It was an emotional moment when the Alfred family arrived at the Penticton Airport late in the evening of July 9.
The family of three, from the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, in southern Africa, had spent more than 40 hours on a series of flights to arrive in Penticton. From there, it would be another drive of less than half an hour to arrive at their new home in Summerland.
The efforts to bring this family to Summerland has taken years as the One Person Project, a Summerland charitable organization, has championed their case.
For the Alfred family, this is an exciting time of new beginnings.
Life will be different for them and they are learning to adjust to a new home and a new community.
Their story is unique, but it is also part of a long tradition of refugees from around the world, finding a new home in Canada.
Ukrainians fleeing war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine are coming to Canada.
The Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel was launched in March 2022 and since that time, around 300,000 Ukrainians have come to Canada.
Following the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021, Canada has taken in more than than 54,700 Afghan refugees.
Since 2015, Canada has provided a home to more than 100,000 refugees from Syria.
The same welcome has happened time and again through Canada’s history.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam, came to Canada. By the end of the 1990s, this figure reached 140,000 people, and another 60,000 Vietnamese people joined family in Canada under the Orderly Departure Program, through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
At that time, Canada also implemented private sponsorship of refugees, which remains in place today.
During the Cold War era, refugees from Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia settled in Canada.
In the 1920s, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, around 21,000 Mennonites came to Canada from the Soviet Union, fleeing famine and other hardships.
My grandparents on both sides are part of this migration, and at time I wonder what my life would be like if they had not been able to come to this country.
While my grandparents’ cultural background and traditions were not the same as those of the Alfred family, families from Syria or the recent Ukrainian refugees, their experiences in Canada would have had a lot of similarities.
The challenges in starting a new life in a new and unfamiliar place would have united them.
Canada's 2025 immigration goals are for to bring in 395,000 permanent residents, 305,900 new students needing study permits and 367,750 new temporary workers needing work permits.
While these figures are down slightly from 2024, they show Canada — a country with an estimated population of 41.5 million — has chosen to be a welcoming place.
Not all share the same attitude, and there have been instances of hate or hostility directed against those who are newly arrived, or against identifiable groups within Canada.
Still, this country strives to be a welcoming home for people from around the world. Most of us living in this country today have origins in other parts of the world. For any number of reasons, our families chose Canada, and Canada accepted them.
Recalling and retelling our own refugee and immigrant stories — something important within my family — should also result in a level of compassion and acceptance for those who are now beginning their lives in this country.
John Arendt is the editor of the Summerland Review.
