The Bakours were among the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Canada. They came on Dec. 7, four days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greeted arrivals at the new refugee reception area of Pearson airport.

They were sponsored jointly by the Canadian government and by the Metropolitan United Church, through the Blended Visa Office–Referred program.

Their profile, on paper, is very similar to that of the government-sponsored refugees now crowded into hotels near the airport. If you have wondered who those people are, and what their stories are, meet the Bakours. The Star visited them over the past two months.

Hussein Bakour and his wife, Wahida Salameh, decided to flee their home outside Damascus as they were walking back from a burial.

It was about a year after the civil war started. Hussein had been tortured for three months in prison, and they’d spent days in the basement, shaking in fear during regular blasts when “rockets came down like rain.” Their nephew, just 9, had been en route to their home when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the head.

As they were returning from his burial, a rocket hit the home of the family’s neighbours. Hussein carried the mother and her son to the hospital.

“Her son died in my arms,” he says in Arabic.

They bundled their five children into their car, expecting to return soon once local fighting between the Free Syrian Army and the regime of Bashar Assad calmed. That was four years ago.

Their two-storey house, they’ve heard, has been levelled.

Before the war, Hussein, 35, was an electrician and pipefitter. He started working when he was 9, and by the time the war started, had a business with more than a dozen employees.

He met Wahida, now 34, when they were in their early 20s and he was called to her family’s home to fix an electrical problem.

They were married, built a home and raised children. Hussein dug a tiny pool in their backyard, where he also grew vegetables and raised ducks and sheep.

What follows is their story as they tell it. The Star has not been able to verify it, but Samer Abboud, a professor who has written a book about the Syrian war, says it is typical.

The anti-regime protests spread to their Damascus suburb in March 2011, but Hussein and Wahida didn’t join. “I was too frightened,” says Hussein. “I didn’t think there would be any benefit, except a bullet.”

Staying away from the protests offered no protection, however. In the summer of 2011, he was driving to get groceries when army officials stopped him at a checkpoint and demanded he give them his car. He refused and was hauled to prison for three months.

Over weeks of torture, his right hand was mangled — he can no longer use it to lift or carry things. Most of his teeth were broken. He was repeatedly electrocuted.

He still suffers from panic attacks and memory loss. (The family’s official refugee profile states Hussein was jailed for a year and a half, but Wahida and Hussein say it was three months.)

The family left Syria for Lebanon.

The Bakours’ sense of dates is vague. But it is clear they lived for at least two years in a tent Hussein built in a camp outside Anjar, a Lebanese town two-and-a-half hours from Beirut. They shared the space with Wahida’s father, stepmother and three of her half-siblings.

There, they received some financial aid from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program, but not enough for food and rent. Hussein couldn’t work, because of his crippled hand and fragile psyche, so the family’s three oldest boys went into the streets to hawk Kleenex and napkins. The oldest, twins Ali and Fawaz, were 8 at the time. The most successful salesman was their little brother Mohammad, then 6.

“(People) gave me money without taking anything,” he says proudly.

The boys and their parents never felt secure in Lebanon. On the streets, they were often cursed at, they say. They were threatened by the Lebanese military, who detained people with expired residency permits.

The Bakours got the first call from the Canadian visa office about being accepted as refugees more than a year ago.

When they boarded the flight to Canada — their first trip on an airplane — they knew very little of what would await. Their hearts were heavy, as they left the rest of their family behind.

“I’d never thought of Canada before,” says Wahida.

They attended a daylong workshop by the Canadian visa office in Beirut a few days before leaving. From it, they gleaned a grab bag of ideas about their home-to-be. One: there was a big waterfall. Two: there was snow. The third one, however, left the biggest impression. It’s the one they offer a reporter, asking what they knew of Canada before arriving.

“It’s banned to hit your kids,” says Hussein. In Canada, “if you ever hit your kids, the government will take them away.”

The kids’ first day at school

Inside the Bakours’ new home near Danforth and Pharmacy Aves., the four oldest children are by the front door, excitedly pulling on their new winter jackets and boots.

It is their first day of school — for all intents and purposes, ever.

There was a school for refugees not far from their tent in Lebanon, but they rarely attended because the teachers flogged them with a thick whip, they say. Besides, they had to earn money.

They have already toured nearby public schools, which allayed any fears about corporal punishment here.

“I swear, it’s beautiful,” says twin Ali, 10, who attended one year of kindergarten before the war. “We are going to learn to read!”

Hussein walked the two-block route twice last night, practising for this morning.

“I hope (the kids) will be doctors and offer free medicine to everyone,” he says, as they step out the door. The children will attend two adjacent schools, Oakridge Junior Public and Samuel Hearne Middle School. Both are part of the TDSB’s Model Schools for Inner Cities program, which provides extra support to students and their families. There is a parent literacy centre, a community support worker and a settlement worker who helps newcomer families find housing, training, jobs and doctors.

Every Friday, the schools send many kids home with backpacks full of food. There’s a free halal breakfast program.

Most important, since 86 per cent of the schools’ students speak English as a second language, there are extra ESL teachers and the Literacy Enrichment Academic Program (LEAP), designed for newcomer children with little schooling experience. There, they are taught not just English, but the routines of school and essentially how to learn.

The Bakours ended up in this school catchment area by chance.

Just before the morning bell, the family makes its way to the administration office.

The principal at Oakridge, Heather Groves, is waiting, along with Grade 1 teacher William Assaf. Assaf shakes 6-year-old Malak’s hand and says good morning to her in Arabic.

“Would you like to come and see the classroom?”

Up on the second floor, she quickly settles in at her desk, and is instantly surrounded by students saying hello.

Things don’t go as smoothly for Mohammad, 7.

His Grade 2 teacher, Kelly Lunn, sits on a rocking chair surrounded by her students on the carpet.

“Boys and girls, this is Mohammad. He’s come a long way to be here,” she says. “We are going to be helpful, but not aggressively helpful.”

He kneels awkwardly on the edge of the carpet. But when he sees his father and brothers leave the class, his face crumples. He races after them into the hall, crying.

Vice-principal Rod Zimmerman tells Hussein many students have first-day problems. The school has also found Mohammad an Arabic-speaking buddy to play with at lunch and recess.

By 9:27, Hussein is exhausted after dropping the twins off. He, too, is learning a new ritual as a parent.

The parents’ first day of school

The scene replays itself three weeks later: kids pulling on coats, a nervous excitement in the room.

A routine is forming in thin layers, like the snow drifting down outside.

Mohammad is happy now. He lists his friends in class: Karim, Abierto, Abdullah.

It’s his parents who are nervous. Hussein and Wahida are going back to school after a 20-year gap.

Hussein finished Grade 6 on paper, but really left at age 9 to work. He never learned to read or write. Wahida made it through Grade 4, but she, too, cannot read Arabic.

They take the subway to WoodGreen Community Services, carefully counting the stops since the letters on the station walls are like hieroglyphics to them.

The centre at Danforth and Coxwell is an official English language centre, funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Here, landed immigrants and those with refugee status are offered free English classes and settlement services until they are sworn in as citizens, usually in three or four years. There is a free daycare for 2-year-old Rahaf.

Four Syrian refugees are starting classes today. Two are in advanced language classes for professionals — a gynecologist and an MBA student, both from Aleppo and fluent in English. The Bakours are at Level 1.

They are ushered into a bright classroom, where desks face one another in a square. Most classmates are Chinese grandparents, but there is a woman in an Ethiopian shawl and a Spanish speaker.

Teacher Cindy Law tries to keep the class fun and welcoming. She is wearing bright red lipstick to match her shirt, and beside her whiteboard she’s pinned a poster with “Don’t worry. Relax. Have Fun!” written in cherry red.

She gets the students to go around in a circle, repeating the days of the week and the months. Wahida shakes her head, smiling. Hussein looks stunned.

Law goes over the same material every few months since there is continuous enrolment. Today, it’s back to seasons. She asks the class to describe things they see in a picture of summer, and notes each word on the whiteboard. Apples. Blanket. Flip-flops.

Students copy the words in English, then in their native tongue, so they can study later.

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Hussein and Wahida follow suit, carefully copying the strange scratchings they see on the board. But how will they study? Since prison, Hussein’s memory is terrible. “I don’t know what I’m writing,” he says.

With hard work, newcomers can learn enough English to function in a mainstream job in their field in two or three years, says Maisie Lo, WoodGreen’s director of immigrant services. But that’s assuming they are literate in their native language.

For people like the Bakours, “it will be many years,” she says. Essentially, they have to learn how to learn — “how to organize and analyze information, and create new knowledge. These are all skills we learned in school, that we take for granted.”

But Hussein and Wahida have come from a war zone. Sitting in a class and watching a kind lady speak a strange language seems a wonderful change. They love it.

Says Hussein: “I feel like I’m becoming a very little kid again.”

‘It seems they’ve been here forever’

Fawaz’s right calf is in a cast.

The 10-year-old either broke his foot or badly sprained it slipping down the stairs. His father and mother hustled him to a nearby clinic, from where they were dispatched to hospital in a taxi.

In the emergency room, they were greeted by an Arabic translator the hospital had called.

“She brought us back home,” Hussein says with a huge smile. “She even gave us her phone number, if we need anything in the future.”

You can understand why he says Canada is full of “the best people I’ve ever seen.”

If integration is a two-way process, so far Toronto has proven very amenable to this family. The Bakours have felt welcomed at just about every corner. Strangers have offered baked goods, stuffed animals, job opportunities, dinner dates …

But the family has also adapted remarkably well.

In an emergency, they got themselves to a doctor’s office on their own. They take the subway daily. Their vocabulary is expanding. (“See you tomorrow,” “no problem,” “crazy.”)

The principals at both schools give positive reports on all four children. They are engaged in class, they say. Ali and Fawaz were playing soccer at recess, before Fawaz’s injury.

When asked what she loves most about Toronto, Malak replies: “My teacher loves me very much.”

On a recent day, Karen Scott, one of the family’s sponsors, was driving the children to visit the beach, when Mohammad yelled in English to stop. His sister had taken off her seatbelt. Considering he moved here from a place with spotty traffic regulations, Scott puts this in the category of “adapting exceptionally well.”

“It seems to me they’ve been here forever,” she says.

In two months, her group has ticked off most of its obligations as private sponsors to the Bakours. They found lodging, registered the family in school and English classes, set up bank accounts, found doctors and dentists. The notable exception is employment.

When the sponsorship term expires at year’s end, ideally, one of the parents will have at least a line on a job, so the family can support themselves. Typically, privately sponsored refugees land jobs faster than government-assisted ones, because of sponsors’ contacts. (While 70 per cent of privately sponsored refugees have jobs by the end of their first year, their average annual earnings are only $18,500, according to government statistics.)

A job using his trade skills might be obvious for Hussein. But he would need the full use of his right hand. Initial consultations with doctors have left him pessimistic. Wahida has never worked outside the house and, so far, Hussein opposes the idea.

Traditionally, refugee scholars have considered finding meaningful employment to be the prime indicator of successful settlement. This might prove elusive for the Bakours for some time.

“It’s a five- to seven-year process,” says Fawzia Haji, the settlement worker with Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office who works at Oakridge and Samuel Hearne schools. “It takes that long for people to feel settled.”

There are other problems. The three boys are showing signs of trauma, their mother says. Ali, one of the twins, will only sleep under his parents’ bed.

“Ali has seen something in Syria probably, something we don’t know about,” Wahida says, adding she has spoken to a school counsellor.

(The same counsellor provided Wahida with some Canadian-style discipline techniques, such as confiscating the iPad when the children misbehave. “I tried, but it didn’t work,” she says. “The kids are giving me a hard time.”)

For her, the most difficult part has been worrying about her family back in Lebanon.

The members of the Metropolitan United Church refugee sponsorship committee are committed to the family for the long term. They raised $47,000 — more than twice as much as needed for a combined government-private case. If the Bakours need financial and settlement support after a year, Scott intends to provide it.

“Morally, if there are still challenges, (abandoning them) will not be an option for me,” she says. Of the committee members, she has spent the most time with the Bakours. She delights when the children run to her for a hug at the door. The experience has pushed her to examine a career change, from IT management to refugee settlement.

“I can’t imagine my life without that little family,” she says.

Over the past two weeks, Wahida’s father, stepmother and three of her siblings followed her path from the informal refugee camp near Anjar, Lebanon, to Pearson airport. However, they are government-assisted refugees with no private sponsor, and are being settled in Hamilton.

Without any guides or translators, the Bakours made their way to that city by subway, train and bus to greet them at their hotel.

“I feel so, so, so happy,” says Wahida.

Two streams of refugees

The Bakours are more typical of government-assisted Syrian refugees (GAR) than of privately sponsored refugees arriving in Canada. Private sponsors bear the costs of supporting a refugee or family for a year. The Bakours arrived on the Blended Visa Office–Referred (BVOR) program, in which Ottawa financially supports the family for six months and their sponsors pay the remaining costs and oversee the first year of settlement. So far, only 1,173 of the 16,565 Syrian refugees who have arrived in Canada are in the BVOR program, and for statistical purposes, Ottawa considers them similar to GAR cases.

Family size

Government-sponsored: 53% of applications have 5-8 people.

Privately sponsored: 52% of approved cases involve just 1 person.

Age

Government-sponsored: 56% of cases in progress involve people 14 years of age or younger.

Privately sponsored: 31% of cases in progress involve people 14 or younger.

Language

Government-sponsored: 85% of cases in progress involve people who speak neither French nor English.

Privately sponsored: 38% speak neither language

Education

Government-sponsored: In 40% of approved cases, 14 years of age or younger, the refugees have no education. In 8% of approved cases, age 15 or older, they have some post-secondary education.

Privately sponsored: No data available.

Sources: “Syrian Refugee Profile: Addendum — January 2016,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; “Welcome Refugees: Key Figures,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

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