War in Syria Immigration Minister John McCallum and Hamza Ali

Canadian cabinet ministers: Ali, one of the artists, shook the ministers' hands and explained the concept behind his gripping paintings of women and men struggling with life and the war in Syria, according to The Waterloo Record. Immigration Minister John McCallum told Ali he was struck by the symbolism of a painting showing a woman carrying a map of Syria on her back up a flight of stairs, a heavy red sky in the background. "Women do all the heavy lifting," McCallum remarked. Hamza Ali, 13, remembers clearly the day last November when a trio of Canadian cabinet ministers trooped into an ad-hoc art gallery set up in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. That painting now hangs in Health Minister Jane Philpott office in Ottawa. The ministers left the camp and went on to open a massive refugee processing centre near Amman that would eventually see thousands of refugees interviewed and screened to come to Canada. McCallum didn't have one — until Monday. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.