Honourable Senators, I rise five days too late to mark the downing of Air India 182 on June 24, 1985, over the coast of Ireland. I want to thank Senator Simons for her timely statement on the tragedy last week, but I want to add to her comments for reasons that I hope you will agree with.

This was the largest single terrorist attack on Canadians — in a sense our own 9/11. But we do not think of it in that way, neither do we mark it that way. So I will take every opportunity every year, along with others in the chamber, to remind us of it.

All 329 passengers on board were murdered, including 82 children, 6 babies and 29 entire families. Two children not on board lost both parents, making them orphans in a few minutes.

In the ensuing months and years, there was confusion. Former Prime Minister Mulroney offered his condolences to then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, when in fact it should have been the other way around. It was only in this 2005, a full 20 years later, when former prime minister Paul Martin finally claimed this tragedy as our own collective tragedy when he said:

Make no mistake: The flight may have been Air India’s, it may have taken place off the coast of Ireland, but this is a Canadian tragedy.

An inquiry led by a former Supreme Court justice concluded that a cascading series of errors, and a turf war among the Government of Canada, the RCMP and CSIS failed to prevent an attack that was indeed preventable.

It has taken us many years to come to grips that this was a terrorist attack perpetrated on Canadians. Many of us wonder what our reaction would have been if those 82 children had been blonde-haired and blue-eyed little boys and girls.

This past weekend, I visited the lonely Air India memorial in Humber Bay Park in Toronto. I ran my hands and fingers over the names etched into the grey marble and sent up a silent prayer for all those we lost. I also sent up a prayer for Canada, that before we celebrate multiculturalism, we need to do the hard work of living it. Whether we are hyphenated Canadians or not, we are all Canadians. That may be a thought worth remembering this Canada Day. Thank you.