Yella and Mooshie Zahirovich
Yella and Mooshie Zahirovich arrived in Canada in 1994 with their young daughter Eliza after fleeing the conflict in Bosnia. Yella was born in Šipovo, Bosnia into a Serbian family, and Mooshie was born in Jajce, Bosnia into a Muslim Bosnian family. The couple met while attending the University of Sarajevo. Mooshie graduated with a business degree and Yella with a bachelor's in agricultural science. Yella and Mooshie married in 1990, just before the outbreak of war. They fled to Serbia in April of 1992. They became stateless, and were accepted to come to Canada as refugees. Yella later completed her master's degree at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and Mooshie completed his MBA at Dalhousie University. The family eventually moved to Montreal where their second daughter, Emily, was born.