Regent Park - A Welcoming Neighbourhood for Afghan Refugees

By: Fred Alvarado.
(Fred is a journalist with the Focus Media Arts Centre, funded by the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.)

Malika Rosali and her daughters came to Canada as refugees from Afghanistan more than 7 years ago, they arrived to Toronto, Canada’s largest city and leading destination of immigrants. It also has  large Afghan diaspora.

One of the reasons that they are escaping their home country is that women have very little to no freedom in terms of civil liberties.

Malika resettled in Regent Park, a neighborhood where Muslim women feel safe and culturally inclusive in a healthy and sustainable community that shares their faith. Malika and her family are now safe and grateful to be residents of Regent Park. She’s also proud of being an active member of Mothers of Peace and the Regent Park Catering Collective, showing her culinary talent when she cooks traditional Afghan food to residents of the community during the popular Regent Park Cultural Bazaar and Taste of Regent Park every year to celebrate the vibrancy of Regent Park neighborhood.

“I make Bolani, this is street food from Afghanistan. I do cater in Regent Park Catering Collective for around six years and know I’m working as a chef at Fred Victor. I make this food at home and bring it here to sell. People really love Bolani. When I sell my food, I try to help my family back home because right now you know the situation in Afghanistan is very like upside down. There’s no work there, even the people, they don’t have money.  It’s like a war, no work. It is really very hard right now.” Malika said in an interview to RPTV.

Malika is concerned with the ongoing unrest in Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control of most of the country after the withdrawal of U.S. and Canadian military troops. Thousands of people are desperate to leave the country because they fear retaliation from Taliban for having worked with Canadian troops and civilians; however, the Canadian government committed to resettling 40,000 Afghan refugees since September, 2021 and Toronto will be a leading destination of the new Afghan arrivals. To date, almost 6,500 Afghan nationals have arrived.

This of course is not the first time Canada has welcomed a large number of refugees. Between 2015 and 2018, for example, 58,650 Syrian refugees were resettled across the country.

Theo Nazary is also an Afghan refugee and dear member of the Regent Park community who came to Toronto more than 20 years ago. Theo is a graduate of McMaster, Ryerson and University of Toronto with a professional certificate in Project Management. He’s an active board member of Regent Park Focus and works as a Strategic Planner for Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre.

RPTV interviewed Theo to know about his experiences regarding his resettling process, finding community in a new country, and his opinion about the ongoing situation in Afghanistan.

From the interview:

“I moved here with my family in August 27, 1997, I’ve being here for more than 20 years. Canada is a beautiful country; we had no issues. One of my aunts already lived here in Hamilton, we stayed with her as soon as we arrived to Pearson, we went to Hamilton that day and we spent a month there. And I think as soon as we landed my whole family recognizes that this is home now. There are no plans to go back to Afghanistan, it’s not a safe place to anybody to return anytime soon. It’s being a good experience.

Throughout this process I work at Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre now and part of growing up and maturing has being to learn about the history of this land and that we have to give acknowledge to indigenous people in this country for allowing everyone including Afghans and everyone to live here and also the Canadian government for assisting people all around the world to be able to resettle here and call this place home. Everybody comes to Canada for a reason, nobody was satisfied to leave their country, they were sort of forced to leave and for a lot of people it was war or persecution, a number of different reasons."

In Afghanistan there is no LGBTQ community, you can’t be LGBTQ or two-spirited in Afghanistan or you will get killed. Those are the people who need to get out, that need to come to an understanding of a pluralistic society like Canada and I think all goes back to the indigenous people that welcomed the Europeans and now are welcoming everyone else in this beautiful land.

In terms of finding community is all about where you live, I’ve lived in these areas: Regent Park and St James Town. There is a vibrant diverse community here; it is not difficult to find people from your culture or from your background whether your Muslim or from the Middle East; it’s not difficult to find people from your own culture here.

I’ve moved quite a bit across the GTA and we usually always had relatives, family friends, and other friends that we were able to connect that were Afghan or Irani, it’s a diverse city, it is one of the most diverse cities in the whole world.

There is a pretty significant Afghan population here in Toronto, I think it’s anywhere between 70 to 150 thousand Afghans are here in the city, and they are all spread out in the GTA.

Regarding the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, things didn’t work out for the U.S. and as a result now we have the current situation where the Trump government made a deal with the Taliban because it was causing them a lot of money I guess, and so they left Afghanistan, they were due and now the Taliban is basically back. Afghanistan is back to the dark period again.

If you hear about the things that are happening now is unimaginable, the worst humanitarian situation ever unfolding right in Afghanistan. There are videos of that Afghani soccer player that was hanging on to the wheel of the U.S. plane taking off, that illustrates how bad the Taliban is and everybody knows this, and it’s unfortunate that they are in power and the U.S. had to withdraw.

The Canadian government led an effort to get as many Afghans that work with them out of the country, they were obviously depending on the U.S. because the U.S. was running the international airport inside Kabul, they worked with the U.S. to get as many Afghanis and as many Afghans that helped them in their cause to get out and I think it wasn’t as well planned because I know Afghans are still stuck there that helped the U.S.

We actually have family members, my mom’s cousin who is still stuck in Afghanistan and he was an interpreter, a translator for the U.S. government and also helped the Canadians as well. There are people still stuck there that are suffering and the worst part for those people is that a lot of the Taliban and the people that in government now, the extremist, they know these people helped the international forces so their lives are at risk.

The situation is dire, it’s pretty bad. At the same time the Canadian government announced a resettlement effort of 40 thousand afghanis to come to Canada and we’ll see what happens there and we’ll see how that unfolds. We did that with the Syrian people when the Syrian war broke out and hopefully, we can bring some Afghans to Canada because there’s a huge Afghan population here that can assist with their resettlement and help those people when they arrive here.” Theo shared his thoughts in an interview to RPTV news.

Millions of Afghans are in urgent need of help, and Canadians have an important role to play in responding to this deepening crisis. But in the shadow of the pandemic and other issues gripping our attention, we risk doing too little, too late."