It’s no easy feat to sponsor and resettle more than 1,000 desperate newcomers in north Toronto in the onset of a Canadian winter.
But for the members of the Armenian Community Centre of Toronto, it’s personal.
The community centre, in the north Toronto community of Willowdale is preparing to welcome 1,079 privately sponsored Syrian refugees set to arrive in Canada in the coming weeks. By comparison, there are 2,600 Syrian refugees set to be resettled in the entire Greater Toronto Area and 25,000 in communities across Canada by February.
READ MORE: How to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees: A step-by-step guide
Dikran Tourosian fights back tears as he recalls the way Canada took in Armenians fleeing genocide a century ago, when the Ottoman government (now Turkey) wiped out 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1922.
Tourosian is sponsoring as many as 40 refugees, 12 of whom have already arrived.
He helps them find places to live and work. He’s given some of them jobs in his Lebanese restaurant, Lara’s Restaurant. He even drives some of their children to school.
Helping out in this way is something the Armenian community does in crisis, says Lorig Garboushian Katrjian.
“It’s not new for us, as a community, to do this.”
Garboushian came to Canada from Syria 10 years ago. Many of the people she and her community are sponsoring were well established in Syria before their communities were torn apart in the civil war.
“Sometimes when I’m talking to them, I’m trying to hide my tears because I know what kind of life they had there.”
But as an influx of refugees is slated to arrive starting Thursday, the community centre still doesn’t know how many people they’ll need to handle each day, let alone each week.
“The most we got in a week was about 60 people,” said Apkar Mirakian, a member of the community centre coordinating the resettlement.
READ MORE: Canadian military volunteers preparing to help Syrian refugees coming to Canada
The Armenian Community Centre has applied to sponsor 2,500 people, including families with multiple children. They’ve brought in about 300 refugees since 2010 – most of them Syrian.
Many are being sponsored by relatives or family acquaintances, Mirakian said.
“The relatives are keeping the new arrivals at their homes, mostly, for a short while … until they can get settled and rent a place.”
To privately sponsor a family of four, an individual sponsor must show proof they have $27,000 to guarantee they can financially support the family for a full year.
But the community centre’s co-sponsorship agreement provides that surety without placing a financial burden on individual sponsors, Mirakian said.
“Everyone, in a way, chips in.”
Same goes for providing the new arrivals the supplies they need to get on their feet.
In a warehouse filled with clothing racks and boxes, volunteer Tamara Ohanessian is coordinating donations – furniture, bedding, clothing.
“Everything the newcomers will need,” she said.
“We would like to see more furniture, kitchen stuff, winter clothes. It’s very important.”
The community centre also has an Armenian-language private school and is allowing the children of refugees to attend for free.
Raffi Sarkissian, the vice principal of ARS Armenian Private School, said there are already more than 30 kids from refugee families attending classes.
“We want to ensure that these children who have lost their homes and lost everything back home, that they do find a second home in the city and we make the transition to Canadian life much more easier for them.”
With files from Jennifer Tryon
Comments