After a long day of travel, the first group of Syrian refugees airlifted to Canada checked in to their hotel just before 4 a.m. Friday.

“We suffered a lot,” said Kevork Jamkossian, who stepped off the first government flight with his wife, Georgina Zires, and the couple’s 16-month-old daughter, Madeleine.

“Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise,” Jamkossian said.

The Canadian forces plane carrying 163 privately sponsored refugees touched down at Pearson International Airport just before midnight, its passengers met by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and other dignitaries.

Trudeau and Wynne greeted the first two families to come through processing and gave them winter coats.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” Wynne told the family, before handing Madeleine a teddy bear, which the young girl accepted with a shy smile.

“We really would like to thank you for all this hospitality and the warm welcome and all the staff — we felt ourselves at home and we felt ourselves highly respected,” Jamkossian told Trudeau.

“You are home,” Trudeau said. “Welcome home.”

The second family to be processed was Vanig Garabedian, his wife Anjilik Jaghlassian, and their three daughters, 12-year-old twins Lucie and Sylvie and Anna-Maria, 10.

“They step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada with social insurance numbers, with health cards and with an opportunity to become full Canadians,” Trudeau said just prior to the plane’s arrival.

“This is something that we are able to do in this country because we define a Canadian not by a skin colour or a language or a religion or a background, but by a shared set of values, aspirations, hopes and dreams that not just Canadians but people around the world share.”

The refugee families, mostly from Aleppo and Damascus, clapped and cheered as the plane touched down in Toronto, the International Organization for Migration said in a statement.

“I am so thankful that this dream has come true for me,” Hala, 23, told IOM staff on the flight. “I was living in a two-bedroom flat in Beirut with 25 other family members. I was going to law school in Damascus, but had to drop out in my last year because of the war. I want to continue my education in Canada and become a lawyer.”

And more than 28 hours after they launched their journey from Beirut to Canada, the group of refugees finally arrived at the Travelodge Hotel on Dixon Rd. at 3:12 a.m., Friday.

“I can’t explain my closure, my feelings,” one man told reporters soon after arriving at the hotel.

Slowly, the tired men, women, children — still overwhelmed with emotions — got off the white, chartered bus and into the chilly morning air, carrying all the belongings they left home with along with the welcome gift packages from Canada.

Refugees carried their belongings in red plastic bags with a sticker that read “Welcome to Canada.” A young girl in a pink jacket and matching hat and scarf descended the steps of the bus, while a father carried his daughter in his arms into the hotel.

A couple of Syrian Canadians still on hand welcomed their countrymen in Arabic.

Surrounded by a media pack, amid spotlights and camera flashes, the newcomers were ushered into the hotel where they were hoping for a good night of sleep before being greeted and picked up by families, relatives and for some, the Canadian sponsors that they have never met.

“We faced some very bad positions,” said one man in a blue down jacket, who fled Damascus with his wife and two children last year.

“We are very happy to be in Canada. I can’t really explain my feelings in words. We came here for safety and a beautiful new future,” he added before he was whisked away by government staff.

Christine Youssef couldn’t wait to see her five cousins who arrived on the flight. Though immigration officials had instructed she pick them up at 11 a.m. Friday, she and another cousin, George Hababek, decided to greet them at the Travelodge.

Her cousins — Adham, Sara, Hanaa, Rezk and Rawad — are the first of her 24 family members sponsored through the Office of Refugees of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

Youssef said the family in Toronto applied to sponsor the 24 members in Lebanon in January and was surprised how fast the application went through. They only found out on Monday that the relatives would be in Canada by the end of the week.

Youssef planned to treat her family to a home-cooked lunch for the first time since they fled Syria in September 2014.

“We are going to take them to the Niagara Falls to hockey and help them integrate and become Canadians,” said Youssef, who has already purchased tickets for Friday evening’s Raptors’ games at the Air Canada Centre as a treat for her cousins.

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Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, who dropped by the hotel after greeting the resettled Syrian refugees at the Pearson, said the processing of their landing at the special terminal was slow and long, but emotional.

“It was very uplifting and inspirational. They keep thanking Canada for our hospitality,” Crombie said. “I thought they would be exhausted but they were all just as elated and happy to be welcomed to Canada.”

A descendant of Polish immigrant parents, Crombie said the new federal government’s quick response to the Syrian crisis makes her proud and she is confident Mississauga, a city where 56 per cent of residents were born abroad, is ready to receive the latest newcomers along with Toronto and other GTA municipalities.

“This is a heartwarming, uplifting and historical moment for all Canadians,” Crombie said.

All of the Syrians who arrived Thursday night have been sponsored by private groups, many of whom had filed the necessary paperwork months ago in order to bring in some of the estimated 4.3 million Syrians displaced by the ongoing civil war in that country.

More than 400 refugees have already arrived on commercial flights since the Liberals took office on Nov. 4.

The mass arrival took on a special significance, with an outpouring of support at the airport and nationwide on social media.

Alexandra Kotyk, a project manager with Lifeline Syria, called the arrival a “big deal.”

“It’s not that other Syrians haven’t arrived, but it’s showing the first tangible result of this new pledge that this government’s made,” she said.

Although the public was advised to keep their distance from the airport on this first night, that didn’t stop many well-wishers from heading to Pearson anyway.

Dozens gathered at the arrivals gate in Terminal 1 in hopes of personally welcoming refugees.

High school friends Joja Smiljanic, 19, and Christine Ross, 19 drove from Guelph to greet the refugees with $200 in Tim Hortons gift cards.

The pair took time off studying for first-year university exams to make a point to the newcomers, especially in the face of anti-refugee rhetoric they have seen on social media and in the U.S. presidential election campaign.

“We have to show that we do want them here. We are an accepting, multi-national country here,” Ross said.

For Smiljanic, it’s a kindness she knows well. When her parents fled the war in the former Yugoslavia in 1993, a stranger bought her mother lunch at the airport. The gesture extended in her first days in a new country is a treasured memory, Smiljanic said.

The dedicated group of well-wishers, including family members of some of those on board the plane, waited until 2:30 a.m. when Peel police advised them no refugees would be coming through.

Kotyk called airport greetings “a lovely thought,” but stressed supports are also needed throughout the settlement process.

“Inviting them to community events would be great but even something as small as welcoming them the way you might any new neighbour, with a hello and a smile.”

A second flight carrying refugees is set to arrive in Montreal on Saturday as part of the federal government’s pledge to welcome 25,000 refugees by the end of February.

With files from The Canadian Press

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