Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

Like the protagonist in his book, The Clothesline Swing, Ahmad Danny Ramadan is a hakawati, a storyteller, at heart. He has listened to countless tales of hardship and love, and has carefully crafted his own novel—and life—around them. From his house in war-torn Damascus to the pride parade in Vancouver, he has dedicated much of his […] More »

  Photo by J. Walton It has been nearly one year since the Liberal government enacted a program to admit 25,000 Syrian refugees arrived in Canada. In their first year, many of the families faced several challenges to overcome: getting to know a brand new country, finding suitable accommodations, and trying to find a job […] More »

“This journey of learning how to become a Canadian has been one of the most exciting and one of the most frustrating journeys in my life,” says Ratna Omidvar. Born in India, Omidvar earned her bachelor of arts before going on scholarship to Germany, where she met her Iranian husband. The two moved to Tehran […] More »

Mijok Lang may not know how old he is, but he has no doubt where he comes from. He remembers, as a child, singing a familiar tribal song with friends. It was the only way, he says, that they could keep lions and other animals at bay in the jungles of Sudan and Ethiopia as […] More »

The eleven extraordinary young people profiled in Citizens of Nowhere have been teachers, social workers, mediators, and breadwinners. Journalist Debi Goodwin meets them as refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, and follows them through their difficult transition to life as first-year university students in Canada. They have each been sponsored to come to study in Canada as […] More »

Thousands of Mexicans seek refuge from their country’s gruesome drug wars, but Canada has slammed the door. For some, deportation has been a death sentence The first of Juan Escobedo’s many trials began in 2007 when his common-law wife, Lisbeth, then just 31, was diagnosed with cancer. The couple had four children and little money. […] More »

Watch out! The terrorists are coming! They’re human smugglers too, all of them. They’re smuggling themselves. And there are many more boats on the horizon, watching and waiting to take advantage of our natural generosity. Xenophobic? Not us. We value immigration. In fact, there are thousands of good immigrants out there waiting patiently to get […] More »

The Toronto Community Mobilization Network kicked off its themed days of resistance to the G20 on Monday with activists converging around a mixed bag of issues including income equity, community control over resources, migrant justice, and an end to war and occupation. It’s an ambitious start­ for the week-long campaigns. On their own, each issue […] More »

Free at last. After three years and nine months thwarting a deportation order in the sanctuary of a Montreal church, Abdelkader Belaouni became a Canadian citizen in October 2009. Belaouni was one of the refugees I spoke to for my article “Gimme Shelter” in This Magazine’s July-August 2009 issue. At the time, he was living […] More »

Canadians like to feel good about our official policy of multiculturalism, and in general there’s plenty to feel good about. But as the introduction of the ominous new law SB 1070 in Arizona in April swept the news—a law that allows police in that state to demand proof of citizenship from people in public and […] More »