Most Canadians don't know about the bombing of Air India, the worst terrorist attack in Canada's history: poll
9 out of 10 surveyed said they had little or no knowledge of the incident
Friday marks a grim anniversary for Canada, but a new poll out of the Angus Reid Institute shows it's one most Canadians aren't even aware of.
June 23 is the 38th anniversary of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985, which killed 329 people, among whom 280 were Canadian citizens.
The flight from Montreal to London exploded off the Irish coast, making the bombing the deadliest terrorist incident in Canada's history.
Another bomb, intended to attack a separate flight, killed two baggage handlers when it exploded at Tokyo's Narita International Airport, bringing the total number of lives lost in the attack to 331.
The poll surveyed 1,548 Canadians who are members of the Angus Reid Institute forum between June 19-21, and found that nine out of 10 surveyed said they had little or no knowledge of the incident.
Only one out of five said they are aware the incident was the worst act of terrorism in the country's history, and more than half of those under age 35 said they had never heard of the bombing.
"It's both surprising and not surprising. On the one hand, the Air India bombings in recent years have been reframed or rebranded as Canada's worst encounter with terrorism," said Angela Failler, Canada Research Chair in culture and public memory, and co-editor of the book Remembering Air India: The Art of Public Mourning.
"So from that perspective, it's surprising that most or many Canadians don't recognize the Air India bombings or have a very vague understanding of the events."
Canada treated attack as foreign event
Just over a quarter of those polled by Angus Reid Institute said Canada hasn't done enough to commemorate the tragedy.
While a memorial to the victims was built in 1986 at Ahakista, Ireland, near where the plane was downed, it would be more than 20 years before any memorial was built in Canada.
The federal government was criticized in the years after the attack for treating it as a foreign event, despite it having been allegedly planned on Canadian soil and killing hundreds of Canadian citizens.
In fact, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney famously called Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to express his condolences for India's loss.
"The suspects and the majority of those killed in the bombings were South Asian Canadians, and there was a disconnect in terms of the national public memory of recognizing that these were Canadians," Failler said.
"There was kind of a distancing that public authorities enacted at that time, and as a result the bombings were thought of as a foreign event for quite a long time — and I think that actually persists today even though they have been reframed as Canada's worst encounter with terrorism."
Tragedy 'in our own backyard'
Some families of the victims have also been critical of how the Canadian government responded to the tragedy at the time.
"They've pointed out that they weren't receiving the kind of support or attention from the Canadian government that they would have expected," said Amber Dean, a co-editor of Remembering Air India.
"And [they've] since pointed out, over and over and over again, that the event just hasn't infiltrated Canadian public memory or public mourning in the way that we would expect an event of that scale, and the massive loss that it represents, to have registered."
Krishna Bhat, whose wife Mukhta and nine-year-old son Deepak died in the bombing, told the inquiry commission that he felt former prime minister Brian Mulroney didn't seem to acknowledge that the tragedy had happened "in our own backyard."
"Alas, what a twist of irony. Are we not Canadians? Were not those talented children, including a dear Deepak, the future of Canada?" he said.
Families and community members will gather at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Air India Memorial in Vancouver's Stanley Park to remember their loved ones.
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With files from Michelle Ghoussoub