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[np_storybar title=”In his own words: A Syrian refugee’s first month in Canada

” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/in-his-own-words-a-syrian-refugees-first-month-in-canada”]

Before war, we had our life, our parties, we had our journeys inside and outside of Syria. People were rich. We were not used to seeing people in the streets, begging.

We were very happy, but everything was different after March 2011. People there don’t want the war. But everybody is fighting in Syria. Everybody. They are destroying Aleppo now — the city, the ancient things, the citadel. Imagine four years without electricity.

In Aleppo, we were eating from cans. Imagine four months without any vegetables. There, everybody is afraid of the future, so they have to store for it, for bad days. Two years after the war started, they used all their storage. Afterwards, it was worse.

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Support for exceeding the 25,000 benchmark is lowest in the Prairies and Quebec, where fewer than a quarter of respondents were in favour. It is highest in B.C., where roughly two in five respondents were in favour.

The poll results come just days after a Calgary school was vandalized with the message “Syrians Go Home and Die.” That is one of several incidents across the country that suggest brewing anti-refugee sentiments. A group of Syrian refugees was pepper sprayed in Vancouver last month; a Peterborough, Ont. mosque was set ablaze in a suspected hate crime shortly after the November Paris attacks.