What it would look like if as many Canadians had died as Syrians

If Canada were Syria, an equivalent to the entire population of Sudbury, Ont., would have been killed amid a tense and violent civil war.

If that doesn't shock you, then you've never been to Sudbury. It's not a small town.

The northern Ontario city is home to 160,000 hard-working folks, a number that happens to match the number of people killed in Syria over the past three years, as the country suffers through a humanitarian crisis second only to Rwanda.

How big? Consider this: If Canada were Syria, the 9.3 million Canadians living in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Markham, Ont., and the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland would have been forced to flee their homes and seek temporary shelter in other provinces, or other countries.

If Canada were Syria, that is.

The comparison is among the more startling numbers released by Canadian journalists Shannon Gormley and Drew Gough this week, as part of a campaign to raise awareness to the struggle in the Middle Eastern country. This week, the pair launched If We Were Syrian, a site that puts the Syrian crisis into slightly more comprehensible terms by comparing the impact in a local scope.

“It is very difficult to convey to an audience that is very far removed from the crisis the scale of it. The numbers are completely overwhelming. Trying to visualize what nine million people look like, it is nearly impossible,” said Gormley, a Turkey-based Canadian journalist who focuses on Middle Eastern issues.

“It is also really hard to get people to empathize with something that is so far geographically removed from them.”

For the past three years, Syria has been embroiled in conflict as an uprising has sought to end the reign of President Bashar Assad. The civil war has left more than nine million people homeless, with nearly a third of those seeking refuge in nearby countries.

Another 160,000 people have been killed in the ongoing struggle. Those are numbers that some may simply not be able to comprehend.

If America were Syria, for example, everyone in Syracuse, N.Y., would be dead and those living in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers and Albany, would have been forced out of their homes.

In the U.K., the city of Reading would be dead and London, Liverpool and much of Sunderland would have been forced to flee. In Canada, Sudbury is dead and nearly a quarter of the country's remaining population is left homeless.

“This crisis has displaced the equivalent of three major Canadian cities and four eastern provinces. I think it takes a special kind of heartlessness to think we are doing enough by resettling a number of refugees that is roughly equivalent to my small-town high school,” she said.

Wealthy nations have provided some $1.1 billion of humanitarian aid for Syria, but that is only about 27 per cent of what the country needs. Canada has offered to resettle 200 refugees and sponsor another 1,100. According to Gormley, that’s not nearly enough.

Gormley says Canadians should try to understand the scope of the crisis and participate in the conversation. If We Were Syrian asks people to contact their Members of Parliament and urge them to approve stronger aide measures.

Comparing the number of people killed and displaced in the Syrian crisis to the size of Canadian cities is an effective way to show the scale of the disaster. But it admittedly loses something, some understanding of the violence and suffering experienced overseas.

Gormley said Canadians may understand what is happening in Syria is terrible, but they may not understand that it is the worst humanitarian crisis since Rwanda. She believes if they were able to understand the scope of the disaster, they would be more likely to want to help.

“The problem that this site tries to address is the fact that it is hard to picture the scale and the gravity of a crisis like this. It feels very far removed; it feels like it is something that could never happen to you. So sometimes you have to imagine it happening to you to care about the fact that it is happening to other people.”

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