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A house fire is difficult for anyone, but for the Bilal family it was especially traumatizing as they had only been in Canada a few months. Mohammad, Afraa, their two children, Naya and Nael, and Mohammad’s brother, Ali, arrived in Canada in February as refugees, after fleeing the war in Syria.
In July, a fire broke out in the family’s home. Fortunately, no one was injured, but most of what little they did have was destroyed.

The Guay-Bourbonnais family home, in Marieville, Quebec, was completely destroyed by a violent fire. 
“I didn’t want help. I just couldn’t accept that I was a disaster victim,” recalls the mother of the family, Caroline. However, in the midst of the chaos, two Red Cross volunteers approached her and said “This disaster has affected you. It’s okay to let yourself be helped.”

Glass and debris flew through the air as a tornado tore the roof from a section of the home that Arnold Brown rented with a friend in LaSalle, Ontario. Now, more than a month later, the 60-year-old is still trying to put the pieces of his life back together after it was quite literally torn apart.

After graduating from the nursing program at Queens University, Nicole Edwards made some surprising discoveries about community health. Nicole had just returned to her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was seeking ways to occupy her free time while she looked for a job.  She applied to volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross, and was assigned the role of Community Health Transportation volunteer with the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living program.

Mohammed Sunba shares his experiences of volunteering with the Red Cross: he started nearly two years ago to support people who have been impacted by personal disasters, such as house fires and floods. The Alberta fire response is the largest disaster Mohammed has been a part of as a Red Cross volunteer.

At the Wood Buffalo Regional Library, Librarian Nicole Greville meets with a group of Fort McMurray residents to practice English conversation over coffee and snacks.
 
It’s been more than two months since the ESL group last met and the room is abuzz with conversation. After all, there’s a lot to catch up on.

Red Cross volunteer Nicole Beauchamp, her husband Robert, and their family have long served their community and country. Beauchamp has been with Red Cross for 20 years and spent part of her summer assisting Alberta fire evacuees, first in Edmonton in May and then again in Calgary in June and July. 

Aileen Park, an Alberta fires evacuee, is an artist. Over the last five years, she has made thousands of tiny blown-glass hearts that she gives to strangers in the hopes that they will bring a smile to someone’s face. These small Pocket Hearts are a symbol of human connection and are meant to be shared and passed along. More recently the hearts have been given to people facing hardships or as a thank you for the generosity from others around her. Her little tokens of hope and solidarity are now spread across every continent.