Members of rescue organization that saved thousands resettle in Nova Scotia after evacuation via Israel and Jordan

Under cover of darkness, Maysoon al-Masri and her husband began their march towards the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Masri was the head of the women’s division in southern Syria of the White Helmets, the rescue organization that has saved thousands of people from under the rubble of homes after Russian and Syrian government airstrikes.

Now she is now in Canada, along with dozens of other rescue volunteers who fled Syria earlier this year, as the noose of Bashar al-Assad’s forces tightened around them.

'Heartbroken' White Helmets say they fled Syria fearing Assad reprisals Read more

But before that, she endured months of shelling and bombardment, a retreat from a government offensive, loss of hope and finally, salvation. A dramatic escape through Israel – a mortal enemy of Syria – was followed by three months of misery in a Jordanian refugee camp, and finally an autumnal welcome in Canada.

“We weren’t scared of death, we feared being detained and tortured,” said Masri. “Every family had somebody in jail. The pictures of detainees stayed with us all this time. We knew that death would not come easily.”

Nearly five months after Syria’s famous volunteer rescue workers escaped the advancing Assad regime fighters and Russian air force, many remain in “humiliating” conditions in a Jordanian refugee camp, where they spent most of the summer awaiting resettlement.

Dozens have arrived in Canada, the country that orchestrated the rescue and pledged to take in most of the White Helmets volunteers who escaped. But hundreds more remain in Syria and are at risk of detention and torture by the Assad regime, which has systematically targeted them during the war.

One volunteer is believed to have been detained by the government last month. The group is particularly reviled by Damascus and Moscow because they documented war crimes perpetrated by both.

Masri and Jihad Mahameed, the head of the White Helmets in southern Syria who is also now in Canada, both confirmed that Ottawa had played a central role in the rescue operation.

“We owe [Canada] our lives, for saving us from the hell we were in,” said Masri.

But for many of the rescuers, the stay at Jordan’s al-Azraq camp and their escape via Israel highlighted the humiliation and violence that Syrians have endured in the eight-year conflict.

“Nobody thinks of migrating and leaving their country and all their belongings, except if they fear for their life,” said Mahameed.

The evacuation came at the tail end of a campaign by Assad, backed by Russia’s air force, to reclaim the southern province of Daraa, where protests to overthrow the regime broke out eight years ago.

The rebels’ defeat was swift, forcing White Helmets volunteers to retreat until many had reached Quneitra, bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Others fled to the Jordanian border.

“It was scorched earth. Nobody dared to resist,” said Mahameed.

Negotiations began between the opposition and the Russian military, which would allow for the forced displacement of fighters and civilians unwilling to live under Assad control. Such deals had been struck elsewhere in the country, but the Russians were unwilling to agree to a deal in which the rescue workers would be evacuated.

According to Mahameed, one Russian general mocked the White Helmets’ foreign support, saying: “Let them go to London.”

Mahameed was in Jordan when the offensive began, but panicking volunteers still in Syria messaged him daily with the names of their family members, imploring him to find a way out.

“People were falling apart,” said al-Masri, who had retreated to an area near the Golan border. “Nobody knew what was going to happen to them.”

Eventually, Canada helped negotiate a plan in which Israel and Jordan evacuated the volunteers in Quneitra and their families . At night on 21 July, Masri, her husband and 420 others snuck to the border, where Mahameed was waiting. The rest of the 1,370 volunteers and their families in the south stayed in Syria.

Masri described a stifling “hell” of a life in al-Azraq camp in Jordan, where the authorities confiscated the White Helmets’ phones and confined them to a small walled-off part of the compound, barring them from leaving even to shop without minders and with little protection from the harsh summer heat.

She said the entire process felt like a calculated attempt to “humiliate” the volunteers.

How Syria's White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine Read more

For now, most of the escaped White Helmets have been resettled. Sixteen families have arrived in Canada and now live mostly in Nova Scotia, but 10 more families are still in Jordan, waiting for their turn.

Those who have arrived in Canada are trying to build a new life, perhaps helping teach first responders what they learned over years of operating in a war zone.

But the death and destruction back home continue to gnaw at them.

“Unfortunately, we the Syrian people have been left to ourselves to face our fate,” said Masri. “The whole world has conspired against us.”

“The world must know that crimes have been committed, and that there is a clear murderer,” she added.