Remembering as Rupture: Canadian History and the 1985 Air India Flight 182 Archive

The June 23, 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182 en route from Toronto to New Delhi killed 329 people, mostly Canadians of Indian heritage. The bombing resulted in the longest and most expensive criminal investigations in Canadian history and has been belatedly acknowledged as “the largest mass murder in Canadian history” and as a “Canadian tragedy.” However, this event resonates with few within Canada and globally.

In this talk, Chandrima Chakraborty (McMaster) will reflect on how remembering this “Canadian tragedy” ruptures dominant versions of national history and invites us to build connections between this tragedy and other historical events that are hazily remembered in Canada.

She will draw upon archival materials from the Air India Flight 182 Archive at McMaster University to illustrate how this memory archive offers students and the general public creative modes of engagement with marginalized histories and the opportunity to attend to a diasporic history of loss, grief, resistance, and survival. With Steve Hewitt, UoB, part of a Birmingham-McMaster Grant, and co-sponsored by the History Department.