In rural Canada, churches connect by welcoming Syrian refugees
Hussein and Roqayah Alassaf test out donated bicycles at their home in Dauphin, Manitoba, where their family and other Syrian refugees were resettled. Photo courtesy of Ron Marlin.
Ken Yakielashek, a Roman Catholic semiretired farmer in the Canadian Prairies, remembers when Christians of varying denominations “wouldn’t talk to one another.”
To Yakielashek, that makes what’s happened in Dauphin, Manitoba—a rural community 200 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg—all the more remarkable.
A year and a half ago, three churches put aside theological differences and came together to sponsor the resettlement of three Syrian refugee families to this town of 8,500.
