Jennifer Whitehead’s London basement is packed to the ceiling with donated goods.
But it’s an open question whether the heaping collection will ever end up in the hands of a Syrian family burned out of their public housing unit late last fall.
Why?
Because the family — a mother and her four children — reportedly left for wartorn Syria, the epicentre of one of the globe’s worst humanitarian crises — on Nov. 21 to bring back another child, and where they are and what they intend to do next remain a bit of a mystery.
Less than two weeks after the family left, the suspicious blaze gutted their Boullee Street townhouse, owned by the London and Middlesex Housing Corp., prompting Whitehead to launch the collection.
Waves of generosity poured in, so much so, there’s no room for any more.
“We have three basements full at this point,” said Whitehead, who has collected everything from toys and tables to pots and phone cards.
“We aren’t receiving any more donations because there is no room for them at this point.”
But Whitehead and other complex residents who organized the collection say they still don’t know when the family is returning to Canada.
Rocked by five years of civil war that’s displaced half its pre-war population of about 21 million, and left hundreds of thousands dead, Syria remains a shattered and dangerous country for millions uprooted within its own borders and only a memory for an estimated 4.8 million more who fled the country.
That exodus — to refugee camps in neighbouring countries, or to Europe and beyond after perilous sea and land crossings — galvanized world attention more than a year ago, prompting Canada, for one, to accelerate its bid to help by taking in Syrian refugees.
Nearly 40,000 Syrians have since been welcomed to Canada, including roughly 2,000 in London.
The London mother and her children — three boys and one girl — had lived in the townhouse since 2014, before the Syrian crisis became the international catastrophe it has, neighbours said.
The head of London’s public housing authority says it finally made contact with the burned-out family after weeks of being unable to reach them.
“It’s a highly sensitive case and there’s some personal safety issues that come into play,” Josh Browne, the corporation’s chief executive, said Wednesday.
The family told the agency they won’t return to their Boullee Street townhouse, but haven’t confirmed whether they’ll take the housing authority up on its offer to stay in another unit, Browne said.
“That decision has not been made by the family. But we continue to be involved,” he said of their future housing plans.
Repairs on the gutted home aren’t expected to be completed until the spring — the housing authority is still waiting to hear back from the insurance company before starting repairs — when it will be offered to a family on the city’s waiting list for geared-to-income housing, Browne said.
Police are treating the Nov. 30 fire as suspicious, but haven’t released any further details.
“It’s still an active investigation,” spokesperson Const. Sandasha Bough said, adding no suspects have been arrested.
Nobody was home when the early-morning blaze ripped through the two-storey townhouse at 402 Boullee, causing between $110,000 and $150,000 in damages.
It’s unknown whether the burned-out London family arrived in Canada as regular immigrants or came as refugees.
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Source: Generous greeting awaits burned-out Syrians | The London Free Press
