Families overcome with emotion at groundbreaking for Air India memorial

TORONTO (CP) - Mothers, fathers, children and grandparents who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing wept openly and embraced one another Friday as ground was broken along the shores of Lake Ontario for a memorial to be completed next year.
Twenty-one years to the day after the bombing, the ceremony marked the beginning of construction on a memorial for the 329 victims, including 280 Canadians, who died when Flight 182 was downed by a terrorist bomb on June 23, 1985 near the Irish coast.

Jayashree Thampi, who represents the victims' families, said she hopes the memorial, along with others planned in Montreal and Vancouver, will allow "all Canadians . . .to visit and reflect and remember all the innocent people who lost life in this terrible tragedy."

Shanta Persaud, a friend of Thampi and other victims' family members, said she has been inspired by her friend's unfailing courage to continue to raise awareness about the tragedy.

"It made me realize that you can't give up . . .you need to go forward," she said in a trembling voice after the ceremony.

The west Toronto memorial, near the shores of Lake Ontario, is the first of its kind in Canada for the Air India bombing victims, although there are commemorative plaques in Ottawa and at the Ontario legislature in Toronto.

The memorial - a sundial at the foot of a wall bearing the names of the victims - is based on a similar structure in Ahakista, Ireland, and is expected to take a year to complete.

All levels of government were involved, and their support made working on the project "extremely satisfying and comforting," said Thampi, who lost her husband and daughter in the attack.

Although it took more than two decades for someone to decide to build a memorial, Thampi said the governments worked quickly on the project once it was underway.

In March of last year, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri - accused of plotting to blow up the airliner - were acquitted in the deaths of all 329 passengers aboard, a tragedy widely acknowledged as Canada's worst mass murder.

The acquittals brought sympathy and support from a country which didn't identify the Air India crash as a terrorist attack at the time, said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto,

At the time of the bombing, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney "was relating (to the victims) as if they weren't Canadian," Wiseman said - another possible reason why it was only in recent years that family members began speaking out about their losses.

Peter Van Loan, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay, was at Friday's ceremony on behalf of the federal government. He said the initial focus was on getting justice for the victims.

"Now we're into a different kind of process of the families remembering . . .and trying to if not bring people to justice, at least come up with better answers for what happened," Van Loan said.

The ceremony comes on the heels of the formal start of a judicial inquiry into the bombing, which began Wednesday, and is expected to take a year to complete.

Wiseman said the inquiry couldn't happen until the criminal trials, which ended last year, were over - as well, the inquiry would have dealt "with the fumbling and stumbling of the RCMP and CSIS," he said.

"It's happening now... simply because (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) promised it during an election as a way to get votes."

Friday was also marked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a national day to remember the victims of terrorism.

"On this day, we pause to remember those whose lives were cruelly and needlessly lost to acts of terror, both here in Canada and around the world," Harper said in a statement.

© The Canadian Press, 2006