Most Canadians ignorant of Air India bombings, nation’s deadliest terror attack: poll

A new poll has revealed Canadians know troublingly little about the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism and the Air India bombings it was created to honour.

Friday marked the 38th anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on Canadian citizens in the country’s history.

But a new poll has revealed Canadians know troublingly little about the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism and the Air India bombings it was created to honour.

On June 23, 1985 329 passengers and crew, 268 of them Canadians, were killed when a bomb went off on Air India flight 182. A second bomb killed two baggage handlers in Japan. Both attacks were tied to a B.C.-based terrorist group seeking an independent Sikh state in India.

Despite the massive scale of the tragedy, just three in 10 Canadians say they’ve ever heard of the Air India tragedy, according to Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl.

Sixty per cent of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they’d never heard of it, while just one in five people were able to correctly identify the attack as the deadliest on Canadian citizens.

“I did not anticipate the numbers being quite that brutal and quite that stark. And I think it gives rise to ask some questions around what are our provincial education systems teaching and not teaching,” Kurl said.

“This isn’t something that happened 150 years ago or 50 years ago, it happened 38 years ago when many of us were still alive. This is not something that is so far faded or wasn’t covered at the time that it is lost to the sands of time.”

Amber Dean, a professor of English and cultural studies at McMaster university said she wasn’t surprised by the poll’s results.