Rafi Ghanaghounian and Colouring Book

Syrian refugee families: The sketches were donated by some 30 Toronto artists as a way to give Syrian refugee families a visual introduction to the city, said Rafi Ghanaghounian, one of three arts supporters who spearheaded the Welcome to Toronto colouring book project, according to Toronto Star. The idea is that while kids are colouring, they’re exploring the images and learning about the city and also getting a little English as well, said Ghanaghounian, who organized the book with fellow art supporters Andrea Pearce and Nicole Baillargeon, following the lead of a Windsor high school teacher who created a similar colouring book for that city Syrian refugees. With captions in Arabic and English, the collection of drawings — some intricate, some whimsical — feature points of interest from the Royal Ontario Museum to the Toronto Islands, Grenadier Pond to the Toronto Zoo, from Lake Ontario to Canada Wonderland, all ready to be brought to living colour by young newcomer hands. He and his partners call their arts group Keep 6 It made sense to me to do something for refugees; my grandparents escaped from Armenia just before the Armenian genocide — they spent their days in the hills and ended up in Iraq, said Ghanaghounian. It interesting that now a second Trudeau is welcoming immigrants to Canada. Then my own parents escaped from Iraq just before the war with Iran and we moved to Canada in 1979 when I was 8 because they had heard about this guy Pierre Trudeau who was letting people in. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.