Thread by @Taleeb

Thread: I’ve been thinking a lot about Meera’s tweet. The #AirIndia 182 bombing has had a profound impact on my life. Not much time passes without my remembering this tragedy & those that passed - and those that lived, like the parents of @NishaOttawa, who are like family to me.

https://twitter.com/FairDuty/status/1274167191332515840

My connection to this began as someone who had the honour of working to bring some closure to the families with @BobRae48 and @michellessample by reviewing & providing clarity into what went wrong and how to prevent a future attack. We vowed the victims would never be forgotten.

Our report was thorough, and we worked with the families, in partnership with the @rcmpgrcpolice, @csiscanada & many others. We worked to identify problems in our system & recommended the necessary changes. It was one small way we would honour the memory of those that perished.

The report publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblc… identified an “entirely legitimate anger that this tragedy has been insufficiently understood & embraced as a Canadian event.” So we worked to try & change this, hand in hand w/ the victims families who couldn’t have been more dignified or kind.

We built memorials in #Vancouver #Toronto #Ottawa and #Montreal - and in #Ireland, where the plane came down to its watery grave, taking 329 innocent lives with it. We built them with love, and with the guidance of the families of those who were taken all too soon.

Despite all this, @FairDuty is right. This tragedy gets nowhere near the remembrance it deserves. A plot, hatched in Canada, in the worst #terrorist attack ever perpetrated against #Canadians, so many of them kids. @kbolan @realreporter @CBCTerry @TerryGlavin keep reminding us.

Yet it is still not often taught in our schools or universities. An afterthought to many, an inconvenient truth to others. When we sought to build the #Vancouver memorial, some @ParkBoard staff fought against having victims names included, unmoved by the impact this would have.

We sourced Federal and Provincial funding to build a new play area for kids, alongside the proposed memorial in #StanleyPark, as a way to remember the huge number of children who perished in the bombing-and also, sadly, to incent the @ParkBoard to agree to names on the memorial.

The families fought hard, with the help of folks like @adriandix, whose wife lost family in the tragedy. Eventually decency prevailed but the process was yet another insult to these families who had been let down by governments for decades, thinking it wasn’t a #Canadian problem.

Perhaps now, as we recognize our own #racism, change will come. Maybe the victims won’t be seen as brown skinned foreigners w/ strange names, who died on a foreign airline far away, rather remembered as fellow Canadians, children, moms, dads, friends, neighbours, taken too soon.

We owe it to ourselves to understand that we are not immune from prejudice even in times of tragedy. We need to teach our kids what happened & how it happened; why it happened, and who our country lost that June 23rd, almost 35 years ago. As a country, it’s time. #cdnpoli #Canada