From people taking vacations to one woman’s journey to teach fitness classes, a number of Canadians have had their travel plans shaken by the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran and its fallout.
There are approximately 85,000 Canadians and permanent residents registered as being in the Middle East, according to Global Affairs Canada. That list includes people who live in the region, but there are also many who are simply visiting.
Among them is Gaye Gibson from Vancouver, who decided to visit Doha, Qatar, for two weeks after stifling heat left her stuck indoors on a previous trip. This time, she said she’s made connections with local residents and found it an “amazing city.”
Gibson told Global News she was watching the news Saturday when the U.S. and Israel began their bombardment of Iran. President Donald Trump has said the objective of the attack is to eliminate Iran’s missile capabilities, destroy its navy and ensure it can never obtain a nuclear weapon.
“It’s strange because I’m kind of going from like, feeling OK, that everything will be OK, but then I watch the news and then I start getting kind of worried about everything and, you know, have to turn off the news,” Gibson said.
Iran retaliated after the initial attack, targeting U.S. and Israeli assets and firing missiles at several Middle Eastern countries including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
Gibson said she asked a local friend if it was safe to go out and was told to get some food but then return to her hotel. She did, but got an emergency alert on the metro. A local resident reassured her but told her to shelter in place.
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“Just watching the news and what started happening, and then I started hearing explosions in the sky and yeah, it’s pretty scary,” Gibson said.
Regina fitness instructor Rachel Droege was also expecting a different experience when she flew to Kuwait to teach classes.
“To be honest, I didn’t really know how to feel,” she told Global News. “There hadn’t been any missile strikes here yet. There were quite a few sirens, it was like (a) tense feeling, like the energy in this city was pretty tense.”
Droege said most of the fitness classes she had come to teach have either been cancelled or poorly attended. The classes are held in the building where she’s staying, so she hasn’t had to leave her residence.
She added her plan is to stay and teach until the end of her residency on Sunday, but if no flights are going out she’ll stay longer.
“The past few days have been OK, the city is feeling very tense,” Droege said. “There’s been a few, not drone strikes, but they’re (Qatar) intercepting a lot of the missiles so there’s lots of debris falling. But other than their sirens, I haven’t found a lot happening.”
While Gibson and Droege say they’re able to stay longer, others such as Francis Vezina and his partner Genevieve Beaudoin say they feel stranded after planning a layover in Doha.
“We received communications from the Canadian government telling us that we might need to rebook our flight, nothing too concise at that point,” said Vezina, who is visiting from Quebec. “We don’t need to be picked up like children. We just need some information.”
Vezina said he and Beaudoin were aware of tensions in the region prior to booking their layover from Thailand, but because the Canadian government’s travel advisories for both Qatar and Thailand were yellow, he felt it would be OK.
“We were in Thailand, we saw communication but nothing official from the government and we decided to go because we needed to go home,” he said. “Now we’re here and we’ve heard bombs, we’ve seen debris, we’ve seen missiles being intercepted over our heads.”
Global Affairs Canada said Monday it had updated travel advice to avoid all travel to Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Canadians in these countries have been advised to follow the instructions of local authorities, sign up with the Registration of Canadians Abroad and ensure their travel documents are up to date.
—with files from Global News’ Heidi Petracek and Elizabeth Zogalis
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