.

Written by filmmaker Anais Barbeau-Lavallette, the stories are poetic as they are poignant.

“The war arrived along with her neighbours’ sudden fear, but Reem stayed behind because she loved her life,” read one of the texts.

Reem is a young woman who, after an explosion destroyed the garage where her husband was working, fled with her toddler while pregnant with a baby girl.

Sometime after, she arrived in Montreal sponsored by the Dunn-Desjardins family of four.

Since then, a genuine bond has grown between them.

“For me she is part of my family,” her sponsor, Line Desjardins said.

READ MORE: A Syrian refugee family’s first day in Montreal

Each story is as heart-wrenching as the last.

The violence in Syria cost Nidal, another participant, his eye as well as his home.

He fled Syria taking his seven children into a refugee camp where he remained for 18 months, until the Legros, a Montreal family of nine, helped him set up in the Centre-Sud.

To welcome them to their new home, the city asked the families to sign its book of honour.

“It seems to us it is quite normal to tell them you are special to us, it’s coming from our heart,” Frantz Benjamin, chairman of the city council, said.

Although there is nothing poetic about war, there is beauty in the new beginnings these families still have the chance to write.

The exhibit runs until Nov. 23 at city hall’s Hall of Honour.