Bassam Katbe can only look at family photos and wonder what might have been.
His father, a dialysis patient, collapsed and died Friday in Lebanon. Katbe’s father and mother were waiting to come to Canada after being forced from their home in Syria. With his mother grieving and alone, he's hoping Ottawa will fast-track his family's request to have her come here.
Katbe's parents lived all their lives in Syria. When Katbe came to Canada in 1997 he encouraged his parents to come too. But at the time life in Syria was stable and his father decided to stay.
“He said, ‘You know what? You guys, you go there, you build your future there. Me, I’ll stay here,’” Katbe said.
But the civil unrest that started in 2011 eventually forced his parents to flee. Attempts to have them come to Canada failed and the only country that would give them a visa was Saudi Arabia, so that’s where they went.
But earlier this year they were again forced to move when their visas weren't renewed, which is how they ended up in Lebanon.
Katbe, who lives in Laval, blames himself for not being able to bring his parents to Canada.
“I couldn't achieve it. And I feel bad that he died a refugee and after eighty years of hard working he died with two suitcases. This is everything he achieved in eighty years,” he said.
His parents were married 57 years and his mother's having a hard time without her husband. The family is pleading with Ottawa to show compassion.
“We're pleading to the humanity, the humanitarian side of them,” he said.
The federal government is promising to speed up the processing of refugee claims and to issue more visas by the end of the year, and that's given the family some hope.
“He died a stranger in a strange country,” Katbe said of his father, who is hoping to avoid the same fate for his mother.
