>cbc.ca/news/canada/pride-parade-syrian-refugee-justin-trudeau-1.3659153
Bassel Mcleash's long journey from Syria to Toronto and finally to Sunday's Pride parade was anything but smooth.
It was a road filled with war, hatred and hardship, which is why the chance to participate in his first Pride parade was so special.
"To be honest, I'm totally speechless," he said as he moved towards the start of the parade. "The excitement and the emotion that's happening, it's overwhelming. It's too much to handle."
Standing 5-foot-1, it was easy for the 29-year-old Syrian refugee to work his way to the front of the group and next to the leader of his new country — a spot he didn't surrender for the entire parade route."
>In 2014, he was diagnosed with HIV
a difficult situation made worse by the fact that in Egypt, foreigners aren't permitted to work if they're HIV positive. So Mcleash was forced live on the margins of Egyptian society, getting paid under the table for translating for foreigners and doing odd jobs. He depended on the kindness of a small LGBT group.
One of the people in his circle was a well-connected scholar and activist, Scott Long, who put Mcleash in touch with Toronto's Rainbow Railroad, an NGO that specializes in helping LGBT folks around the world escape persecution, imprisonment, torture and possible death.
Mcleash was the first person approved for the organization's new program to sponsor LGBT Syrians to come to Canada after the new Liberal government promised to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees late last year.
>Five months after Rainbow Railroad offered to help him, Mcleash walked through security at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, a permanent resident of Canada.
>In 2014, he was diagnosed with HIV
>a permanent resident of Canada
Can't even make this stuff up any more