From people taking a vacation to one woman traveling to teach fitness classes, many Canadians have had their travel plans shaken by the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and its aftermath.
According to Global Affairs Canada, about 85,000 Canadians and permanent residents are registered in the Middle East. That list includes people who live in the area, but also those who simply visit.
Among them is Gaye Gibson, of Vancouver, who decided to visit Doha, Qatar, after braving the heat that left her stuck indoors for two weeks on a previous trip. During this time, he connected with local residents and found it to be a “wonderful city,” he said.
Gibson told Global News she was watching the news on Saturday when the US and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran. President Donald Trump said the attack was aimed at eliminating Iran’s missile capability, destroying its navy and ensuring it could never acquire a nuclear weapon.
“It’s weird because I’m going to be like, okay, everything’s going to be okay, but then I watch the news and then I start worrying about everything and, you know, the news has to be turned off,” Gibson said.
Iran retaliated after the initial attack, firing missiles at several Middle Eastern countries, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, targeting US and Israeli assets.
Gibson said she asked a local friend if it was safe to go out and told her to get some food but return to her hotel later. She did, but got an emergency alert on the metro. A local resident pacified her but told her to take shelter at the spot.
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“Watching the news and starting to see what’s going on, and then I start hearing explosions in the sky and yeah, it’s pretty scary,” Gibson said.
Regina fitness trainer Rachel Droz was expecting a different experience when she flew to Kuwait to teach classes.
“To be honest, I didn’t know how to feel,” he told Global News. “There haven’t been any missile strikes here yet. There were some sirens, it was (a) tense feeling, the energy in this city was quite tense.”
Most of the fitness classes she came to teach were canceled or poorly attended, Droz said. The classes are held in the building where she stays, so she doesn’t have to leave her residence.
She added that she plans to stay and teach until the end of her residency on Sunday, but she will stay longer if there are no flights out.
“The last few days have been okay, the city has been feeling very tense,” Droz said. “Not some drone strikes, but they (Qatar) are intercepting a lot of missiles, so there’s a lot of debris falling. But other than their sirens, I don’t see a lot going on.”
While Gibson and Droz said they were able to stay longer, Francis Vezina and his partner Genevieve Beaudoin say they were caught after planning a layover in Doha.
“We received communications from the Canadian government that we might have to rebook our flight, nothing definitive at the time,” said Vezina, who is visiting from Quebec. “We don’t need to be picked up like children. We just need some information.”
Vezina said she and Beaudoin were aware of tensions in the region before they booked their layover from Thailand, but since the Canadian government’s travel advisories for both Qatar and Thailand were yellow, they thought it was OK.
“We were in Thailand, we saw the communication but nothing official from the government and we decided to go because we had to go home,” he said. “Now we’re here and we’ve heard the bombs, we’ve seen the debris, we’ve seen the missiles intercepted over our heads.”
Global Affairs Canada said Monday it has updated the travel advisory to avoid all travel to Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Canadians in these countries are advised to follow the instructions of local authorities, sign up to the Canadians Abroad Registry and ensure their travel documents are up-to-date.
–With files from Global News’ Heidi Petrasek and Elizabeth Zogalis
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
(tags to translate)Iran(T)Donald Trump(T)Canada(T)World
