Joseph Tomas expects challenges.
There will, no doubt, be several for his family of six after the Syrian clan’s arrival in Charlottetown Wednesday to begin a new life.
The children – Odiss, 19, Andrew, 16, Thomas, 11, and Peter, 6 – will start school next week where everything will feel and appear joltingly different.
Tomas, a plumber by trade, will eventually take on the predictably sizable task that strangers to a strange land face in finding adequate employment to provide for family.
His wife, Basma, was showing the early emotional strain of a long trip to a new home. She was tearing up after a tiring journey with the realization many friends and family are left behind far away.
“It’s going to take a while to get relaxed here,’’ Tomas says through an interpreter.
The 45-year-old Tomas, though, is taking this major new chapter in stride.
Tomas says he will learn to cope, hopefully even thrive.
So, too, will his family.
They will have help, for sure.
Paul Stevenson, vice chairman of the committee that helped bring the Tomas family to P.E.I., says plenty of assistance will be provided to get the Syrians settled.
The committee made many repairs to an apartment in Charlottetown that will be home to the family.
Committee members will also be working on befriending the family, taking them shopping, tending to different needs, all in a collective effort to make them feel they are a part of the community.
Naturally, the P.E.I. Association for Newcomers to Canada will be leaned on to provide short-term settlement services.
Tomas expressed great gratitude toward the people who brought his family to Canada.
The effort was persistent and rather drawn out with the Central Christian Church working with the Diocese of Charlottetown to bring the family to P.E.I. Seven local churches stepped up, joining forces raising funds.
The process began back in August 2015, two years after Tomas and his family fled the northern Iraq city of Mosul, which had been his home for more than 30 years.
Life in Lebanon was no treat, though.
The family had little money to live on. The two oldest children worked long hours to help make ends meet.
Unfortunately, the family was forced to wait and endure a long, drawn-out process of hoops and hurdles that stretched over almost three years before finally boarding a plane to start life anew.
Both Tomas and his wife Basma embrace the prospect of a better life on Prince Edward Island, viewing the province as a safe and peaceful place to raise their children.
While the trip was very tiring, Tomas is exuberant in describing how it felt to arriving at the Charlottetown Airport Wednesday morning.
“It was like a dream,’’ he says.
