On Sunday, 17-year-old Talar Simonian will get the chance to say thank you to the country that has taken her in, reports.
The Syrian Armenian refugee will sing with her uncle accompanying her at Sunday’s Concert for Gratitude at the Crystal Grand Banquet Hall in Mississauga.
“When I arrived, it felt like home,” she said on CBC’s Metro Morning. “[People] were waiting for us at the airport.”
Simonian said she plans on singing an Armenian song called Groong, about a bird. “It’s asking, ‘Why did you leave and go very far and not come back, we’re sad now,’” she said.
Simonian arrived in Canada a year ago with her family after being forced to leave their home in Aleppo four years ago because of the war.
“It was raining bombs,” she recalled. “The washroom was the safest place in the home so we spent most of our time there.”
Now, she says, life feels safer and more peaceful. “Canada is protecting our families,” she said. “We feel like we are at home.”
Simonian is one of many Syrian Armenian refugees performing on Sunday at the Concert for Gratitude.