{"id":15968,"date":"2016-11-30T18:02:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T23:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15968"},"modified":"2016-11-30T18:02:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T23:02:29","slug":"khamissas-to-be-auroras-voice-during-canada-150-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/khamissas-to-be-auroras-voice-during-canada-150-celebration\/","title":{"rendered":"Khamissas to be Aurora\u2019s voice during Canada 150 celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in her native South Africa, Aurora\u2019s Mae Khamissa has developed a bit of a reputation with her friends and family.
\nSuch is her love for her adopted homeland, one nephew teasingly dubbed her, \u201cMiss Beautiful Canada\u201d for all the marvellous stories she has shared with them.
\nNow, \u201cMiss Beautiful Canada\u201d has gone legit, with Mae and Raz Khamissa chosen to represent Aurora as part of the \u201cCanada 150 Community Leaders\u201d program, hosted by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
\nThe Khamissas, long-time owners of the venerable Omars Shoes, which was founded by Raz\u2019s father, Omar, nearly 50 years ago, were named to the position by Council last week.
\nThe Canada 150 Leaders is intended to provide a nation-wide network acting as the \u201cCommunity Voice\u201d for Canada\u2019s 150th Anniversary Celebrations in 2017, whether at local or larger-scale events, all the while sharing stories about their communities \u201cto create an insightful mosaic of our nation.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen they approached us, I thought it was a big deal and for us to be considered is pretty neat,\u201d says Raz. \u201cI am so proud to be Canadian. We moved from South Africa almost 48 years ago and we have been so blessed to be living here. We are very blessed to have an opportunity to vote, to express our opinion, to disagree with someone else\u2019s opinion but still get a chance to discuss things.
\n\u201cThe freedom, the comfort level, the safety factor, there are so many things we\u2019re so lucky to be a part of here in Canada. My father was a very proud Canadian and I am glad to be considered to be following in his footsteps. For me, it really is an honour to be considered part of the Canadian celebration of 150 years.\u201d
\nMae sums up her feeling with one word: \u201cPride.\u201d
\nOver the last two years, Mae has been an active member of the Interfaith Refugee Resettlers, an interfaith group which has brought together members of Aurora United Church, Trinity Anglican Church, and the Newmarket Islamic Centre to sponsor groups of Syrian refugees to settle in the Aurora-Newmarket area.
\nA representative of the Newmarket Islamic Centre, Mae says the experience has helped her not only appreciate but redefine her sense of what it means to be Canadian.
\n\u201cAt Union Station recently there was a [newcomer] family that needed money to go to London, ON, and they didn\u2019t have enough,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe people got together and started putting money into a pot and helped them get to London. In the last few years, there have been a number of new Canadians that I have been involved with and just the feedback I have had from them in such a short period of time [has been amazing].
\n\u201cOn Friday night, we did an overview [with the Syrian family we sponsored] and his view was, \u2018at first we were told this country was a dark place, it never gets sunny there, and it is cold all year round. We thought we would be treated like we were in the camps. We got here and there were people waiting for us at the airport to take us, when we got to the home there was a house full of people to welcome us, food was supplied for the longest period of time and it just doesn\u2019t stop. We have never seen this. We really expected to be treated badly, but we had no choice.\u2019\u201d
\nThey were afraid to make that leap, to take that chance, says Mae, but when they did, the community stepped up to make sure they felt comfortable and at ease in their new home.
\n\u201cIt makes me so proud that even someone who just stepped into this country six or eight months ago has already fallen in love with it,\u201d she says. \u201cWe know there are so many countries that can bring in people. There are so many refugees all over the world, and to know that we are willing to open our doors to people coming in. It just builds me into being more proud, and especially with this government right now I am very happy because we are showing our true side of what Canadians are and what we\u2019re really about and that makes me so happy.\u201d
\nThis is a sense shared by Raz as well, who said from his own family\u2019s immigrant experience they were \u201ctreated with the utmost respect\u201d as soon as they arrived in Canada.
\n\u201cWe were always treated with the utmost respect and people were so nice and good to us, and that is the reason why when new immigrants are coming now I take pride in the fact that is what Canadians do,\u201d he says. \u201cThey treat people well and they help them as much as they can. They bend over backwards to make things easy for them, because it is not easy moving to a whole new place.\u201d
\nAnd as for the teasing nephew?
\nWell, he arrived in Canada nearly five years ago and has come around to Miss Beautiful Canada\u2019s way of thinking. Now she gets to do the teasing.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in her native South Africa, Aurora\u2019s Mae Khamissa has developed a bit of a reputation with her friends and family.
\nSuch is her love for her adopted homeland, one nephew teasingly dubbed her, \u201cMiss Beautiful Canada\u201d for all the marvellous stories she has shared with them.
\nNow, \u201cMiss Beautiful Canada\u201d has gone legit, with Mae and Raz Khamissa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2016-12-01-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-49y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 21:32:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}