LAVAL, QUE.—It is as much daily affirmation as it is morning ritual: a caffeine-charged reminder of one refugee’s grip on the Canadian dream.

Kevork Jamgosian hangs a sharp right and joins the queue at the Tim Hortons drive-thru. The 30-year-old Syrian, in a touching role reversal, has already dropped his parents off at school and bundled and unbundled his 2-year-old daughter for daycare. He’s about to make the 23-kilometre trek to his job as a car jockey at a downtown Montreal dealership.

But first, an extra-large triple-triple to kick-start a day that sometimes doesn’t end until his own evening French class is dismissed at 9:30.

“If you take Tim’s, you are original Canadian,” Jamgosian says with an infectious laugh that punctuates many of his observations. “We wake up at 7 every day and we don’t stop — the Canadian life. Too busy all the time.

“But I like this life. It’s perfect.”

It’s been one year since a surprisingly bright-eyed Jamgosian — a surname that appeared as Jamkossian in initial news reports — ended a 15-hour journey from Beirut in front of clattering camera shutters in his new country. With toddler Madlen in his arms, Jamgosian and his wife, Georgina Zires, were the first of the 163 refugees to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after a Canadian military plane touched down at Pearson airport. The Dec. 10 flight was the first in Canada’s plan to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees.

Trudeau’s message was simple: “You are home.”

Jamgosian calls this his “wow day.” He delights when he and his wife are referred to as the “first refugee family” and he sometimes Googles news footage of his arrival to refresh details blurred by the fatigue of travel and the whirlwind of paperwork necessary before his first plane ride.

He recalls the grid of lights below as the plane approached Toronto, shaking the PM’s hand — though the encounter was a surprise, he says he recognized Trudeau immediately — and how welcoming and kind everyone was. And his own feeling of happiness.

He has done his best to, indeed, make this home.

“I was born in Syria 30 years ago and when I stepped off the plane it felt like I was born again,” he says. “Before I came to Canada, when I sent my papers, I say I want to forget everything in my country and start a new life. Today, I feel the same way. The first four or five years (will be) hard for me, but I’m sure after is a good life for me and for my family.”

Jamgosian and Zires, sponsored privately by the Armenian Community Centre of Toronto, arrived with little more than clothing. Most of the refugees that night were, like Jamgosian, Armenian-Syrian. After staying with a cousin in Toronto for three days, they moved to their planned destination of Montreal. Once there, the Fondation d’Alep helped find an apartment in Laval, just north of the city. They moved in Dec. 24. The foundation — a Montreal-based charity that helps newly arriving Syrians — provided beds, so the family didn’t have to spend Christmas sleeping on the floor, and other furniture collected through donations.

The charity also brought over food, when the Jamgosians realized most stores were closed for the holidays and an artificial Christmas tree that stands decorated in the corner of their dining room again this year.

The couple’s life took another twist a few days earlier when Zires, after blood tests to understand the cause of fatigue, learned she was pregnant.

“That was my Christmas gift,” says Jamgosian. “I was very happy.”

Jessica was born Aug. 30.

She has not been the only addition to the Jamgosian household. Kevork’s parents came over from Syria in February. His sister followed. The seven of them live in a three-bedroom apartment in a low-rise. The rent is $1,000 a month and Jamgosian is the sole breadwinner.

Zires, who speaks no English, was first a full-time student learning French. Now she looks after the baby while the other adults attend school. Jamgosian takes French classes on Monday and Wednesday nights, three hours each time. He practices his English with his colleagues and online.

Although settling in Quebec meant learning two languages — Jamgosian already spoke Armenian, Arabic and Turkish — he says he researched Toronto and Montreal before he came and, like a lot of people, was astounded at the cost of rent in the GTA. He saw car insurance was also much cheaper in Montreal so he picked that area to settle. Daycare in Quebec is also heavily subsidized — the couple pays about $165 a month for Madlen — which was a welcome surprise.

The Fondation d’Alep helped him find a job, at first wielding a shovel on a crew that cleared snow overnight.

The job was tough, as was the transition. Not knowing people or the neighbourhood — “If I go two streets (away), I lost my way to come home,” he says — or how to function in a very new world created anxiety.

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Now the family attends church, likes to visit the mountains north of the city and shops in Laval where they can speak Arabic at many grocery stores. Jamgosian fishes in a nearby river with new friends and he knows he should learn about this game called hockey because that will make him more Canadian. With a second child on the way, he also quit a two-pack-a-day smoking habit.

“When you come from another country and start from zero, it’s a little bit hard,” he says. “When we come, we don’t have language, now we can speak. I’m working and we have our daughters. I rent my house and we have my car. So it is good for the first year.”

Since April, Jamgosian has worked at Ford Lincoln Gabriel, earning $14 an hour, mostly moving cars, photographing trade-ins and posting information about those used cars on the dealership’s website. Someone there helped him find his own affordable vehicle, a 10-year-old BMW.

General manager Nathalie Leduc says she has been so impressed by Jamgosian’s work ethic, initiative and good humour that the plan is to start training him to be part of the sales team, a commission job that could earn him anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000 annually.

Leduc says she didn’t realize Jamgosian was a refugee until he asked permission for two Star journalists to visit him at work. He keeps it to himself, he says, to earn opportunity on merit.

In Syria, Jamgosian did everything from sales to machine operation at his father’s plastics manufacturing company — “It was a comfortable life,” says his dad — but that Aleppo factory has been reduced to rubble in the ongoing civil war. The store where Zires worked as a clerk has also been flattened. A neighbour from Aleppo recently told the family that a missile had ripped through the roof of their former home.

“We lost everything,” says Jamgosian. “Five years I’m living in the war and nobody understand what (is) happening. Who kills who? Why? We don’t understand. If you know your enemy, you can do something but you don’t know who is your enemy.

“We see the bombing, the rockets, everything. It’s hard, a hard life.”

Jamgosian says a sniper’s bullet once grazed his head — “lots of blood” — when he was looking out a window. He knew he had to leave, first to Lebanon to get his paperwork in order, then on to Canada. The search for a fresh start, he says, was mostly for opportunities for his daughter, now daughters.

“Here in this country, everybody has a chance to do something good,” he says.

Zires, with Jamgosian translating, adds: “Everything is good here in Canada. Everyone treats everyone with respect.”

Jamgosian would like to find a second job, maybe do handyman work on weekends. He says he will work 80 hours a week if he can.

Jamgosian hopes he can move into sales at the dealership — he knows his French must get better — and one day he imagines setting up his own garage with mechanics and a used-car lot. He’d also like to buy a house.

In their apartment, the family has five yellow frames, placed around the word LOVE in pink lettering and two pink butterflies. In each frame, except for the one Madlen broke, there is a picture of Trudeau meeting them at the airport.

Jamgosian would like to meet Trudeau again. That, he says, is his “dream.” He’d like to further thank him for the new life Canada has given him — this time without a translator.

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