It’s official. You can pin Cochrane on the global map.
The world’s most visible, pressing human issue has come home to roost. By invitation.
With the arrival of three Syrian families – greeted Feb. 9 and Feb. 14 at Calgary International Airport by elated local sponsors and news-media outlets including the Cochrane Eagle – our town has upped its game.
There’s something noble, pure even, in the simple notion that we can provide comfort and security to those whose world has been, and is still being, bombed to ruin.
The violent armed conflict in Syria, stemming from what began as unarmed civil unrest in 2011, is the most grim humanitarian crisis convulsing the world today. According to the United Nations, 13.5 million people inside Syria need urgent help, including 6.5 million who are internally displaced. More than 250,000 people have died in the conflict, with hundreds of thousands more wounded.
Most recently, two bombs rocked Syria’s capital, Damascus, Feb. 13, killing more than 50 people. That nation’s neighbourhoods and towns resemble hell on Earth more than anything else.
How do you raise a family, go to school, or start your career in that environment?
This is something anyone born, raised and living in Canada their entire lives, thankfully, know nothing of first-hand. Because of our stability, humanity and prosperity we have the capacity to help.
That’s where Cochrane has stepped in. The Kumous family, the Assaf family and newlyweds Saffaa Alkhoury and Louay Ghassan are about to discover how awesome Cochrane and its people are. With our help they will be able to raise a family, go to school and start careers – things we are fortunate enough to, comparatively, take for granted.
They will discover they have choices.
These people didn’t choose for their neighbourhoods to be the “theatre” in which armed aggressors – including Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s forces, ISIL, Hezbollah, Al-Nusra and Kurdish fighters among others – spill blood. When a 500-pound dose of ordinance dropped with the best of intentions misses the mark and annihilates a school or hospital, those on the ground don’t benefit from the intent. Rather, they suffer. Horribly.
We can learn valuable lessons from their experiences. It may be as simple as how not to do things. It may be more complicated.
Either way, having them here to share their struggle is our reward for helping them escape the death and destruction wrought on their towns in what can’t be classified as a war as much as a heavily-armed free-for-all.
Perhaps, together, we can find a better way. At that point, the world would be compelled to tune in.
Credit to those bringing these refugees to our town and giving us that opportunity. The Cochrane Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Group, the Cabot family, the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, the Franciscan Friars at the Mt. St. Francis Retreat Centre and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, among others, are to be lauded for their efforts.
Makes our stake in the game beyond worth it.
It takes a whole village to raise a child and, in Cochrane’s case, make that child’s family comfortable in its new surroundings.
In doing so, we can make the world a better place – one village at a time.
