Mostafa Al-A'sar Globe and Mail July 4, 2026

Mostafa Al-A’sar is a Toronto-based journalist, writer and human rights defender.

As a young journalist in Egypt, I was arrested for being critical of the government. For more than two weeks, I was tortured. When I was freed after nearly four years in pretrial detention, I was forced into exile, and I moved through four different countries.

Now, I am in Canada. Finally, I feel safe. Yet even through those hard times in exile, loneliness was a rare feeling that visited me infrequently. That is no longer the case.

After I was released in 2021, I left Cairo for Beirut, and while I was in exile, I never truly felt like a stranger there. It was easy to meet new people, build friendships, and connect with others who shared similar intellectual interests, as well as cultural proximity and languages. I met fellow Egyptians with whom I later shared an apartment, and they helped me integrate quickly into Lebanese society. We formed a circle of support for one another, and gradually shared our wider networks of acquaintances and friends.

In that part of the world, cities often have many physical social hubs where people with shared interests tend to gather, and where encounters happen repeatedly and spontaneously, so that relationships can develop naturally. In Beirut, for instance, the coffee shops and bars along Hamra Street have a cultural and social function, too. The same used to be true of downtown Cairo, though things have changed over time because the regime fears any form of social gathering in civic spaces. Back then, if ever I felt bored, I would just head downtown without any plans and wander through city streets, confident that I would run into someone, perhaps at a coffee shop along the way – no itinerary, no prior arrangement, no online-calendar invite needed.

Here in Canada, I find myself needing to schedule a meeting with new friends a week or two in advance just to spend an hour together. I don’t blame them; this is what big cities often do to human relationships. Under the weight of necessity and social pressure, people can turn into rigorously scheduled machines. After all, everyone has daily obligations to fulfill, including work commitments to cover the growing cost of living and household responsibilities – not to mention what is often significant commute times. In this context, free time feels like it’s a privilege.

It’s no surprise, then, that more and more Canadians feel alone. According to a 2021 Statscan survey, 13 per cent of Canadians 15 and older said they sometimes or often feel lonely; the number jumps to nearly one-quarter for Canadians between 15 and 24. The percentage of Canadians who report seeing their friends on an average day has dropped from nearly half in 1986 to just 19.6 per cent in 2021, with the average amount of time declining by nearly a quarter, too. That number plunged for working-aged Canadians (25 to 64) by two-thirds in those 35 years.

The issue is especially concerning for immigrants. Often, we have to live farther out from the downtown cores of a city to find affordable housing. We have to juggle additional responsibilities, including the moral-feeling duty to support family members back home, and navigating government bureaucracy and paperwork as we continue to work through the system. And it is hard to break into existing communities, many of whom might not understand our language or culture.

Even among the communities with whom we may share similar culture and experiences, there can be a sense of distance. Many of the people I have met so far are themselves exiles, and although they have been living in Canada for years – some of them have even obtained their Canadian citizenship – many still have not developed a sense of belonging. They continue to live in a constant survival mode, without a certain vision of the future they once dreamed of, or even about whether or not they will stay in the country.

It feels impossible to try to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships – both platonic and romantic – when you’re not sure where life will take you next. Cultivating new, strong relationships requires effort and time immigrants cannot always afford. It means risking starting over again, planting the seeds of friendship and nurturing them, and not knowing if you (or they) will be around for them to bloom.

Then there are the cultural differences in how platonic and romantic relationships are practised. From my experience in places like Egypt and Lebanon, friendship means being part of one’s family. Friends meet daily, and sometimes see each other more than they see their own relatives. I remember once telling a friend who lived in another city in Egypt that I needed to talk to him, and asked him to come over. He even didn’t ask why – he just showed up. This kind of relationship feels harder to find here, where Canadians’ classic politeness sometimes feels like it masks one’s actual feelings, and where talking to strangers is often viewed as strange behaviour, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2024, when I arrived in Toronto through the Canadian Global Refugee stream for human-rights defenders living in exile, I felt like a penguin that had fallen behind its colony. For me, social communication is a need, and I couldn’t get my fix in a place where people were more distant than what I was familiar with. It only made it harder when I had to live in a shelter for three months before I was able to rent my first place in Canada.

Eventually, I realized I had to work on creating and growing my own community in my new home. Getting on the online dating apps was one step toward that.

A 2025 study by the Migration Studies Centre at the University of British Columbia found that immigrants are 56 per cent more likely than native-born Canadians to use online dating. But it’s not just about finding love – the apps offer a channel for belonging and stability, as well as access to digital platforms that can become alternative meeting grounds. Maybe, I thought, these apps could be the Western equivalent of bustling Hamra Street.

What I found instead was deeply confusing. I thought I had connected with one match on Tinder – a woman from Ukraine – over our pasts living in conflict zones; shortly afterward, though, she ghosted me. Another Tinder match only revealed after we had hooked up that she was ethically non-monogamous, and already had a partner. I wish I had known this from the start, because I wouldn’t have proceeded; instead, the whole thing made me feel like I was an object. Then, after a friend recommended the Feeld app – he told me that there were more open-minded and friendly people there – I matched with a woman with whom I seemed to have a lot of interests in common. But when I asked to have a coffee, she replied that what she wanted instead was to fulfill a sexual fantasy involving an intruder entering her home.

A recent survey from The Globe and Mail found that only eight per cent of Canadians are currently dating, with University of Toronto PhD candidate Elaine Hoan pointing to the competitive job market and stresses over income as one possible cause. And a 2025 BMO report found that 42 per cent of single Canadians “admitted to adjusting their plans for a date for financial reasons,” with nearly a third cancelling a date to save money. For single immigrants, these come on top of their existing stresses, and can cause them to lose touch with their emotional needs and meaningful human connection.

After a few months and several failed attempts at building something promising, including with more friendship-oriented options like Bumble BFF, I deleted the apps. Many of them advertise that they’re “designed to be deleted,” but if that was really the case, how are they meant to make money? Instead, all too often, apps are deleted not because love is found, but because hope runs out. We can’t let that happen.

I decided I needed to actively meet people in real life – make friends, talk to strangers, hang out in bars and group activities with shared interests.

Canada does not necessarily lack for public spaces where this can happen: There are parks, beaches, community centres and libraries. Yet many people still experience social barriers. Sometimes, cost is the problem; inflation has meant it’s more expensive to dine out or get a drink. In Egypt and Lebanon, people have carved out their own spaces in which they can chat with strangers, feel a sense of belonging and gather regularly with friends and peers in a natural way, including affordable local cafés – simple, informal and unpretentious environments that place little financial burden on visitors.

But crucially, they also facilitate natural social interaction, without planning or performance. Too often, Canadian public spaces create events that are for the explicit purpose of socializing, which feels unnatural and can itself become a barrier. And in Canada, the isolation brought about by the cold winter months doesn’t help.

Eventually, I found a close circle of trusted people from different places. Some are Egyptians or Arab speakers who share similar experiences. Some are work colleagues or classmates from the journalism school where I am pursuing my master’s degree. I finally have people here who I can call close friends.

However, almost all of us are struggling in our own ways and juggling many of life’s necessities at once. Our demanding and high-anxiety environment makes it even more difficult to meet regularly and nurture our friendships. It can feel like we are swimming against the current.

But at least we are trying. It may not be exactly the kind of friendships we aspire to, but we are making every effort to preserve our human and psychological needs. The hope to shape a better version of our lives is what matters. And until it feels natural, the work is sustaining – and it is worth it.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-finding-connection-as-an-immigrant-in-the-lonely-city/