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Syrian refugees arrive in N. Van
Family of five welcomed with a hot meal and a fresh start in Canyon Heights JUSTIN BEDDALL jbeddall@nsnews.com
She was jet-lagged but overjoyed. “We finally made it,” Syrian refugee Fadia Wattar said shortly after arriving at Vancouver International Airport on Monday. She and her family had travelled for 30-plus hours from Egypt to begin their new lives in Vancouver, but the journey had been years in the making. “It’s four years we’ve been waiting,” said Fadia’s brother Hisham, a North Vancouver resident who’s worked tirelessly along with Canyon Heights Church to bring his family here as privately sponsored refugees. “So to them it’s not been a one-day journey, it’s been four years waiting,” he said. “There was lots of hugs and tears and emotion. The kids were excited too, their cousins, their relatives.” During the emotional airport family reunion on Monday, Hisham welcomed sister Fadia, along with his two nieces and two of his niece’s young children, ages 12 and 7, who fled war-torn Syria in 2012 and have been living in limbo in Cairo for the past three years. Hisham explained that his family had been living a normal life until the start of civil war in Syria that brought bombings and
Hisham Wattar and members of his family from Syria finally got to sit down for a dinner together at his North Vancouver home on Monday night after years apart. Wattar worked tirelessly with Canyon Heights Church to bring his family here as privately sponsored refugees. PHOTO KEVIN HILL gunfire within kilometres of their home in Damascus. The family’s situation became even more perilous when his young nephew participated in student protests during the Arab Spring civil uprisings and was later detained by the secret police who stormed the family home. See School page 9
This Christmas, believe again.
N. Shore Rescue warns of avalanche risk BRENT RICHTER brichter@nsnews.com
A backcountry skier was spared a potentially deadly night in an avalanche-prone mountain gully thanks to North Shore Rescue Sunday.
The man had gotten off-trail between Hollyburn Mountain and Mount Strachan around 1:30 p.m., although North Shore Rescue wasn’t called in until the subject’s family alerted Cypress Mountain staff after dark. Before his phone battery
died, cell tower data suggested the skier was somewhere on the east side of Hollyburn, making for a very risky rescue, according to Mike Danks, North Shore Rescue team leader. “The avalanche danger was high last night because there’s been quite a lot of
accumulation up there,” he said. Search managers sent in rescue teams on foot with parachute flares but, fortunately, the missing man found his way to a North Shore Rescue cache See Lost page 9
The Peak of Christmas • Nov 27-Jan 4 grousemountain.com/christmas