Most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. Community has a beginning, a middle and a next.

Ottawa’s history of welcoming refugees stretches far back, and includes the arrival over the years of hundreds and thousands of people from Burma, Congo and Colombia, Kosovo, Somalia, Vietnam, and Hungary, who escaped war or persecution and made it to Canada’s capital. Our community is rich with the stories of former refugees who have put down roots, revitalized neighbourhoods, raised future leaders and woven their traditions into our social fabric.

But it had been a while — almost a generation — since a large group of refugees had a high-profile arrival in our midst. Public interest in refugees faded. Private sponsorship, a Canadian innovation that empowers ordinary citizens to resettle refugees, survived on a smaller scale thanks to dedicated volunteers. Federal policymakers continued to support refugees in theory, but in practice advocates had to work hard to protect key services.

By the end of August, 2015, the UN had registered 4,343,225 Syrian refugees.

When Syrians began pouring into neighbouring countries in 2011, exacerbating an already overwhelming increase in forced migration around the world, few Canadians were paying attention. But in the summer of 2015, the global refugee crisis took over the news cycle. Our screens filled with images of people trudging up country roads carrying everything they owned, leaky rafts crammed with Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans trying to cross the Mediterranean, rescue workers retrieving the bodies of those who didn’t make it. By the end of August, 2015, the UN had registered 4,343,225 Syrian refugees, making Syria the world’s single largest refugee-producing country.

In Canada, a country insulated by geography from the urgency of the European migration crisis, talk of helping the Syrians grew louder and more insistent. Then, on September 2, the body of a three-year-old boy washed up on a beach in Turkey. His name was Alan Kurdi and he was a Syrian refugee. In his t-shirt, shorts and sandals, he looked like he could have been out for a picnic at Britannia Beach. He could have been our kid — literally. Alan’s aunt in Victoria, BC had tried to sponsor his family, but the process was slow and complicated and his parents gave up hope. They decided to cross the Mediterranean in a crowded dinghy, and only the father survived.

That infamous photograph of Alan’s body on the beach, as painful and heartbreaking as it was, changed everything. Canadians went from passive to active almost overnight, springing into action in their communities while loudly demanding that their leaders do something too. Private sponsorship surged and donations flowed to settlement and humanitarian organizations. Soon a new government was pledging to bring in 25,000 Syrians within a few months, more than doubling Canada’s intake for an average year.

In this frantic time, we didn’t know how many Syrians would come to Ottawa, but one thing was clear: lots of people were about arrive in a very short period, and we needed to scale up. It was a once-in-a-generation moment, a challenge the community embraced.

The effort began in the fall of 2015 and continued at top speed through 2016. We donated clothes, furniture, money and skills. We volunteered to drive, to clean, to apartment-hunt, to paint and organize. We put in long hours providing medical care, settlement services, legal support, language interpretation and logistics. We filled in forms, made soup, built web sites and coordinated our efforts. At times it felt like the entire city was touching the life of a Syrian arrival in one way or another.

We didn’t get everything right — far from it. There was frustration at times as existing agencies struggled with increased demands and inexperienced players entered the fray, and as services, funders and governments searched for pathways to collaborate. The media attention was overwhelming for the new arrivals and those working with them, and the early months of settlement highlighted not just all we could offer but all we could not, including an adequate supply of affordable housing.

Making space in our midst for newcomers has always made Ottawa a better place.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the gains we made, as individuals and as a community, far outweigh the challenges. Making space in our midst for newcomers has always made Ottawa a better place, and the Syrian effort was no exception. New relationships have been created between neighbours, between organizations, between faith groups. Existing partnerships are deeper and stronger. Services that have expanded to better serve the needs of the new arrivals are doing a better job serving everyone. Employers are embracing exciting new talent, teachers have new skills and understanding, and ordinary citizens have a more informed and nuanced view of the world.

This website is dedicated to telling the stories of how it all happened. If you were part of the Syrian refugee resettlement effort, we hope you look back and recognize yourself in these vignettes. But this is just the beginning. We hope you will be inspired to share your own story by posting it to the Refugee 613 Facebook page.

Let’s write the next chapter to Ottawa’s refugee story together.

If you weren’t involved in the Syrian effort and fear you missed the moment, know that you are still needed. Refugees continue to arrive every week, both those being resettled and those seeking protection on arrival. They come from Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, Colombia and Congo, and they need our support as much as the Syrians did. You can still sponsor, volunteer, donate, organize and welcome — visit the website of any settlement agency or www.refugee613.ca for ideas and contacts to get started.

The hectic pace of 2016 may have eased, but that’s no reason for Ottawa’s welcoming spirit to wane. The magnitude of the global refugee crisis demands that we continue to do what we can to offer sanctuary and a new start to vulnerable people.

There are more than 21 million refugees in the world right now. UNHCR estimates that 1.2 million of them are in need of resettlement this year, because their situation is so precarious their lives are at risk.

Canada resettled a total of 40,000 Syrians in the past year and half, and here in Ottawa we took in more than 2,100 Syrians and several hundred more from other countries. We are proud of what we did, and rightly so.

But as these stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things make clear, we can move mountains when we work together. Let’s write the next chapter to Ottawa’s refugee story together.