Most Canadians don't know about the bombing of Air India, the worst terrorist attack in Canada's history: poll

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."

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 president 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."