AUGUST 2020

chaldeans AROUND THE WORLD
Chaldeans in Canada
BY ADHID MIRI, PHD
The steady immigration of
Chaldeans from northern Iraq
to the United States and Canada
started at the beginning of the last
century. The early pioneers left their
villages and took unchartered voyages
to distant countries, ports and seas
armed with little more than courage
and faith. Few official documents are
available to support their stories and
much of what we know comes from
family members and elders.
The first Chaldean pioneers came
from the village of Tel-Keppe, what
was then part of Ottoman Turkey,
reaching the New World around
the beginning of the last century.
We have documentation for Akko
Qarana (Brazil), Jajjo Hajji (South
America), Petto Goryoka (Mexico),
Makhola Qashat (Mexico), and
Yousif Shammam (North America -
Canada).
Yousif Shammam left Iraq for
Egypt, ending up in Fort William,
Canada in 1899. Shammam is considered
by many to be the first pioneer.
A handful of years later, in July
1905, a United States government
‘declaration of intention’ document
shows that George Binno, born in
Tel-Keppe in 1878, arrived in New
York via Havre, France.
Many Chaldeans came to Canada
and the Detroit area from Tel-Keppe,
establishing themselves and sending
for their families. This type of ‘chain
immigration’ also occurred between
Canada and Michigan. Hanna Sarraya
went first to Fort William, Canada in
1913, moving to Detroit in 1920 with a
priest named Father Faranso Dabbish.
Between 1910 and 1912, a few adventurous
immigrants (we count 23)
traveled to Detroit and Canada but
returned after a short stay. By 1913-
1914 there were 41 documented
Chaldeans living in Canada. Some
were from the village of Tel-Keppe,
such as Jameel Qashat (1914), some
were from Mosul and one man (name
unknown) from Baqofa.
Born in 1883, Jameel Qashat is
the hero of a dramatic pioneering
story. He became an officer of the
Ottoman Army at age 20, witnessing
Turkish calamities against Christians
and Armenians. Soon after his army
discharge, he decided to leave Iraq
and join his maternal uncle, Yousif
Shammam, who was living in Fort-
William, Canada.
In 1914, Qashat started his journey
on foot from Mosul, Nineveh to
Beirut, Lebanon. He traveled with
a 2,000-person caravan, all seeking
to escape Ottoman persecution.
This first step of the journey took 3
months. In Beirut, Qashat met up
with a British sailing ship that carried
him to the port of Marseille,
France. There he caught a sail on a
French vessel traveling to Canada.
The French commercial ship was
in the Mid-Atlantic when World
War I erupted on August 28, 1914.
It was vulnerable and defenseless
and worse yet, orders were received
from the French government to sink
the commercial ship in the event of
a German attack. Luckily, the ship
escaped that fate and Qashat landed
safely in Canada just before Christmas
in 1914.
During his first year, he stayed
and worked with his uncle, Yousif
Shammam, selling goods, portables,
clothes and accessories. Qashat
worked hard and saved his money,
one foot planted in his new land but
one foot still in Mesopotamia, “the
land between two rivers.”
News of Turkish massacres in Qashat’s
homeland and letters from his
family members prompted him to
travel back to the land of his birth.
His return journey in 1921 was more
dramatic: crossing two oceans, landing
in Beirut, through the Suez Canal,
Egypt, along the Red Sea, around the
Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Ocean,
to the port of Basra, Iraq.
Qashat settled in Baghdad, got
married and worked for the British in
their new camps. In another pioneering
move, he was among the first to
open a hotel in Baghdad’s famous Al-
Rasheed Street. He named it Qasr Al-
Sham (Syria Palace). With the church
as his second home, the new world became
a distant third and Qashat never
returned to Canada or the USA, despite
his desire to travel back. He died
on November 27, 1967 in Baghdad.
After World War II, religious
persecution, the rise of nationalism,
the 1958 Iraqi coup, the rise of
fundamentalism, and the fall of the
Soviet Union all combined to trigger
an emigration of Eastern Christians
from Iraq.
There were fewer than 9,000
Canadian Chaldeans in 2006. By
the time Pope Benedict XVI formed
the Mar Addai Catholic Eparchy
for Canada in 2011 there were
over 13,000. As of 2013, the eparchy
serves 18,886 Catholics. Seven
priests and 40 permanent deacons
preside over eight parishes, which are
located in the provinces of Ontario
and Quebec. In the 2016 census over
46,000 people identified themselves
as Chaldean or Assyrian.
The Chaldean Catholic Eparchy
of Mar Addai of Toronto is
36 CHALDEAN NEWS AUGUST 2020