MCoS Board Member, Mahnaz Robertson Reflects on Saskatchewan’s Embrace and Canada’s Promise

First-Person Essay by MCoS Board Member, Mahnaz Robertson

I Came to Canada as a Refugee. Today, I Watch Others Face the Same Uncertainty

When I stepped off the plane in Vancouver in July 1982, I carried a photo album, the responsibility of caring for my two brothers, and a sense of uncertainty so heavy it felt physical.

We had fled Iran after the persecution of Bahá’ís intensified following the revolution, in 1979. My parents, fearing for our safety, sent the three of us away to another country. We spent three years in limbo in the Philippines, unable to study, unable to work, and increasingly distraught as news reached us of Bahá’ís back home being arrested, tortured, or killed.

Canada, a place we had never seen, took us in.

From the window of the bus heading to Swift Current, the prairies stretched farther than anything I had known. Fields of wheat danced in the wind; the sky felt endless. I wondered quietly, where are the people? But when we arrived, a member of the local Bahá’í community greeted us with warmth, making us feel welcome even though we barely spoke English.

Within days of arriving, at 21 years old, I found my first job: washing floors and dishes in a small restaurant a forty-minute walk from the basement apartment we rented. The work was exhausting, the hours long, but it felt like hope. With my youngest brother in school, it was the first time in years that our lives were moving forward.

I met Archie, my future husband, in a basement suite the same year we arrived. My English was limited; his Persian nonexistent. All I could do was show him my photo album—pictures of my parents, uncles, aunts, cousins. Pictures from a life we could no longer return to. He didn’t yet know that my grandfather had been killed or that my father was injured by a mob because they were Bahá’ís. He only knew that we had survived something and were trying to start again.

For him, I was a young woman determined to build a future. For me, he was among the first Canadians I met, someone who saw us not as refugees, but as neighbours.

Canada gave me safety and a sense of new purpose. I learned English, worked in restaurants, raised children, opened a licensed daycare, studied at night, and later spent more than two decades serving my community as an Account Manager and Lending Officer at a local credit union.

After Archie and I married, I learned the rhythms of prairie farming: how to read the sky, how to respect the land, how fragile a year’s income can be, how the difference between gentle rain and hail can determine everything. I learned that supper at the back of an old farm truck can taste better than any restaurant. I learned the awe of northern lights and the quiet miracle of fireflies.

I also learned what it means to belong.

For more than 25 years, I volunteered with the Southwest Multicultural Association, supported immigrant women, taught English as a second language, and opened my home to newcomers, because I never forgot what it felt like to be welcomed myself all those years ago.

Canada’s generosity changed my life, but it also shaped my children’s. Today, they are a doctor, an engineer, and a pharmacist, all serving their communities in Saskatchewan. They love the land. They care for it. And now their children, my grandchildren, are learning about service, unity, and building vibrant communities.

Today, hundreds of Iranian Bahá’í refugees wait in Turkey with the same uncertainty my brothers and I once lived through—unable to work, unable to study, and unable to return to a country where they face persecution. Their stories may not match mine exactly. But their fears, hopes, and longing for safety are the same.

And yet, even beyond those who have fled, there are those who remain—facing even more immediate danger. A young Bahá’í man, Peyvand Naimi, is currently imprisoned in Iran, where he has endured mock hangings, prolonged torture, and pressure to falsely confess to crimes he could not have committed.

His case reflects a broader and deeply troubling pattern: for decades, the Bahá’í community has been scapegoated during moments of national crisis, through disinformation, false accusations, and state-sponsored incitement.

My story is not only a refugee story. It is a Canadian story.

I arrived carrying the weight of supporting my two brothers, a photo album, and an uncertain future. Since then, my family has spent four decades striving to serve the communities that welcomed us. Canada offered us safety, dignity, and opportunity, based on the belief that those fleeing persecution deserve not only refuge, but the chance to thrive.

But it also reflects something deeper: a commitment to human dignity that must extend beyond our borders, especially when that dignity is being so visibly denied.

I know what that chance can become. I live it every day.