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Four years ago Joudi Safo, a Syrian Kurd, came to Squamish with his wife Sheren and child through the Squamish United Church’s refugee sponsorship program. Now, this past February, he waved a little maple leaf flag at his citizenship ceremony with family and friends, including his three-year-old son who was born in Squamish.
“We moved to Squamish, and it was a shock for us. I thought, is this heaven?” Safo said.
Safo isn’t the only Squamish United Church sponsored refugee. Over the past decade, the church says it helped over 34 people find new lives in Canada through the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program.
As a “sponsorship agreement holder”, the United Church of Canada is pre-authorized to sponsor families to come to Canada. They provide newcomers with all the necessary funds for re-settling, including housing, food, clothing, and transportation for one year. The church also supports refugees in less tangible ways, like navigating government systems.
In Squamish, Kevin and Vicki Haberl, both members of the church’s refugee sponsorship committee, said one of the most challenging aspects of sponsoring was providing housing. In 2017, after their kids had already moved away, the Haberl’s decided to convert their basement to a suite that could help house sponsored refugees.
The Haberl’s suite first hosted Safo’s older sister and her family, but once the Safo’s arrived in 2022, his sister’s family moved into their own rental in Squamish, making room for the Safos.
“We just kept going,” said Kevin Haberl. “Joudi moved in, and it was awesome. We were just part of a group. The other [church] members probably did more than we did, we just were there.”
For Safo, stepping into the Haberl’s basement suite meant more than just a place to sleep. Safo and his family spent nearly a decade in Iraq after fleeing the war, first in a refugee camp, then nearby working odd jobs to get by. Moving to Canada though was a different world entirely.
“When I went back to Kevin’s house the other day, even after a couple months away, I got that first feeling again, like when I first moved to Canada,” Safo said.
Safo came to Squamish with limited English. At first he learned through free classes, but after he got his job as a barber at Fresh Cuts, he dropped the classes and learned English by talking with customers, listening to music, watching movies, and using Duolingo.
On his citizenship test, he also passed with flying colours, 20 out of 20.
When the citizenship ceremony time came around, Safo insisted on an in-person one, rather than the online option, even though the wait was longer. Being Kurdish, Safo said he was treated like a third-class citizen in Syria, unable to speak his language openly and excluded from government work. Canada was the first place, he said, where he truly felt he belonged.
“Since I was born, I never felt like Syria was my country. Being Canadian, that was the first time I felt like I had a country now,” Safo said.
The Squamish United Church is still actively helping to sponsor more families, one to Squamish, and two to Calgary, where Safo’s sister now lives. But Kevin Haberl said that Federal support for the program has waned in recent years, making the process of securing new families’ travel documents and visas much slower.
“There’s no timeline. It’s just whenever,” Kevin Haberl said. “Vicki wrote to the MP again and got a nice note back. It’s still happening… it just is what it is.”
These days, Safo’s mornings look like most parents’ in Squamish, dropping his nine-year-old at school and his toddler at daycare before heading to the shop. His wife, Sheren, spends her days studying English in order to apply for citizenship. Safo’s grateful for the opportunity the Squamish United Church gave him.
“They changed my life and my kids’ lives forever,” Safo said. “They’re going to have a better education. A better life. I can’t say enough about the feeling.”
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