Kurl: 40 Years On, we owe it to the victims of the Air India bombing to remember

Ottawa Citizen

23-06-2025

'The death of a beloved is an amputation' – C.S. Lewis
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In the wake of grief, the ghost pain of amputation follows: the ache of knowing a love now gone. The daily, monthly, yearly reminders of existences obliterated.
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After 40 years, it is also an apt reflection of the ways in which Canada has — and hasn't — reckoned with the deadliest terrorist attack on its own people. Exactly four decades ago today, 280 Canadian citizens, including 54 children, were murdered. Twenty-eight of them were from Ottawa. They met their end in a plane whose journey originated in Vancouver B.C., then was ripped apart over the Atlantic Ocean by a deliberately placed bomb. The plane belonged to India. The vast majority of its 329 passengers were Canadians. But the events have never been fully owned by this country.
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We report and reflect, for a moment, at this time every year. Outside of June 23, however, an event that should be seared into national memory is generally mentioned only in passing, appended to news coverage of bungled CSIS and RCMP investigations, or to discussions about Canada-India relations.
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The death of a beloved is an amputation, Lewis wrote. Except for the ghost pain of victims' families, it has been lost, forgotten.
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A new Angus Reid Institute survey canvassing awareness and perceptions of the attack finds more than 80 per cent in this country unable to correctly identify the bombing as the single worst case of mass murder of Canadians in our history. One-in-three (32 per cent) say they've never heard of the incident. This rises to a stunning 54 per cent among those aged 18-to-34.
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What can the victims' families possibly take from this lack of awareness among their fellow citizens? At a gathering in Hamilton last month, it was a topic of still-raw anger, and floods of tears. Relatives recalled facing uphill fights for support from municipal parks boards and councillors merely in an effort to place memorial plaques across the country, such as the one at Ottawa's Dow's Lake. For some, it struck a pervasive chord of revictimization. Having lost so much, they had to fight, for so little.
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Fifty per cent of the general population itself says the attacks were never treated as a Canadian tragedy; this can be nothing short of an indictment of our leaders, our educators and ourselves.
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There is danger in forgetting, or not knowing at all. We're living in an era of disinformation. Activists are believed when they say vaccines are more harmful than helpful to populations. Grifters like Alex Jones only admit his lie that the gun-killings of 20 elementary school children at Sandy Hook Elementary school was a 'hoax' when dragged into court.
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The circumstances of Flight 182's bombing are also now subject to disinformation. Elected politicians who know better are unwilling to talk about the origins of the bombing. Veteran journalists who know the facts far better than those trying to rewrite history are reticent to deal with this, because they don't want to feed the conspiracies.