It began with just a small group gathering in Mississauga’s Celebration Square, cheering that the Syrian city of Homs, 10,000 km (6,200 miles) away, had fallen victim to rebel forces.

But when it was announced that President Bashar al-Assad had fled the country, ending the country’s civil war, this town square in a small Canadian town was flooded with people celebrating, Many of them had fled Assad’s regime to Canada just a decade ago.

“I cried for more than 45 minutes,” said Khaled Abdulwahed, a 31-year-old Syrian who settled in Toronto as a young man and helped organize Sunday’s impromptu event.

Mr. Abdulwahed, a Canadian citizen who was 17 when he first took part in anti-government protests in Syria, continues to advocate for his country’s human rights, earning him the title of “Syrian Mayor of Toronto.” .

While many have started planning trips to visit family and friends, they have also said that Canada will remain home for most of them.

“Now it is up to us to help our people rebuild our country and support it from here,” he said.

Mr. Abdulwahed was part of a wave of Syrian refugees who came to Canada between 2015 and 2016, bolstered by a campaign promise from newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to help resettle 25,000 Syrians at a time when many were trying to escape their Fleeing the country died.

Canada’s warm welcome contrasted sharply with that of its neighbor to the south, where Donald Trump ran his first presidential campaign on a promise to ban Muslims from entering the country. He would try later Ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Like Mr. Abdulwahed, Muzna Dureid also had to make the journey to Canada alone as a young woman.

Within the first three months of the revolution, the then 21-year-old witnessed the arrest of her brother, the hacking of her social media accounts by Assad intelligence officers and the murder of an uncle for his pro-democracy activities.

“That was the turning point,” she said in a call from her older brother’s new home in Spain. He was released a year after the arrest, but by then the family had already fled Damascus and spread across the world.

While Ms. Dureid’s parents remained in Saudi Arabia, she managed to secure a scholarship in Turkey before receiving another scholarship to study in Montreal in 2016.

A Facebook call for a sofa to sleep on soon developed into a lifelong bond. The Quebec family that hosted her for that first night – and continued to do so for the first year – later privately supported the rest of her family during their stay in Canada.

Canadians have been helping with resettlement since 1979 over 390,000 refugees through private sponsorship – which differs from government-sponsored programs in that the cost of relocation is borne by an individual or group.

As Canada sought to resettle Syrians fleeing war, this proved crucial to achieving this goal. Almost half came through some form of private sponsorship Government of Canada.

Canada has implemented resettlement more than 100,000 Syrians, all through a mix of government and private funding.

This is a small number compared to how many refugees the countries surrounding Syria – namely Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan – have taken in since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. But their warm welcome in Canada helped them feel an integral part of their new home community, Ms. Dureid said.

“That’s why people believe that they don’t just belong to this country for a temporary period, but that this is their country,” she said.

The human rights activist and policy adviser, who has worked with Canada’s Ministry of Gender Equality, says she will likely split her time between Syria and Canada now that Assad is gone.

“My dream is to have a ministry of gender equality in Syria and to be part of this work,” she said.

“I think many of us will stand between both countries and serve both countries equally.”

But there are signs that Canada’s open attitude has changed in recent years, as Trudeau’s government has sought to reduce the country’s number of permanent residents as the country grapples with an ongoing cost of living and housing crisis.

It is unclear what impact, if any, this would have on Canada’s refugee resettlement program. In 2023, the country became the fifth largest recipient of asylum seekers in the world.

Maya Almasalmeh, a sociology student at Western University, was just 17 years old when she arrived in London, Ontario with her family in 2016.

In the Syrian city of Deraa, she lost her grandfather – “a second father figure” – and her home amid the siege of the city that would become known as the birthplace of the uprising against Assad.

“He stole our childhood,” she said.

Being the eldest daughter of seven siblings in an immigrant home means she also sees herself as a second parental figure to her many brothers and sisters. And that sense of responsibility extends beyond her front door in London.

“Canada is the country that gave us peace, it gave me my education and helped me develop into the person I am today,” said Ms. Almasalmeh. But, she stressed, “we will go back” to help “build the new generation.”

She then explains her long-term goals in detail.

“I want to be a social worker because the people who helped us in the beginning were a lot of friendly social workers,” she explained, noting that her “second home” Deraa will need people with her skills to rebuild it.

But like Ms. Dureid and Mr. Abdulwahed, the 25-year-old does not expect Syria to become a permanent base.

“Canada is our home. I would say it’s our heart,” she said. “We will never forget how Canada gave us the chance to live happily again.”

But some revelers are also exercising a high degree of caution before booking flights to visit distant relatives.

“Edmonton – this is my home. This is where my family is,” explained 36-year-old Basel Abou Hamrah, who settled in the Canadian prairies with his mother and three siblings at the end of 2015.

Mr Abou Hamrah said there were concerns when considering returning to Syria. Part of his difficulty arriving in Edmonton stemmed from the fact that he had not yet come out as gay to his family.

There is also uncertainty about the future of Syria, which has been liberated from an Islamist rebel group that was once an affiliate of al-Qaeda but has renamed itself in recent years.

There were questions about what kind of government the group would form and how much freedom Syrians would have under this new leadership.

“It is not safe for LGBTQ refugees at home in Syria,” he explained.

Before the 2011 revolution, there were reports of gay men come into the sights of the police.

Mr Abou Hamrah said this was the reason for this week’s news that some European countries had decided to do so Suspend asylum decisions for Syrian refugees is of great concern to him.

“There are many LGBTQ refugees who, no matter what the new government in the new Syria looks like, will not be safe,” said Abou Hamrah, pointing out that the situation in the country is still changing.

For others, a more permanent return to Syria could be the news they have been waiting for since the civil war drove them from their homeland years ago.

“Canada has given us security and dignity,” said Israa El Issa, a mother of four, from her home in Prince George, British Columbia. “There has never been a day where I felt like a refugee, not Canadian, or unwanted.”

She and her family fled Aleppo and were later sponsored from Lebanon by a group of private citizens on the west coast of Canada.

Until this week, she had planned to continue her studies in Canada and one day become a nurse. But she said now that’s all on hold: “God willing, I’ll finish in Syria instead.”

A motivating factor for returning to Syria is a strong sense of “alienation” she feels from the family she left behind after unsuccessfully trying to bring her father and mother home.

“That’s everything I wanted,” she explained. But her father died of cancer about eight months after they moved. She tried to bring her mother with her, but said she was having trouble navigating the system.

“I tried so many times but no result,” she said.

Despite these difficulties, she bears no grudge against the country that took her in, but sees it as a natural process to want to return home.

“Ultimately, Syria is our country. And why are we refugees anyway? Because there was a war in our country and it wasn’t safe to stay there,” she said.

“But now that Syria is free from Assad’s oppression and security, God willing, is returning to Syria, of course we will return too.”