Brian S. Masse (born July 9, 1968) is a Canadian politician. He has served in the Canadian House of Commons since 2002, representing the riding of Windsor West as a member of the New Democratic Party.

Masse is married to Terry Chow, with whom he has a daughter and a son.

Masse was born in Windsor, Ontario. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Wilfrid Laurier University in 1991, and has completed course work for a Master of Arts degree at the University of Windsor. During the 1990s, he was a job developer for the Association for Persons with Physical Disabilities and a program coordinator for the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County.

Masse gained local prominence in 1996 for his opposition to a dance bar that was planned for a residential neighbourhood. He was elected for Ward 2 of the Windsor city council in 1997, and was re-elected in 2000. In 1998, he played a prominent role in preventing a rock-crushing operation from opening in the Wellington Avenue area.

Hélène Laverdière (born 1955) is a politician in Canada. She was elected Member of Parliament for the riding of Laurier—Sainte-Marie in the 2011 Canadian federal election as a member of the New Democratic Party, defeating Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe in his riding.

Laverdière obtained her Ph.D in sociology from the University of Bath, and briefly taught in the sociology department at the Université Laval. She subsequently entered Canada's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1992, serving in Washington, D.C., Dakar, Senegal and Santiago.

The Syrian people (Arabic: الشعب السوري‎ / ALA-LC: al-sha‘ab al-Sūrī) are the inhabitants and citizens of Syria and are, overall an indigenous Eastern Mediterranean people. While modern-day Syrians are commonly described as Arabs by virtue of their modern-day language and bonds to Arab culture and history, they are, in fact, largely a blend of the various Aramaic speaking groups indigenous to the region who were Arabized when Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula arrived and settled following the Arab expansion. Syrians are tied together by geography, linguistic heritage, religion, and similar Eastern Mediterranean ethnicities. Most Syrians reside primarily in Syria; however 17 million Syrians live outside of Syria and they stay connected to their cultural roots by watching Syrian satellite television, listening to Syrian music and preparing Syrian cuisine.

Damascus, the capital of Syria, is one of the most continuously inhabited cities in the world (for 8000 years straight, Syrians inhabited Damascus), and a large percentage of Damascenes are the descendents of the early inhabitants of Damascus.