Drowned boy on the beach - Alan Kurdi & the Syrian refugee crisis Part 1

02/25/21 • 48 min

In early September in 2015, a photo of a young boy lying lifeless on a beach in the Mediterranean captured the world’s attention. The picture showed two-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down in the sand.

Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria, but on the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, the family’s father and husband, was the only one to survive.

Tima Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister and Alan’s aunt, spoke about the night the family boarded the boat in Bodrum, Turkey.

Tima said she went to grab her phone and noticed she had dozens of missed calls; she called her sister-in-law who was living in Turkey.

The journey the Kurdi family took was one thousands of Syrians attempted at the height of the civil war.

On this episode of the Global News What Happened to...? journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis and speaks with Tima about the Kurdi family’s devastating journey and finds out how the photo of Alan mobilized Canada to take action and help thousands of Syrians fleeing persecution.

Contact:

Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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Tima Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister and Alan’s aunt, spoke about the night the family boarded the boat in Bodrum, Turkey.

Tima said she went to grab her phone and noticed she had dozens of missed calls; she called her sister-in-law who was living in Turkey.

The journey the Kurdi family took was one thousands of Syrians attempted at the height of the civil war.

Contact:

Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Lac Megantic | 7

On this episode of the Global News What Happened To...? journalist Erica Vella revisits the 2013 Lac Megantic train derailment.

In the early hours of July 6, 2013, a train carrying petroleum crude oil crashed into the centre of Lac Megantic, a small town in Quebec.

The downtown core erupted in flames; 47 people perished, 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes. The tragedy marks one of the worst rail disasters in Canadian history.

The incident happened at 1:15 a.m. July 6, 2013, when a runaway train with 72 oil tankers — owned and operated by the now-bankrupt railway company Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway Ltd. (MMA) — barreled into the town at over 100 km/h.

Along with the 47 deaths, much of the town was also destroyed.

The Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the derailment and found 18 factors led to the Lac-Megantic disaster, including poor training, mechanical problems and sloppy safety oversight, a Transportation Safety Board (TSB) investigation concluded.

Three men, Tom Harding, Richard Labrie and Jean Demaitre, were charged following the derailment, but in 2018 a jury had found the men not guilty.

On this episode of Global News What Happened To...?, Erica Vella visits the town of Lac Megantic to speak with people who witnessed the tragedy over seven years ago. She describes what the town looks like know and finds out if any changes were made to ensure a derailment like this never happens again.

Contact:

Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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Drowned boy on the beach - Alan Kurdi & the Syrian refugee crisis Part 2

On this episode of the Global News What Happened To...?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis (Part 2)

In 2012, Ruba Bilal was living in Damascus, Syria with her husband and two sons; she had reached a level of stability in her life, but the country where she had lived her whole life was in the middle of a dangerous civil war.

Bilal said she was an activist in her community and worked on providing aid to people who were in areas that were under siege, but her family had concerns that she would be taken and detained because of the work she was doing.

That year, Bilal and her family felt tensions beginning to mount and she said they made the decision to temporarily relocate to Lebanon.

As the civil war continued, it was clear Bilal and her family would never have the chance to return to Syria and she submitted an application to LifeLife Syria, an organization that connects Syrian refugees with potential sponsors in Canada.

In 2016, she learned her family would be coming to Canada as privately sponsored refugees.

Bilal and her family were one of thousands who came to Canada in 2016, after the federal government made promises to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.

The commitment came after a photo of two-year-old Alan Kurdi garnered international attention on the dangers refugees undertake to seek safety.

Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria. On the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, Alan and Ghalib's father, was the only one to survive.

On this episode of Global News What Happened To...?, Erica Vella speaks with Bilal about how she and her family adapted to life in Canada. She also finds out what happened to the Kurdi family and if the federal government has continued its commitment to resettle refugees in Canada.

Contact:

Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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