When asked about her life in Syria a decade ago, Amani Shamseddin struggles to find the words.
Sitting on the couch in her Edmonton home as her children clamour for her attention, she pauses to think.
“It wasn’t safe, we had so many incidents,” the 33-year-old says after a moment. “I don’t want to bring it back.”
In the fall of 2015, the newly elected Liberal federal government embarked on its pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrians fleeing the country’s brutal civil war in just 100 days.
Since then, Canada has welcomed more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.
Among them were Shamseddin, her husband Mahmoud and their children Ahmad and Ghena, who were eight and four when the family fled Damascus in April 2016. The family briefly stayed in Lebanon before securing asylum in Canada.
According to Global Affairs Canada, more than 250,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict that began …