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On a freezing Ottawa afternoon I politely decline the offer for coffee.

The last thing I want is for the Syrian family we are interviewing to go to any trouble for me and cameraman Paul Nolan.

Hasna Ali disappears into the kitchen.

A short time later she comes back into the living room holding a tray of glass cups filled with piping hot sweet tea for us.

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That’s the kind of warmth and hospitality the Ali family shows their guests.

They escaped the horrors of the Syrian civil war with almost no possessions and spent three years living in squalor at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. But Hasna will make sure I am comfortable in her new Canadian home with a hot cup of tea.

It is humbling.

I stumbled upon the story of Mohammed Ali and his family by fluke.

Though they had been featured in a couple of media reports