Ibtesam Alkarnake had already started the arduous 24-hour journey from a temporary home in Jordan to asylum in Canada when her waters broke.

Nearly six years after they fled the war in Syria, safety seemed finally in reach, as the family made their way to the northern Alberta city of Fort McMurray to begin new lives as privately sponsored refugees.

So Alkarnake said nothing, enduring hours of discomfort in silence as they made stopovers in Frankfurt and Calgary. When the family landed in Fort McMurray on Tuesday evening, she posed for pictures, trading hugs and smiling at the dozens who showed up at the airport to greet the city’s newest residents

Only when the family was taken to their new home did she reveal to one of the sponsors that she was about to give birth. And just hours after the family landed in Fort McMurray, her son Eyad was born at a local hospital, weighing 6lb 3oz.

“Brute determination” is how Doug Doyle, the pastor of Fort City church, described it. “She was bound and determined to get to Canada and have that child in Canada.”

Doyle’s congregation began the process of sponsoring the family to Canada in 2015, taking advantage of a programme that allows Canadians to bring refugees to the country in exchange for covering their expenses for the first year or so and helping the newcomers settle into their new lives.

The process took years – during which Alkarnake became pregnant and was initially told she would be held back from traveling to Canada as a result. Panic set in, said Doyle, as the family feared they had lost their chance at starting over in Canada. “They’ve had several years of unsettledness. They were wanting to settle and find a place to call home.”

The church intervened on their behalf and officials agreed to let her travel after a health check confirmed it was safe to do so. The baby surprised everyone by arriving at least a month early, said Doyle. He wasn’t sure exactly at what point in the family’s journey that her waters broke.

Both Alkarnake and Eyad are doing well and the family – which includes her husband and four other kids who range in age from five to 17 years – are slowly settling in.

“For them, it’s been a total whirlwind,” said Doyle. “They’ve arrived at an incredibly unique time in history, right? You have borders closing to people like them in the US, you have the shooting in Quebec.”

The day after their arrival, some members of the family participated in a local solidarity march for those affected by the mosque shooting in Quebec City. “We just let them enter the politics of Canada at this point in time, and let them see expressions of support for the Islamic community in our city,” said Doyle.

It was a moving tribute to Quebec from the residents of Fort McMurray, who made headlines around the world last year after flames forced a frantic evacuation of the city and destroyed thousands of structures.

The experience was a game-changer for the few in the congregation who had been reluctant to embrace the idea of sponsoring refugees, said Doyle. “People began to see themselves as displaced people, as refugees in a sense, who got so welcomed and cared for by the cities that they ended up in,” he said. “And it created quite the re-evaluation of how do you respond to people who have been displaced through no fault of their own.”

As the city struggled with the aftermath of the fire, Doyle suggested to his congregation that they pass their sponsorship duty to a church in Edmonton. “And no, our people rallied and said we are going to do this,” he said. “As devastated as Fort McMurray is by the fire, there’s a resilience in the city … And there’s this desire to give back.”