Husband and wife Rani McKhoul and Dareen Saliby are both glad they were able to celebrate Christmas this year in Lac La Biche - it’ s been a while since they were able to do it at all.
Husband and wife Rani McKhoul and Dareen Saliby are both glad they were able to celebrate Christmas this year in Lac La Biche - it’ s been a while since they were able to do it at all.
McKhoul, Saliby and their three daughters Lamar, 13, Stephanie, 7, and Annabella, who is two months old, are Syrian refugees who arrived in Canada in February under the sponsorship of the New Life Victory Fellowship in Lac La Biche.
McKhoul and Saliby are both Christians and have attended the church with their children since they arrived. One of their friends at church is Grace Miller, who says that she realized that they didn’ t have a lot of people in the community they could go to for Christmas in Canada.
“I invited them to my house for Christmas, we decided to have an occasion,” she said.
The family celebrated with Miller by having both Canadian and Middle Eastern food. Miller also said there were a lot of gifts that were given.
“My children were very happy with you,” McKhoul said to Miller.
This kind of occasion is a far cry from where the family came from.
McKhoul and Saliby lived in the city of Homs before and during the initial outbreak of the war in 2011.
They both said that life was stable and prosperous before the war both for them and for their country.
“It was very different,” Saliby said, comparing Syria before and after the war.
“I had a home, I had a car, I had lots of money and I had work. We lost everything,” said McKhoul. “I can’ t work every day like I could before and everything was very expensive.”
The family was forced to flee Homs in 2012 when their house was raided by armed men and eventually destroyed.
“At 2 or 3 o’ clock at night, armed men shot the door off and broke through ... but government forces scared them of,” McKhoul said.
“The following morning we went to my village (a place called Wadi al-Nasara, which has an Eastern Orthodox-majority population). A friend phoned me and told me that the house was bombed and everything was destroyed. That was two days later.”
McKhoul said that they had only their clothes and their documents on them.
The family stayed in a room at a monastery in Wadi al-Nasara for a brief time before they moved on to Lebanon. He said they had to leave Syria because there was no way they could afford to live there.
“We moved to Lebanon because I needed money and I needed work. Lebanon was safe,” said McKhoul.
McKhoul registered him and his family in a UN refugee camp in Zahle, where they would stay for three years.
It was now the beginning of 2015, and Saliby’ s brother lived in Lac La Biche and had connections with the Program for Adult Learning, whose head is Colleen Pierce.
Pierce made an application for private sponsorship on behalf of Saliby and McKhoul. She later went to the ministerial organization that has the New Life Victory Fellowship under its umbrella, and the agreed to provide the funds for their sponsorship.
In the meantime, Saliby and McKhoul were both keeping track of their progress while taking trips to the Canadian consulate in Beirut. All the while, McKhoul and Saliby were also trying hard to keep them and their children afloat in Lebanon.
“It was a long process both here and there,” said Miller.
But both Saliby and McKhoul said the wait was worth it when they heard the news that they were coming to Canada.
“We were very, very, very, very happy,” said Saliby.
The family arrived to Lac La Biche after flying through Amman, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton.
Since arriving, the family has been given financial support and guidance by the church. McKhoul has since become the owner of International Marble and Stone Ltd., a company that does interior and exterior work with granite and ceramic tiles.
“It’ s been difficult to find work though,” he said.
The couple’ s English is rusty but improving and they say that their daughters have picked it up well as well as succeeding in school.
“Our big daughter is doing very well in school now,” says McKhoul.
“She (Lamar) has a good teacher here,” said Saliby. “Stephanie is also learning quickly.”
McKhoul says that going forward he hopes for his family some of the same kinds of luxuries and safety that they had in Syria before the war. But he also said that he likes Lac La Biche and considers it home.
“In the future, I need work, maybe I buy house, car, kids live here and their happy and safe,” he said. “I love the city now. When I go to Edmonton for a while, I decide to come back here. Now this is my city.”
Saliby also said that at least one child really likes it in Canada.
“Stephanie said to me that she’ s very happy to be here in Canada,” she said.
The family is also content to celebrate Christmas.
“We were not able to celebrate Christmas during the war,” said Saliby. “Everyone was sad, everyone was moving and everyone was poor.”
