Opinion: Air crash in India reverberates with families in Canada still grappling with 1985 tragedy

Montreal Gazette

2 days ago

The June 12 Air India crash in the northwestern Indian city of Ahmedabad, with 230 passengers and 12 crew members aboard, is sending deep reverberations through a group of Canadians who know all too well the shock, grief and horror of losing loved ones in hauntingly similar circumstances.
They are the families of those killed in the bombing of Air India Flight 182 en route from Canada to India 40 years ago.
I work closely with these families as a researcher and advocate. I began interviewing these families in 2014 and have witnessed firsthand their pain, advocacy and emotional turmoil of living in the shadow of a historical event.
As reports of the Ahmedabad crash came in, the WhatsApp account of the Air India Flight 182 families immediately flooded with expressions of shock, concern, sympathy and memories triggered by the latest incident.
On June 23, 1985, Flight 182 was brought down by terrorist bombs created and planted on Canadian soil. The devastating mid-air explosion occurred over the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland. It killed all 329 passengers and crew, including 268 Canadians. The crew and most of the passengers were of Indian origin.
Investigations into the causes of the crash of Air India Flight 171, en route to London's Gatwick airport, shortly after take-off are still underway. At least 279 people died in the crash, which also impacted people on the ground.
A recent public conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., commemorated the 40th anniversary of Flight 182, bringing together Indian and Canadian families, researchers, creative artists and community members.
The conference dealt with critical themes, including the challenge of Flight 182 families recovering from their losses within a climate of broad indifference among their fellow Canadians.
Regardless of what may have caused the more recent crash in western India, these Canadian families know the shock and loss that a new set of victims' families are facing, and how important it is to support them.
Hopefully, the home countries of last week's crash victims — most of them Indian and British citizens, with at least one Canadian reported to have been aboard — will regard their deaths as significant losses. If so, this would be unlike what the 1985 victims' families experienced in Canada.
In Canada, we have a national day to remember on June 23, 1985. The bombing has been called a Canadian tragedy in a public inquiry report.
And yet, according to a 2023 Angus Reid poll, 'nine out of 10 Canadians say they have little or no knowledge of the worst single instance of the mass killing of their fellow citizens.' That essentially means the bombing has yet to penetrate the consciousness of everyday Canadians or evoke shared grief or public mourning.
The families continue to carry the torch of remembrance as they organize annual memorial vigils every June 23. Few others attend. Many victims' relatives have died since 1985. Some spouses, siblings or parents are now in their 80s, wondering why the bombing is still not widely discussed in schools or in public discourse.
The grinding and unsatisfying criminal proceedings, the belated public inquiry and the welcome but lukewarm apology by the Canadian government 25 years after the fact have all contributed to the failure of this tragedy to adhere more solidly to the Canadian consciousness. In fact, many continue to deny the Canadian significance of Flight 182 and view the bombing as a foreign event.
At last month's conference, my research team launched the Air India Flight 182 archive to counter this collective amnesia and lack of acknowledgement.
Canadian archival consultant and writer Laura Millar has said that archives act as 'touchstones to memory' and can aid the process of transforming individual memories into collective remembering. Adopting NYU professor Carol Gilligan's ethics of care for the archive, we have been consulting with families to find ways to share their grief with the public.
The Flight 182 memory archive — both physical and digital — serves as a repository for artefacts, first-person narratives, memorabilia and creative works related to the tragedy produced by family members. Family donations of artefacts such as dance videos and pilot wings redirect notions of archives away from a documental deposit. Hopefully, they can move the public to learn and care for the impacts of the Flight 182 bombing.
The archive is a publicly accessible record of the tragedy, where scholars and everyday citizens can learn about the victims and their families.
Since the past involves both the present and the future, the archive will enable a meaningful recognition of marginalized voices and histories. It can offer a form of memory justice for those who would otherwise be forgotten by sustaining memory from generation to generation.
While the archive articulates the demand from families that the bombing of Flight 182 and its aftermath be incorporated into Canadian national consciousness, establishing this archive alone will not be enough to elevate the memory of Flight 182 to the place it deserves.
But at least it establishes a rich, permanent academic and personal legacy for the community of mourners, and for the Canadian and global public to find it, use it and learn from its many lessons.
Families of those on board the 1985 flight are preparing to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the terror bombing of Flight 182 that has devastated their lives.
As we learn more about the tragic Air India Flight 171 crash on June 12, the lessons of Flight 182 will hopefully prevent a new set of families from feeling the pain of indifference on top of the unimaginable agony of loss they're already experiencing.