Saint-Jérôme, first stop after fifteen years in a camp

On December 8, 2008, the federal government announced the arrival of the first group of Bhutanese refugees resettled in Canada: 24 people, welcomed in Saint-Jérôme, in the Laurentians. Of Nepali origin, these families had been driven out of Bhutan and had been living since the early 1990s, some fifteen years, in UN-run camps in southeastern Nepal, home to about 100,000 refugees.

Canada had first committed to welcoming up to 5,000 of them. The commitment was raised to 6,500 in 2013. According to a study published in the journal Anthropologica in 2023, some 2,000 of them were directed to Quebec, to four cities: Quebec City, Joliette, Sherbrooke and Saint-Jérôme, where about 300 people settled.

The same study notes that keeping people in the regions is a challenge: in the 2016 Census, Saint-Jérôme counted only 105 people with Nepali as their mother tongue. That number probably underestimates the community, but it shows that the welcome of the first days is not always enough to make people want to stay.

Volunteers, settlement organizations and families already established opened the door. Staying also depends on what comes next: a job, neighbours, a place at school and in neighbourhood life, the feeling of being expected. That part is not up to governments alone.