Air India flight 182 archive opens in Canada
Toronto: A formal archive memorialising the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182, the Kanishka by pro-Khalistan terrorists, has been launched at McMaster University located in the city of Hamilton, in Ontario.
The archive contains both physical and digital material including testimonies from the family members of what remains the worst terrorist incident in Canada's history.
The initiative has been led by McMaster professor Chandrima Chakraborty, who said, 'The goal of the Air India archive is to address the silencing of the Air India tragedy in Canadian history and public memory.'
She elaborated, 'The objective is to educate the public about the grief of families, preserve and honour the memories of those who perished on Air India Flight 182, and create avenues for memorialisation and ongoing research.' The university is also hosting a two-day conference this weekend to mark the 40th anniversary of the Air India bombings.
Professor Chakraborty said, 'The AI tragedy has been called a Canadian tragedy, yet the grief of those who lost loved ones continue to be unacknowledged in Canadian history and public memory. Perhaps, marking the 40th anniversary through such free, public events such as this conference that centres the voices and experiences of families can create greater public awareness and enable informed engagement with this historical event.'
As the conference organisers, Chakraborty, Amber Dean, also a professor at McMaster, and Maia Lepingwell-Tardieu, a PhD candidate there, stated, 'June 23, 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Air India bombings. Although this event has been described as a Canadian tragedy that resulted in the mass murder of 331 people, it remains little known and seldom remembered in our national consciousness.'
The archive is being hosted at McMaster University's Research Collections and has the support of the university's library's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections and the Sherman Centre of Digital Scholarship.
'The Air India archive is a community co-created public memory archive that will preserve and honor the memories of those who perished on AI Flight 182 and document the experiences and memories of Air India families and critical witnesses,' Professor Chakraborty said.
Physical items include badges of the pilot and co-pilot, memorial books published by the Air India victims' families, other works n the subject, seven volumes of the public inquiry report, which was released in June 2010, among other items.
However, Professor Chakraborty said the project has funding till March next year but will require support in the form of donations to sustain it and allow it to expand.
'I have boxes and boxes of materials that I will not be able to digitize without receiving substantial funding to continue the work of digitising materials,' she said.
The Kanishka bombing claimed 329 lives and two baggage handlers at Narita Airport in Japan were killed when another bomb on another Air India flight exploded there.
The 40th anniversary of Canada's worst terror episode comes at a time when pro-Khalistan separatism has been largely normalised by Canada's political leadership and in the country's mainstream media and its link to extremism largely ignored.
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