It’s been a tumultuous couple of years inside Iran, with protests over the killing of 22-year-old Masha Amini taking place in dozens of towns and cities around the world. In Toronto, which is home to the second-highest concentration of Iranians immigrants outside of Iran, the Mohyeddin siblings, Sally, Samira and Amir, have run Banu for eighteen years. Banu is an Iranian restaurant that blends political activism and delicious food. Alongside the heaping plates of pomegranate beef tenderloin and okra and eggplant stew are reminders of the politics of the home they left behind. Photos of Iranian political prisoners line the walls at the front entrance. There's a memorial to the victims of flight 752 shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard with 176 passengers aboard, 138 of them destined for Canada. And amidst the protests of the last year and a half inside Iran and beyond, that sense of community support has swelled. “People have been coming in the restaurant and saying, Hey, we support you. And I'm usually in the kitchen so my sister's in the front, and then hug my sister and then just leave.,” says Banu head chef Amir Mohyeddin. “So I find a lot of non- Iranians are now getting it. And even Iranians, there's some Iranians who come in there who's never been political and they're like, wow. Thank you so much for doing this.” This episode of Countless Journeys takes you inside the history of Banu, as we hear what the Mohyeddins wanted to create through Banu that they couldn’t find anywhere else in Toronto, and their hopes for their homeland in a time of incredible change.
[00:00:00] Sally Mohyeddin: When we immigrated here, I felt like everything was taken away from me, my family, my friends, my school music. So when we created Bonu, I tried to implement all those things in our space.
[00:00:20] Tina Pittaway: This is Sally Mohyeddin, a familiar face at Banu, an Iranian restaurant in downtown Toronto. Sally, along with her siblings Samira and Amir founded the popular eatery 18 years ago.
[00:00:33] It's been a hub for the Iranian diaspora and activism ever since. The Mohyeddins fled revolutionary Iran in 1979, and they've never returned. At Banu, they've fostered a blending of food, decor and politics that's central to their lives and their community.
[00:00:54] Amir Mohyeddin: Well, this is a shirazi salad, so it's some lemon dried mint salt, pepper, and a little bit of, uh, olive oil.
[00:01:04] Tina Pittaway: Amir Mohyeddin is the chef at Banu. Alongside the heaping plates of pomegranate beef tenderloin and okra and eggplant stew are reminders of the politics of the home they left behind. Photos of Iranian political prisoners line the walls at the front entrance. There's a memorial to the victims of flight 752 shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard with 176 passengers aboard, 138 of them destined for Canada. And amidst the protests of the last year and a half inside Iran and beyond, that sense of community support has swelled.
[00:01:43] Amir Mohyeddin: People have been coming in the restaurant and saying, Hey, we support you. And like, I'm usually in the kitchen so my sister's in the front ,and then like hug my sister and then just leave. So I find like a lot of non Iranians are now getting it. And even Iranians, there's some Iranians who come in there who's never been political and they're like, wow. Thank you so much for doing this.
[00:02:07] Tina Pittaway: I'm Tina Pittway, and this is Countless Journeys from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 on the Halifax Seaport. The story of Banu is coming up next.
[00:02:16] MONTAGE:
[00:02:19] Countless journeys.
[00:02:23] All of our chefs represent either our grandmothers or our mothers or our aunts, or the land we come from, or the place we grew up in, and we put ourselves on the plate.
[00:02:34] It was my home. It was everything. People came in and wanted to talk to me, and whenever they came in to buy a loaf of bread, they had to make sure that I knew that they bought a loaf of bread and sat down and wanted to talk to me.
[00:02:50] It was Portuguese women coming here to build a better life, but also to help build Canada.
[00:02:55] It, it's, it's scary to make that change. Our, our change was absolute. There was no going back, so it was a, a brave thing for my parents to do.
[00:03:05] Instead of feeling torn between my two realities, I decided to feel happy wherever I am.
[00:03:20] MUSIC OUT
[00:03:23] Samira Mohyeddin: We drink vodka.
[00:03:25] Sally Mohyeddin: We eat kabobs.
[00:03:25] Both: We dance, we dance, we sing, we sing.
[00:03:28] Sally Mohyeddin: We do all the things we're not supposed to do.
[00:03:30] Tina Pittaway: Sisters Sally and Samira Mohyeddin finish each other's sentences a lot. Theirs is an easy back and forth. They're describing the atmosphere that they've created at Banu on Queen Street West in Toronto, which opened 18 years ago.
[00:03:45] Samira Mohyeddin: It might as well be 50. It, it is a lifetime.
[00:03:48] Sally Mohyeddin: Absolutely.
[00:03:50] Samira Mohyeddin: Restaurants usually shut down in the first couple years, so, um, we love each other. We've built this thing together and, you know, we're hoping that that love will push through and, and make a difference.
[00:04:02] Tina Pittaway: When they first started thinking about opening a restaurant more than 20 years ago, there was a roster of Iranian restaurants in the suburbs north of Toronto, but something seemed to be missing.
[00:04:13] Sally Mohyeddin: We would go to Iranian places and have food, lunch, dinner, so forth, but we never wanted to hang out after.
[00:04:21] Amir Mohyeddin: When we were growing up, if we were going out to an Iranian restaurant, which there weren't many then, uh, it was more for kebab. It's a, it's an annoying thing to make at home. So anywhere we would go, it was more just to eat and leave. You know, even having tea after was something that we wouldn't do. So, you know, our intention was to open a space where people wanted to come there and stay there, you know, have tea, have drinks, you know, it wasn't somewhere where you'd come, you'd eat and run away.
[00:04:55] Tina Pittaway: A main artery through Toronto's downtown core, Queen West has undergone many transformations over the decades. It's gone from being a bit rough around the edges - when Banu opened in 2005, the neighbors included a strip club and karaoke bars - to a more gentrified vibe these days. But one thing it's always boasted is a vibrancy and sense of community.
[00:05:18] Sally Mohyeddin: The decision to open here was a very deliberate one. You know, food is the window into other cultures - the first thing we're sort of exposed to. I may not know Thai people, but I certainly know Thai cuisine. Which is why we came downtown and opened a restaurant. We didn't stay in our own quote unquote community because we wanted to expose others to our culture in a culture that they may not think that we have.
[00:05:42] Right? So, Uh, you know, if we came and opened up a, a shop, you know, where all the Iranian restaurants are, they're all beside each other. Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, we would've maybe had more business or whatever, but we made a conscious decision to expand our culture and our cuisine to a community that has never been exposed to it. And I think that that's right. That was something that we really, really wanted to do.
[00:06:07] Tina Pittaway: The idea was twofold: to expose non Iranians in the Queen West neighborhood to Iranian food and culture, and to also bring Iranians into this part of the city that some weren't entirely comfortable heading to.
[00:06:19] Sally Mohyeddin: A lot of people that were not familiar with the area that were Iranian were actually telling us that they were afraid to come down to that area.
[00:06:29] Why would we open there? You know, of course now they don't say these things, but back then that's what they would say.
[00:06:35] Samira Mohyeddin: I mean, queen Street West is called Queer Street West. Uh, unfortunately a lot of the queer bars closed. But you know, it's good to sort of go where you're told not to be. Right? That's real inclusion. And if, if Toronto is welcoming in that way, we have to be all over and in, in everybody's faces.
[00:06:53] We made a conscious decision. My brother and I are part of the LGBTQ community and we wanted to have a space where people in our community could feel comfortable to kiss their boyfriend, to kiss their girlfriend, to bring their partners.
[00:07:05] You know, and, and it really, I have to say one of the best things about having this restaurant is when I see same-sex couples from our culture, they're behaving the way they wanna behave. Cuz I know they couldn't do that in other, in other restaurants.
[00:07:19] (SALLY WORKING)
[00:07:19] Sally Mohyeddin: But I'll just let you know. On your grilled tomato, here you have mint, salt and pepper.
[00:07:25] Tina Pittaway: Sally is the eldest of the siblings. She and Samira were born in Tehran in the 1970s. Amir was born in Toronto.
[00:07:32] Sally Mohyeddin: And then on the herb side, we have here a mix of mint in basil. And then you have your koobideh and your rice. Basically, you take a little bit of everything, put it in your spoon and I think it is the most popular dish in most Iran restaurants.
[00:07:51] Tina Pittaway: Sally works the front of the house. She oversaw the look and feel of the restaurant, which celebrates the sleek, cosmopolitan vibe of pre-revolutionary 1970s Tehran. The decor, along with the food and alcohol is designed to educate people about the culture of Iran that was thriving before the Islamic Republic took over.
[00:08:15] Amir Mohyeddin: There is fried mint, dried mint, rose, petal and walnuts growing up. And even now we are a very political family. So it was sort of a space when we first opened was to kind of like, emulate the sixties and the seventies in Iran, but also have the politics behind it, uh, that we stood by or stand for.
[00:08:44] Tina Pittaway: On the menu, there's saffron chicken, a fresh herb stew made with braised beef and dried lime and fenugreek. Amir's devoted to showcasing classic Persian flavor profiles.
[00:08:56] Amir Mohyeddin: Uh, food wise, I would say I'm kind of bored of the whole Mediterranean title of food. Where it's, uh, just a sort of mishmash of everything and where it's all kind of in a melting pot now.
[00:09:14] So it could be Lebanese food, Iranian food, Greek food, and they just say it's Mediterranean and there's different things pulled out of each country and the dish isn't a proper made dish. And so I'm kind of tired of that stuff. And uh, and garlic sauce. We don't have garlic sauce. I'm just not, you don't have to put it on the meat. I swear it tastes good. (laughter)
[00:09:40] Uh, things have to have a certain standard, especially my mom, who I consider probably the best, uh, Persian cook in the whole family. And we are a pretty big family. So with all of the kebobs, unless they're the organ meats, We give roasted tomato and then we just, uh, put some olive oil, uh, salt and, uh, dried mints on it.
[00:10:05] And so we eat that so we can, you kind of crush the tomato in the rice, mix it with the meat, and then have the fresh herbs. The basil, mints, sometimes terragon on the side, so you eat them all together.
[00:10:18] Over the years, the menus also featured everyday foods that often aren't found in other Iranian restaurants, so things like organ meat, grilled testicles and brain sandwiches, comfort foods that in pre-revolutionary days were often served with a shot of vodka on the side.
[00:10:34] Sally Mohyeddin: When we first opened, it was a vodka bar. Our sign used to say: Iranian Vodka Bar. After the Iranian revolution they banned alcohol and, uh, you know, parties and dancing. It was like a real life Footloose situation.
[00:10:55] Tina Pittaway: The original menu didn't include rice. Something lots of customers who weren't familiar with Iranian food found confusing.
[00:11:02] Samira Mohyeddin: That's right. We didn't have rice. I mean, it just didn't go with what we wanted to do. And it didn't go with vodka. Right? It, it really required a lot of education because people had no idea what to expect. Right. They thought it was maybe like Indian food. Right.
[00:11:18] Amir Mohyeddin: So a lot of people were like, Why aren't you serving rice? But we serve like three different types of bread. Um, and so we just thought the rice, the vodka is just not gonna go together, and we want it to be sort of a lively place where, you know, if you're consuming all this rice, it's almost like, okay, coma time, food, coma. Right? Let's lie down a bit where we wanted it to be a sort of party. You know, you'd have tables of 10 arriving for a birthday and leaving, finding out there's no rice.
[00:11:48] Samira Mohyeddin: You know, our culture, actually, if you wanna be really meta about it, we weren't a rice eating culture. Rice came to us from India. We have a, a, a multitude of different types of bread, but we didn't really eat rice until the late 17 hundreds. So, uh, uh, we used to have a big explainer on the back of our menu. Uh, it said, you know, because we had, for instance, naan-o paneer on our menu, but naan, you'd bring it to the table and they were like, this isn't naan. And you'd say, yes it is - naan just means bread. Mm-hmm. Like, which is exactly what it means.
[00:12:21] Paneer just means cheese. It could be any kind of cheese, it could be any kind of bread. But people, you know, they have a real grasp of Indian cuisine because it's been around for so long in this country. Right. Um, but at the time it was something that we really had to educate people on. But now people know the know the words. They know what it means. And so it's not, we've, we've actually taken the explainer off the back of the menu now.
[00:12:45] Amir Mohyeddin: We were trying to do like something different. So there were a lot of people who still come there to this day and ask for bread on the side and won't have rice, you know, and they've been coming for like 17 years. Uh, so that's nice to see. Yeah.
[00:13:00] Tina Pittaway: Vodka wasn't the only word in the original signage for the restaurant that the Mohyeddins were adamant about using. They were also proud to use the word Iranian, a word that had been shunned for years by many in their community.
[00:13:13] Sally Mohyeddin: We wanted to use the word Iranian as opposed to Persian because people denied being Iranian for so long because they were afraid of what society would think of them or how they would be perceived.
[00:13:26] Samira Mohyeddin: Yeah, the connotation, right? I mean, um, you didn't want people to think that, you know, that that government, right. So you're, I'm Persian, right? But we always had the idea of like, let's take that back, that, let's take that ownership of that word's, right?
[00:13:40] Sally Mohyeddin: We are Iranian and this is who we really are.
[00:13:44] (MUSIC TRANSITION)
[00:13:44] Zarin Mohyeddin: When I came to here, to Toronto, maybe the Canadian, uh, Iranian community was maybe, 500.
[00:13:54] Tina Pittaway: The Mohyeddin family arrived in Canada in May, 1979.
[00:13:59] Zarin Mohyeddin: My name is Zarin Mohyeddin.
[00:14:01] Tina Pittaway: Zarin Mohyeddin was a young mother to Sally and Samira when she and her husband Faraj left Tehran for Canada a few months after the revolution.
[00:14:10] Zarin Mohyeddin: And I had two kids - they were daughters, my daughters. And I knew, uh, they don't have any freedom and liberty as a woman. So I was very loud against the revolution and I was working in the office. And everybody knows in the place that I was working, speaking out against the new regime was very risky.
[00:14:43] Tina Pittaway: Staying was no longer an option.
[00:14:45] Zarin Mohyeddin: It was a revolution. The day that Shaw left the country we had an interview with Canadian Embassy and, uh, Mr. Sheerdown, he was the one that who help all the hostages from United States to escape from Iran. He, he interviewed us and then he said that you have six months to leave the country.
[00:15:09] Tina Pittaway: The family first settled in Wickham, Quebec, where a sister of Faraj's had a small farm.
[00:15:15] They planned on waiting out the political situation, thinking it would blow over, and that they'd return in a couple of years. But realizing that this new life was likely permanent and missing urban life, after one year, the family packed up and made the move to Toronto.
[00:15:32] Zarin Mohyeddin: Samir was in, uh, junior kindergarten, but Sally was in grade two when we came here, half of grade two. I can say that my life, uh, when I came to Canada, it became upside down.
[00:15:47] Tina Pittaway: Zarin was an only child and her mother joined them in Canada. She helped out with the kids and taught Zarin to cook.
[00:15:54] Zarin Mohyeddin: I didn't know how to cook. Then I learned.
[00:15:58] Tina Pittaway: The Mohyeddin household soon became known for its wonderful parties. It became a bit of a hub where people who were new to Canada could connect with other Iranians.
[00:16:07] Amir Mohyeddin: Yeah, food was important to us because people were always around, so it was whenever people were around, food was always around too.
[00:16:16] And I kind of don't remember a day as a child that other people weren't at our house, there was always at least 10 people in the house. Um, so there was always food. The dishes that stood out as my childhood memory were, um, saying, so my grandmother would make, and there were mostly desserts, uh, that I yet to find anywhere.
[00:16:38] Like there was a dish, I don't know what to say it in English, but it was called nan panjeri, which was like deep fried stencil, and you would dip it in hot oil and it would be covered in powdered sugar. And it was most delicious thing ever.
[00:16:52] Samira Mohyeddin: My favorite dish is gormeh sabzi. I could eat it forever. It's a mixed herb and fenugreek stew. It's my favorite dish because I could eat a lot of it. I find it really earthy, and when it's made with lamb, it's even better. And it was the first stew that my mom taught me how to make. And after the seventh try, I got it.
[00:17:18] Sally Mohyeddin: I don't know what my favorite dish would be. I mean, it's, uh, uh, macaroni, which is I guess a weird, uh, spaghetti bolognese. And that was my favorite, uh, meal as a kid, and it's still my favorite meal today.
[00:17:38] Tina Pittaway: This macaroni is different from the Italian version.
[00:17:41] Sally Mohyeddin: We steam it after and we make a potato crust at the bottom of the pan. And uh, then we flip the pan and the crust becomes the top and then you cut the cross and the macaroni and you eat it and it's delicious.
[00:17:58] Tina Pittaway: Growing up, it wasn't just those home cooked meals that the siblings bonded over in their love of food. There was an intense time when Amir became very sick.
[00:18:08] Amir Mohyeddin: My memory is kind of shot from childhood. There's blotches.
[00:18:12] Samira Mohyeddin: He doesn't remember much. He was heavily drugged. So we are sort of the repositories of that.
[00:18:17] Yeah. So my brother had childhood leukemia and he was in the hospital at Sick Kids and the Food Network had just started. So you had a lot of people like Emeril Lagassie and those types, you know, bam, that guy. And so Amir was you know, constantly watching. Yeah. The rooms at Sick Kids had TVs and they were quite expansive and amazing.
[00:18:37] So there was a television up there and he was constantly watching. And then the other thing is that he was eating a lot, right?
[00:18:44] Sally Mohyeddin: Yeah. Well, or he wouldn't eat at all.
[00:18:45] Samira Mohyeddin: Yeah. One or the other. Food was a big thing, you know, we would try to cheer him up with food, whatever he wanted, cuz the doctor said sometimes he, no, he can eat. Sometimes he'll have an appetite, sometimes he won't. When he does give him whatever he wants. If it's a bucket of ice cream, give it to him. So he sort of developed that love of food then.
[00:19:04] Sally Mohyeddin: When he was able to eat, we would all get excited and ask him, what do you want to eat? You know, where, where should we go? What can we get that for him?
[00:19:10] Samira Mohyeddin: And it was at all hours like we were, and we would engage in it. If he was like, I want 24 Chicken McNuggets, and it's like three in the morning, we're like, okay, we're eating chicken McNuggets. And like we'd go out, get like, you know, 24 chicken McNuggets and we'd eat it with him. Like that's what you did, right.
[00:19:26] Tina Pittaway: And it wasn't long after that that Amir first started to dream about becoming a chef and opening a restaurant.
[00:19:33] Amir Mohyeddin: I would say I was 10 or 12 years old. It was something that we all kind of talked about because we as a whole said, you know, we're always entertaining people in the house, so why don't we just do a restaurant?
[00:19:47] Tina Pittaway: And when it came time to apply to college, Amir knew exactly what he wanted to study.
[00:19:53] Zarin Mohyeddin: He said that I want to go to be a chef. I said, no, you can't, because I know that it was a hard things to do. Either you love something, either you love the business, otherwise if you do it for the business. It's, it's very hard.
[00:20:11] And finally, um, I agreed that he goes for the chef school in George Brown, and then we found the space.
[00:20:23] Amir Mohyeddin: I was 24.
[00:20:25] Tina Pittaway: Amir oversaw a major renovation to the space that was capped with a very special photograph that to this day, greets customers at the entrance.
[00:20:34] Samira Mohyeddin: And we came across this photo of my mom, which was so emblematic of the time. Right. Um, she's 18 years old at a party. It really just sets the scene of what we were trying to convey about Iran from that era that people, uh, a, were trying to deny and then also people had no remembrance of it either.
[00:20:57] Tina Pittaway: The image is 12 feet high.
[00:21:00] Samira Mohyeddin: So we put this and it looked beautiful. It just really brought this space together.
[00:21:05] And it also worked with the name of the restaurant, Banu. That was my mom's nickname. All of my mom's friends call her Banu. Banu means Lady or Dame, but it's a sort of esteemed, uh, woman.
[00:21:19] Tina Pittaway: The last couple of years have been intensely emotional for the Mohyeddins, with two major events that have galvanized Iranians around the world. Events that visitors to the restaurant are reminded of when they arrive.
[00:21:31] Sally Mohyeddin: So we're here in front of, uh, Banu. Uh, this is the entrance door. This is, um, the names of all the people that were shot down on flight 752 on January the eighth, 2020 .
[00:21:54] Tina Pittaway: That night, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard fired a missile at Flight 752 as it took off from Tehran for Kiev. Of the 176 people who were killed, 138 passengers were destined for Canada, most of them Canadian citizens and landed immigrants.
[00:22:11] Sally Mohyeddin: And uh, we put the names and the year of birth of all of these 176 people that were shot down. And we did this in order to keep their names alive, to keep them in everyone's minds.
[00:22:26] So until we find out truly what happened to these individuals. It's see through, we printed their names and the Persian writing and what happened to them is written in white. Um, there is a light behind them that shines on their names. Uh, we felt that this is the best place to put it because it would demand the people that are entering to also have a look and remember this.
[00:22:56] People have come in and say, thanked us that are Iranian people's families have come in, uh, dined with us. We've talked about the people that have passed away. Um, it just keeps memory alive and, uh, we hope that it serves justice.
[00:23:18] Samira Mohyeddin: You know, when that, uh, plane went down, it was something that to this day, has traumatized our entire community. Everyone knew somebody. We actually had family on that plane on my mother's side. Um, and it's just our small way of doing something because we really felt helpless. I mean, it's a, it's a feeling of utter helplessness.
[00:23:43] And, you know, we're 9,000 kilometers away from home. And so this was our way of sort of honoring, honoring their memory.
[00:23:51] Tina Pittaway: Like hundreds of other cities throughout the world, Toronto has seen tens of thousands take to the streets in demonstrations in support of the anti-government protests that have rocked Iran since the killing of 22 year old Mahsa Amini.
[00:24:04] Sally Mohyeddin: Uh, people will come in after rallies hug each other, people cry. Um, it's just a really tender moment for Iranians and, uh, we look to each other, I guess, in some way, uh, whether we know each other or not, because we share the same pain.
[00:24:21] Amir Mohyeddin: People have been coming in the restaurant saying, Hey, we support you.
[00:24:25] And like, I'm usually in the kitchen, so my sister's in the front and then like hug my sister and then just leave. So I find like a lot of non- Iranians are now getting it. Um, and even Iranians, there's some Iranians who come in here who's never been political and they're like, wow, thank you so much for doing this, you know.
[00:24:44] Sally Mohyeddin: When uprisings happen, uh, when issues happen with Iran, we try to be as vocal as we can in the restaurant, which is hard to do because you still have to have an environment where it's enjoyable for people to be, so you have to do it in a sort of a - you can't be too pushy.
[00:25:03] Samira Mohyeddin: I don't think that people sit down in front of, you know, a plate of Iranian food and think about all these things, but I think that uh, it's happening all around them when they come into our restaurant. It's not something that you can avoid. You see it, it's on the walls, it's in the music, it's in the drinks, and so you feel that you get a sense of it, you know, again, we're not hammering you over the head with it, but it's all around you.
[00:25:27] Sally Mohyeddin: And up here we have a, hashtag Mahsa Amini. Uh, the day after we found out this was happening, I think two or three days after we had a protest here. So we made that sign and I just kept it up there for the same reason, just to keep it alive. And so, uh, we keep Masha's memory alive and also this movement alive.
[00:25:52] Same with the woman Life Freedom mural. We donated our wall and a local artist Ghazaleh Rastgar came and, uh, did a beautiful mural.
[00:26:03] Samira Mohyeddin: Rain, sleet, snow, people are coming out. I don't know.
[00:26:07] Sally Mohyeddin: It makes me very happy when I see people coming out because I feel like, you know, we have been going to protests for 40 something years, and I feel like finally everybody is becoming one.
[00:26:22] Samira Mohyeddin: We're seeing the unity that that didn't exist before for sure.
[00:26:25] Tina Pittaway: And it's that sense of unity that gives Samira some hope for being able to visit Iran someday.
[00:26:32] Samira Mohyeddin: My sister was a lot older than me, uh, when she left. So she has very concrete memories. I don't, you know, but you know, I'd like to go home as a family, you know. I wanna go home.
[00:26:50] That's it. Like, I, I don't, don't know what else to say. It's really that simple for me because, uh, there's 8 million Iranians in diaspora and there was no Iranian diaspora before this regime came to power. It didn't exist. So that should tell the world something. You know, we wanna go home. And as much as Canada really is our home and we love it and we grew up here, there is something that pulls you back there, you know, and maybe I, I won't live there, right? Let's say this regime goes, and maybe we won't live there, but we want the freedom to be able to go home whenever we want. You know.
[00:27:37] Sally Mohyeddin: I couldn't have said it better myself. I wanna go home too, just like millions of other people.
[00:27:43] MUSIC
[00:27:45] Tina Pittaway: Thank you to the Mohyeddins for sharing their story with us, and producer Sean Liliani in Toronto. And special thanks to intern Michael Kaduck for his work on this episode.
[00:28:16] If you'd like to hear more stories like this and help new listeners discover this podcast, make sure to rate Countless Journeys on your favorite podcast app, or leave us a review.
[00:28:27] Countless Journeys comes to you from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport. I'm Tina Pittway, by for now.