In November 2012, Dr. Bal Gupta, whose wife, Ramwati, was killed in the bombing of Air India Flight 182, appeared before the Public Safety and National Security Committee in Ottawa. He opened has testimony with this statement: "... it has been my misfortune to have been coordinator and chair of the Air India 182 Victims' Families Association from 1985 onwards." He goes on to lend his support for new anti-terrorism legislation in Canada before providing a poignant and heartbreaking account of the Air India tragedy. Dr. Gupta puts the event into perspective: 

• A single terrorist act killed 329 persons. Statistically, that is a higher ratio than the number of 9/11 victims in the U.S.A.,* keeping the population in mind. Most victims were Canadians, from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia—all the provinces except P.E.I. Others came from many states in India and the U.S.A. They came from almost all religious backgrounds, including atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian. Eighty-six victims were children under the age of 12. Twenty-nine families—husband, wife, and all children—were wiped out. Thirty-two persons were left alone; the spouse and all the children were gone. Seven parents in their forties and fifties lost all their children, and two children, about the age of 10, lost both parents. (*emphasis provided by SPD)

You can sense Dr. Gupta's pain and frustration throughout the testimony as he points out how the "real culprits are still roaming free in Canada and elsewhere." He also cautions Canadians, "make no mistake, the victims of the next terrorist act could be anybody. Terrorism cares little about a victim's colour, creed, gender, or age."

Click on the button below to read Dr. Gupta's full statement. 

When I speak or write about the Air India tragedy, I tend to get very passionate (even preachy) about how we failed the victims through a botched investigation and a collective, national indifference to what happened. I realize that this isn’t entirely fair to the people who did respond appropriately to the tragedy from the eighties to the present.
 
While passion and anger are appropriate at times, I have been counselled (sometimes overtly and sometimes through passive suggestion) that there are times when a more subdued tone needs to be employed. Speaking in sweeping indictments is often not helpful.
 
This has been revealed to me over the years through a few key encounters and reflection on the entirety of the Air India story.

• When I spoke about the tragedy in academic (I’m a retired teacher) and social settings, I was frequently greeted with blank stares. I see this as a failure on my part to communicate the message I was trying to convey. Perhaps I was employing too much anger and disgust, and my audience didn’t know how to respond. By and large, speaking about Air India tended to be a conversation killer in many situations. There may have been other factors at play but, ultimately, I must take responsibility for not moving the dialogue along to facilitate a more thorough examination of what happened before and after those Air India planes were targeted so many years ago.
• When I finished my first draft of My Father’s Secret, my editor read the original ‘Author’s Note’ and told me to scrap it. She said, “Your reader doesn’t want to be bludgeoned after reading your novel.” She was right. The original ‘Author’s Note’ saw me launch into a stern lecture on the entire terrorist event, and the many failing of the Canadian national security, law enforcement, and government systems. The re-written ‘Author’s Note’ is much more subtle and, I think, more powerful. I give the reader the information without telling them how to feel about it.
• Shortly after publication, three of my readers shared stories of being connected to some of the victims. One described being a little boy and learning that someone in their neighbourhood had died on the plane. He told me about neighbourhood families rallying and visiting their devastated neighbour, bringing food and comfort to them before they headed to Ireland to identify the remains of their family member. Two other people spoke of friends and relatives who knew children who died in the bombing. Of the 329 killed on Flight 182, eighty-six were children, six of whom were infants. One of my readers shared the story of a close friend who has never been the same since her childhood friend was killed on Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Another reader, whose wife was close friends with one of the victims as a little girl, got a tattoo to memorialize her lost friend.
• While I rip into the investigators and government in My Father’s Secret and in my reflections on the Air India tragedy, there are no doubt many CSIS, RCMP and legal professionals who worked tirelessly to bring those responsible to justice. While they ultimately failed, their efforts should never be under-estimated. There are also journalists who chased the story and exposed the truth:
  • Tara Singh Hayer was paralyzed after being shot and later murdered for implicating those he said were responsible for the bombings.
  • His friend, Kim Bolan, was subject to death threats for her reporting.
  • Terry Milewski continues to speak out about the bombings and the movement that inspired it.
• The families of the Air India victims have never stopped telling the story of the gross injustice that their loved ones have suffered—in 1985 and the decades since the bombing. They must have felt like they were speaking into a vacuum as the government and the majority of Canadians maintained their largely muted response to the worst terrorist attack in this nation’s history. While the government of Canada did eventually apologize and take responsibility for their failure (25 years after the bombing), the average Canadian still frowns and shrugs their shoulders when they hear about the terrorist attacks. Ambivalence in the face of an historic tragedy. 

 
This is why I need to be mindful to watch my tone at times. There are plenty of people who have given their all to understanding what happened in 1985. There are many who have used their broken hearts to appropriately mourn the lives lost. And there are many who will not let our nation forget what happened on June 23, 1985.

In 2020, George Floyd was killed by police outside a Minneapolis deli. The video of his last moments spawned worldwide protests against the systemic racism that forms the undercurrent of so many societies.  In the summer after Floyd's death, Canadian School Counsellor magazine asked me to write a story about racism in Canadian schools. Writing the article forced me to look at my own privilege as a white male living a cozy existence in Canada. This article was picked up by at least one school board in their efforts to train staff in identifying implicit bias and acknowledging the systemic racism that still pervades our education system. 

Click on the button this link or the button below to read the story.  

My Father's Secret wasn't always the name of my novel. For the longest time I stubbornly clung to the title A Nation's Shame. My wife was the first person to review my manuscript. She suggested I change the title because it didn't quite sit right with her. She thought it sounded too academic. Like a fool, I dismissed her concerns. 

I went through the initial planning phase for the novel with my design team and they came up with the cover mockups above. I told them I wanted a Canadian flag and an open sea included in the design. When I shared the covers with my closest advisors, the middle cover got the thumbs up (I liked the one on the far left). However, two of my advisors felt strongly that the title needed to be changed. From their perspective, A Nation's Shame didn't sound like a work of fiction. To them, when you superimpose the title onto the cover art that I had selected, the book looked more like an government report than a novel. In other words, they agreed with my wife's position—the one I dismissed after she read my draft manuscript. Now I had two different sources telling me the title I coveted was a bust. This created a bit of a crisis for me. Here I was in the design phase of a self-published book and my title had to go. 

This wasn't a very pleasant experience for me. It took a few days, and quite a few emails to my advisors—and even more discussions with my wife (who I now refer to as my business manager)—before we settled on My Father's Secret. I actually came up with the title while I was laying down for a nap, trying to calm the stresses that had come with the scrapping of A Nation's Shame. My business manager/wife rejected a lot of titles, but when I said My Father's Secret, she responded, "That could work." I dare not dismiss her a second time. 

For the record, my wife has been my number one supporter through the entire process of writing and publishing the novel. While I was a bit of a stubborn fool early on, I came to rely on, and take to heart, her advice. If it weren't for her guidance, I would have given most of my books away or charged people a pittance. She kept me on point. And she was right to do it. I am not just saying this: she is the yin to my yang. I would be a floundering idiot without her there to balance things out for me. 

As it turns out (I have shifted back to the title of my book now), calling the book My Father's Secret was the right move for two reasons.

• First, the title does sound more like a work of fiction.
• Second, and more importantly, something happened in the summer of 2021 that proved the title change was absolutely necessary. In the spring, the graves of 215 Indigenous children were 'discovered' on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia. I put quotes around discovered because Indigenous people have been telling anyone who would listen (and there weren't many listening) that there were graves in the residential school yards across Canada. Within a few months, over 1,000 graves had been identified, adding another tragic layer to the residential school story in our nation. If every there was a nation's shame, this was it. 

Put in the context of our entire national history, the Air India tragedy, the inspiration behind My Father's Secret, constitutes a colossal failure of government and law enforcement to do the right thing. It is also a massive, collective failure of the Canadian people to do more than pay lip service to multiculturalism, and to recognize that the bombing of those Air India planes was an attack on the fabric of our nation. I maintain that Canadians should be ashamed that the terrorist bombings and mass murder of 331 people has been relegated to a mere footnote in our nation's history. To date, there has been no true reckoning for what happened in and around June 23, 1985. 

However, when the Air India tragedy is juxtaposed with what Canada has done to Indigenous people, a compelling argument emerges wherein our white, mostly male, predecessors participated in a long, drawn out form of genocide. We tried to 'take the Indian out of the Indian.' We tried to destroy families and First Nations. An honest account of our history demonstrates that we tried to make the Indigenous people disappear. Thank god we failed. 

While the Air India tragedy is shameful (and I will continue to vigorously defend this position), the attempted long-term subjugation and elimination of Indigenous people is  our nation's shame. 

​​If you haven't already listened to the MY FATHER'S SECRET playlist, make sure you take a bit of time and listen to the catchy tunes that I dug up for you. It's a different way to enjoy the novel either while you're reading (though this option isn't for everyone) or while you are away from the book. I personally like listening to the playlist when I am driving and when I am taking it easy around the house. The songs are linked to each chapter and sub-chapter of the novel in one of three ways: 

• By year
• By theme
• By mood

Let's explore ten of the tunes on the MY FATHER'S SECRET playlist so you can see how my music mind works (at least when it comes to the novel). 

Zombie by the Cranberries​​ Featured in the song list for Chapter 1 of the novel, Zombie was inspired by two bombings in Warrington, England (between Liverpool and Manchester) in 1993. The IRA claimed responsibility for the bombings, one of which killed two: Tim Parry, 12, and Jonathan Ball, just three-years-old. Dozens of other people were injured in the wake of the explosion. The event inspired Dolores O'Riordan to write the song as a tribute to Parry and Ball. Music critics at the time called the song a departure from the Cranberries more melodic ballads as Zombie launches into a forceful, uptempo, alternative rock classic. I chose the song for the playlist because it clearly spoke to the Troubles and signalled a theme and tone that fit my storyline. You probably want to check out the video for Zombie here. 

Use Me by Bill WithersUse Me by Bill Withers was picked for the playlist because it captures the mood of 1972 from a musical perspective. It is part of the Chapter 2 song selection that includes a mixture of 1970s and early-2000s music. Of all the tunes associated with Chapter 2, Use Me stands out for it's classic groove and soulful vibe. The song itself was Wither's second biggest hit (after Lean on Me) and reached number 2 on the Billboard Chart (kept from number 1 by Michael Jackson's Ben and Chuck Berry's My Ding-a-ling). Where Zombie was picked for the songs clear link to the Troubles, Use Me was picked to set a 1970s mood for the listener/reader. 

Bad Side of the Moon by April WineThis Canadian classic was selected for the playlist from two reasons: (a) because it's performed by a Canadian band and (b) because the lyrics hit the mark for what I was trying to achieve in the scene 'A Canadian and a Provo' in Chapter 3. At this point in the story, the RCMP Security Service are coming to terms with the arrival of Darcy Byrne from Northern Ireland. He's bad news. The first words of the song capture the theme:

It seems as though I've lived my life on the bad side of the moon
To stir your dregs and sittin' still, without a rustic spoon
Now come on people, live with me, where the light has never shone
And the harlots flock like hummingbirds, speaking in a foreign tongue

While I identify the song as a Canadian classic (mostly because April Wine made it a huge hit in Canada), Bad Side of the Moon was actually written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin in 1970. Not as Canadian as one might think. You can hear Sir Elton's version by clicking here. 

Unwell by Matchbox TwentyLike Use Me, Unwell by Matchbox Twenty was picked to set a mood—this time for November 2003, the time period where Declan Keenan begins to investigate his father's secret.  At this point in the story, Keenan is locked away in a school library immersing himself in the available research (of which there is very little) into the downing of BOAC Flight 281. The melody and lyrics provided by songwriter Rob Thomas are a solid reflection of what people were listening to in 2003. ​

Gimme Shelter by the Rolling StonesChapter 5 of My Father's Secret is pivotal in moving the plot toward its intended (and predictable) destination. Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones serves to not only capture the spirit of 1972, it also fits the theme of the chapter. As Mick Jagger sings at the start of the song:

Ooh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Ooh yeah I'm gonna fade away

The song then proceeds with a sense of urgency (War, children/It's just a shot away) as the focus of the song speaks of the need for shelter from the madness that is occurring in the world with the rhythm of the song reflecting the lyrics. In Chapter 5, the madness is brewing with the characters not knowing how desperately shelter against the coming storm is needed. 

Dark Necessities by the Red Hot Chili-PeppersWith one of the catchiest bass lines of all time (in my humble opinion), Dark Necessities takes the listener on a musical journey that both embodies the musical essence of the Red Hot Chili-Peppers and captivates the listener with its melody and lyrics.  In Chapter 6 of My Father's Secret, the Irish hatch a plan to mess with the RCMP Security Service. Their propensity for evil becomes evident. Indeed each emerging terrorist could be described with the refrain 'dark necessities are part of my design.'

Bad Company by Bad CompanyIn Chapter 7, the events of 1973 take centre stage. The music on the playlist blends dark themes with 1970s rock songs—sometimes in the form of cover tunes like John Lennon's Instant Karma, covered by U2. Bad Company by Bad Company takes the listener back to the shadier side of the 1970s as Paul Rodgers expresses an oath to be part of 'Bad company til the day I day.' He describes what bad company looks like: 

Rebel souls
Deserters we are called
Chose a gun and threw away the sword 

In My Father's Secret, Chapter 7 is all about the men who 'chose a gun and threw away the sword.'

Idioteque by RadioheadRadiohead is one of those bands that, when I listened to them for the first time, I thought they were pretty good ... that is until I listened to them a second and a third and a forth time. I love bands that get better every time their music hits my ear. Idioteque is connected to the What's Our Exposure scene in Chapter 8. The song explores the angst of those living in wartime. From the perspective of My Father's Secret, the scene associated with this song is best described in the lyrics: 'We're not scaremongering, This is really happening.' Once you read the scene, you'll know what I mean. 

Calling All Angels by TrainChapter 9 is called Declan's Last Stand. The main characters search for justice is frustrated at times and Calling All Angels by Train reflects Declan's appeal for help—or even just an explanation for why things are unfolding the way they are unfolding. This part of the song describes Declan's struggle: 

When there is no place safe and no safe place to put my head
When you feel the world shake from the words that are said

And I'm calling all angels
And I'm calling all you angels

A Farewell to Kings by Rush​The experience of music continually sounding better with each listen is something I first experienced while listening to Rush's A Farewell to Kings when I was a teen. I soon discovered that Rush always sounded better over time and with plenty of volume. How three guys made all that music is a marvel to me.

Rush appears four times on the My Father's Secret playlist: Hope, Cinderella Man (covered by the Trews), Resist and A Farewell to Kings. The final Rush song on the playlist is really associated with the Afterword where I speak of how the Air India tragedy of 1985 inspired the writing of the novel.  The Afterword is an expression of dismay and disappointment in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. Neil Peart put's my thoughts into eloquent poetry: 

The hypocrites are slandering
The sacred halls of truth
Ancient nobles showering
Their bitterness on youth
Can't we find
The minds that made us strong?
Oh, can't we learn
To feel what's right and what's wrong?
What's wrong

My Father's Secret tells a story of betrayal that encourages people to 'feel what's right and what's wrong.'

There are 82 songs on the playlist. I have described ten of the them here. If you want to see the rest, go to the playlist on YouTube Music or click on the Word file below. It is a pretty cool way to experience the novel in a very different kind of way. ​

It changed the course of the Troubles. On January 30, 1972, the sway of the civil rights associations was replaced by the militancy of the Provisional IRA. That’s the day the British sent in the paras—an elite paratrooper unit of the armed forces—to help ‘police’ the 15,000 strong group of protesters who were marching against internment in Derry.
 
Let’s be clear: this was not a kumbaya, peace sign waving lovefest march for human rights. This was a group of angry, disenfranchised people who had had enough of Ulster rule and the imposing of un-democratic measures like internment.
 
Internment gave the authorities the power to detain ANYONE without charges.
 
Previous civil rights association marches had been the source of conflict and tension between Republican marchers and Ulster police. The Derry march was not likely to be free of similar conflict and tension but, by days end, no one thought 13 people would be lying dead and 15 others seeking medical attention at area hospitals.
 
So, here’s what happened. The protesters gathered on the Creggan and began marching toward the Guildhall in the city centre. Police and soldiers were ready and turned the protesters away from their intended destination—mostly because a counter-protest was slated to arrive at the same location, at the same time, which meant all hell would break loose between the two groups. When the authorities stopped the advancing protesters, most diverted toward Free Derry Corner while a passionate minority started hurling rocks at the cops and soldiers. The authorities responded with water cannons, rubber bullets and CS gas—a pretty standard response in the early days of the Troubles.
 
At one point, the order was given to the paras: arrest as many protesters as you can. Perhaps the effort to detain so many protesters triggered something in paras. Some soldiers say they heard shots fired at them (this was later proven false). At least one military officer disobeyed orders and brought his men into the Bogside. Whatever caused the first soldier to fire the first bullet is irrelevant—the results were clear: 21 of the paras opened fire on the crowd in the area of Rossville Flats, discharging 108 live rounds, killing 13 and injuring 15 (one of whom died six months after Bloody Sunday and is acknowledged as the 14th victim of that deadly afternoon in January).
 
For years British investigators exonerated the soldiers for opening fire. However, mounting pressure by the families and social justice crusaders resulted in an apology from British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 where he admitted that the soldiers fired the first shot and that all those who died where unarmed civilians. Later, in 2016, authorities prepared to lay murder charges against Soldier F (the British military upheld their right not to identify the soldier) in the deaths of James Wray and Willian McKinney, as well as the attempted murders of three other men. In 2021, the charges were dropped when the prosecution determined that they did not have a reasonable hope of securing a conviction. While there was a mountain of evidence of what happened that day, perhaps it was the near 50-year gap between the incident and the willingness to consider charging the soldier that led to the dismissal of charges.
 
This brings us to My Father’s Secret. I do my best in the novel to re-create the tragic events of Bloody Sunday. I created the character Jim Reilly as a Republican nationalist who attended the protest that day along with two of his friends. Reilly encounters the equivalent of a Soldier F, who executes him in Glenfada Park.
 
For the record, the Bloody Sunday shootings appear, from the accounts I’ve read, to be an exercise in madness and mayhem. Once the shots were fired, people fled while bodies dropped. Most of the shooting happened in the first few minutes with the killing spree ending about 40 minutes after it started. I admit to using poetic license in the killing of Jim Reilly to highlight the power of Bloody Sunday on Irish consciousness. It is fiction—there was no execution witnessed by onlookers. However, soldiers did pick off victims, some of whom were prone when they were shot.
 
Bloody Sunday is the most significant wound of the Troubles. It marked a shift in militancy that lasted until the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 (some say the militancy has never gone away). When tension is allowed to build, and peaceful releases are not discovered, the result is always profound devastation.
 
For more, see: 
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bloody-Sunday-Northern-Ireland-1972
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/british-soldier-charged-over-1972-bloody-sunday-will-not-stand-trial-2021-07-02/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0615/132189-bloodysundaytimeline/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0702/1232632-derry-bloody-sunday-prosecutions/

 

June to October, 1984
Indian armed forces attack the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, India. The Golden Temple is the holiest shrine for Sikhs. Sikh extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale is killed in the attack. Several months later, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India is killed by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for the attack on the Golden Temple. In Canada, Talwinder Singh Parmar, leader of Vancouver’s Babbar Khalsa, vows that Air India flights “will fall out of the sky” in retribution for the actions of the government of India.
 
Spring 1985 
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is asked by the government of India to monitor the activities of Sikh extremist groups in Canada prior to the visit of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. CSIS responds by placing wiretaps on the phone conservations of Talwinder Singh Parmar. A few weeks later, CSIS intercepts a call between Parmar and Jang Singh in Germany. The two discuss plans to kill Gandhi at the United Nations in New York. The conversation is dismissed as idle talk.
 
Early June 1985 
CSIS follows Parmar, Inderjit Singh Reyat, and an unidentified person (referred to as Mr. X by CSIS) to a wooded area on Vancouver Island near Duncan, B.C. Agents hear a small explosion that they think is a high-powered gun. CSIS dismisses the incident when their investigation determines that Reyat is the registered owner of two revolvers, but alert Vancouver Island police about the incident.

Eventually the RCMP and the United States Secret Service interview Parmar and Surjan Singh Gill about the alleged plot to kill Prime Minister Gandhi in New York. The RCMP opts not to question Parmar about the explosion in Duncan for fear of alerting him to the CSIS surveillance operation.
 
Around the same time, CSIS is warned by Indian intelligence of potential threats to Air India. In Vancouver, a man identified as Jaswand Singh purchases plane tickets on two Canadian Pacific flights, one to Tokyo and one to Toronto. Both flights connect to Air India flights. On June 22, Mr. L. Singh and Mr. M. Singh check in their luggage onto the target flights but never take their seats aboard either aircraft. Meanwhile, two days before the bombings, CSIS intercepts a conversation between Parmar and Gill. Later, the RCMP determines that the two men were speaking in code with the references to paper representing the plane tickets and references to clothes representing explosives.
 
June 23, 1985 
A suitcase bomb explodes at Narita Airport in Tokyo, killing two baggage handlers. Fifty-five minutes later, a bomb explodes on Air India Flight 182, killing all 329 people on board.
 
Summer 1985
CSIS directs the RCMP’s attention to the Duncan, B.C., site of the “small explosion” of early June. The RCMP determines that Parmar, Reyat, and Mr. X tested the components of a bomb that day. Eventually, the RCMP learns of the CSIS wiretap on Parmar and asks for the tapes. A dispute arises; CSIS gives the RCMP access to notes on the tapes but not the tapes themselves. Meanwhile, unknown to the RCMP, CSIS begins erasing the tapes. By the time the dispute is settled, only 54 of the 286 tapes of Parmar’s conversations survive; the rest are destroyed. Most of the tapes are destroyed after the bombing of Flight 182. During the trial, some RCMP documents propose that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CSIS operative Surjan Singh Gill, who had penetrated the Babbar Khalsa and had become a confidant of Parmar’s. Gill is said to have resigned from the group three days before the bombing of Flight 182 and fled Canada in 2000. CSIS vehemently denies the allegation. 
 
Fall 1985 
Police raid the homes of Parmar and Reyat. No clear evidence linking the two to the downing of the airplane is found. The two are charged with minor weapons offenses. Not long after the raid, Ajaib Singh Bagri appears before a large crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York and proclaims, “We will kill 50,000 Hindus.”
 
1986 
The Canadian Aviation Safety Board determines that Air India Flight 182 was brought down by a bomb. An inquiry by the government of India concurs, determining that the bomb was located in the front baggage compartment of the aircraft.
 
1988 
Inderjit Singh Reyat is charged with making the bomb that exploded at Narita airport. Since Reyat is a resident of England at the time, plans for his extradition are put into place. By 1989, he is returned to Canada to stand trial. Also in 1988, Tara Singh Hayer, the publisher of the  Indo-Canadian Times,  is shot by a Sikh extremist. Several people are charged with attempted murder, including Ajaib Singh Bagri. While the shooter is convicted, the charges against Bagri are stayed.
 
1990 to 1991 
Reyat is tried and convicted of manslaughter for the deaths of the two baggage handlers at Narita airport in Tokyo.
 
1992 
Talwinder Singh Parmar, the alleged mastermind of the bombings, is killed in a shootout with police in India. CBC radio reports that Parmar had been in custody prior to the shootout and that he had been interrogated by the police about the Air India tragedy.
 
1995 
The RCMP announces a $1-million reward for information leading to a conviction in the Air India case.
 
1996 to 2000 
The RCMP makes repeated announcements that charges in the Air India case are imminent.
 
1998 
Tara Singh Hayer is murdered. Hayer’s writings implicated Bagri and Malik in the Air India bombings. Hayer would have been called as a witness if charges were laid against the two men.
 
2000 
Over 15 years after the bombing of Air India Flight 182, two men, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of the 329 people on board Flight 182 and the deaths of the two baggage handlers in Japan.
 
2001 
Inderjit Singh Reyat is formally charged as a conspirator in the Air India bombings. Prosecutors plan to try Reyat along with Bagri and Malik.
 
2002 
Ongoing legal wrangling delays the beginning of the trial.
 
2003 
Reyat unexpectedly pleads guilty to manslaughter charges and one count of aiding in the construction of a bomb. A number of more serious charges are stayed, and some speculate that Reyat will testify against Malik or Bagri. However, the plea bargain does not compel Reyat to testify against the two men.
 
Spring of 2003-2004 
The trial of Malik and Bagri begins in April. During the Crown’s case, a former lover of Malik says that he confessed to being part of the bombing of Flight 182. An FBI informer testifies that several weeks after the tragedy Bagri told him that he was part of the bombing. One crown witness, who was to play a key role in the case, suddenly forgets important information saying “I don’t know” over 20 times while she is on the witness stand. When Reyat testifies, he claims that he cannot remember anything about Malik and Bagri. The Crown makes the unusual request to treat Reyat, whom they called to the stand, as a hostile witness. In terms of the case for the defence, witnesses find their credibility challenged at every turn. One witness testifies that Air India was brought down by the government of India to discredit Sikh extremist groups. The trial ends after 19 months of testimony from 115 witnesses.
 
2005 
Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri are acquitted on all charges. The government initially rules out a public inquiry into the tragedy, but agrees to hire an independent advisor to recommend whether or not there should be one. Former Ontario Premier Bob Rae was tasked with filing this report. Entitled 'Lessons to be Learned,' Rae attempts to come to terms with unanswered questions surrounding the Air India tragedy. Despite limitations placed on his investigation, Rae provides a powerful critique of the government and law enforcement. 

2006
Prompted by Rae's report, and certainly in response to pressure from the victims' families, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces the formation of a royal commission of inquiry into the Air India bombings. 

2010
Prime Minister Harper apologizes to the families of the victims of the Air India bombings. He issues the apology a week after retired-Supreme Court Justice John Major's Royal Commission report Air India Flight 182: A Canadian Tragedy. In the report, Major and his team rip into the Canadian government and law enforcement for systemic failures that both led to the tragedy and compounded the tragedy after the fact. While the families of the victims pleaded for decades for a pubic inquiry, successive governments said an inquiry wouldn't provide anything new. Major's response: "nothing could be further from the truth." 
 
Source: 
CBC News in Review, http://media.curio.ca/filer_public/1a/3b/1a3bd901-e2f0-41c8-8af9-a2bbb82f907c/air_india.pdf.

Unfortunately, this title is misleading. It is my position that the bombing of Air India Flight 182 was NOT accompanied by a systemic coverup by the Canadian government. Bear with me as I explain.
 
While I was writing My Father’s Secret, I endeavoured to provide as faithful a re-imagining of the Air India tragedy as I could. However, as a work of fiction, where I was trying to come to grips with how this terrible incident could occur, I kept confronting a singular problem: the bombing was orchestrated by people of South Asian ancestry based on grievances emanating from South Asia with people of mostly South Asian ancestry representing the victims of the tragedy. In 1985, this dynamic allowed Canadian authorities—and Canadian citizens—to reject our warm embrace of multiculturalism and assume a position akin to, “Look what these Indians did”—this despite the fact that 85 percent of the victims were Canadians. All the dominant group in Canada were willing to accept was that this was a ‘brown on brown’ crime that could be shelved with the hope that the ‘problem’ would just go away.
 
Let’s not split hairs hear. A few people have gone to great lengths to talk about language differences (Punjabi and Hindi are clearly not English or French) and immigration status (some of the victims were landed immigrants). If the state recognizes someone as Canadian, they’re Canadian and this cannot be rationalized away simply because of the colour of a person’s skin.
 
Now back to the coverup idea. In My Father’s Secret, the only way to make the story work was to have an official coverup, complete with destruction of evidence and murder. If I was faithfully retelling the Air India story, I would have written the story without a coverup. Why? Because there was no need to cover things up because everything happened in plain sight.
 
Do you think I am exaggerating? How else do you explain the fact that:

• CSIS recognized Talwinder Singh Parmar, the ringleader behind the Air India tragedy, as the most dangerous terrorist in the country, and had eyes on him right up until the day before the bombing (they removed surveillance to pursue a Soviet target on June 22, 1985).
• CSIS followed Parmar, Inderjit Singh Reyat, and an unknown man (who was repeatedly misidentified as Parmar’s son and whose identity remains unknown) to a forest in Duncan, B.C., where the men did something that caused a loud boom. CSIS thought they fired a high-powered rifle. When the RCMP returned to the site in the weeks after the bombing they found remnants of that confirmed the testing of an explosive device.
• In the aftermath of the bombing, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called Indian Prime Minister to offer his condolences, despite the fact that the victims were overwhelmingly Canadian (and 80 of them were children!).
• While the RCMP was investigating the bombing in the summer of 1985, CSIS began erasing tapes of the conspirators speaking with one another in telephone conversations. Of the 286 tapes, only 54 survive the erasing process. CSIS describe the erasure as routine, while blaming the RCMP for being too slow to ask for and secure the recordings. 
• When the victims’ families descended on Cork, Ireland, to identify the remains of their murdered family members, they were greeted by Irish officials. Some people remember encountering British and French personnel helping with the recovery. No Canadian officials were present to deal with their grieving citizens.
• It took Canada six months to officially call the act of terror a bombing, and over 15 years to lay charges against others allegedly involved in the Air India conspiracy. The victims’ families had to beg for a public inquiry, which they finally got in 2006.

 
I could go on (and on and on) with the things missed in the Air India tragedy. However, this sampling should provide a startling example of how, when we’re not paying attention, tragedies of unspeakable proportions can happen right in front of us. The points above speak to neglect, incompetence and implicit bias against Canadians who look a certain way. Sadly, there was no need to coverup the Air India bombing because the level of disengagement from the tragedy, both in leadership and in the collective response of citizens from coast to coast, allowed the perpetrators to carry out the bombing in plain sight with no meaningful response from the true North strong and free.

My Father’s Secret doesn’t try to hide too much. The back cover already gives away the fact that the novel is a re-imagining of the Air India tragedy of 1985—the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history and only one person, the fellow who bought the component parts of the bomb (the bombmaker?), convicted for his part in the deaths of 331 people (it is important to remember the two people killed at Narita airport in Japan). It was a Canadian tragedy that very few people want to call a Canadian tragedy. This was the event that inspired the writing of the novel.
 
I was immediately affected by the bombing of Flight 182. Maybe it was because the plane exploded on the morning of my 21st birthday. Maybe it was because the victims boarded the plane a short drive from my home in Toronto. Or maybe it was because I was puzzled by the muted response of the Canadian government and the Canadian people after the plane went down. I don’t remember the tragedy being framed as “Canadian”—instead, I remember a collective disengagement from the event, probably because Canadians of South Asian descent were victims of the tragedy and the episode initially appeared—and was later confirmed—to be perpetrated by Canadians of South Asian descent. I do not remember any mass, multicultural candlelight vigils being held across the country. I do not remember government officials rushing to vow justice for the victims (it took the Canadian government six months to admit that the plane was bombed!). I also do not remember a collective, national hunger to prosecute the men who committed this crime.
 
Like many Canadians, Air India drifted to the back of my mind. I accepted the way the government and media framed the event. I did not seek out or organize a candlelight vigil. I just sat back and watched matters unfold with a passing interest that defied the gravity of the situation. However, there was always a nagging feeling about the Air India conspiracy that rattled around in my consciousness.
 
In the spring of 2003, I delivered a commentary on CBC Radio One that made my feelings about the tragedy known. It was about a month before the anniversary of the bombing and just ahead of the trial (and eventual acquittal) of two alleged Air India conspirators. In that commentary, I said,

“My heritage is Irish. I know I would have reacted more intensely if Canadians returning to Ireland had been killed. But the plane was not filled with white people like me, there were mostly dark-skinned people on Flight 182. And while I felt sorrow, there was a distance between the victims and me. In an awful way, I was almost relieved that the dead didn’t include ‘people like me.’ The Air India tragedy has haunted me for years. I look back at my reaction to the event with deep shame. The tragedy has taught me that subtle racism can rest beneath the surface and rear its head disguised as passivity, ambivalence, and disregard. While I may not have been consciously racist in 1985, there certainly was something unconscious going on.”
 
That summer, I came up with an idea: what if I told the story of the Air India tragedy from an Irish perspective?
 
And so, it began. I was quick out of the gate. I knocked off twenty pages in no time. I researched Bloody Sunday—the event that was going to act as the mirror to the attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. The story was taking shape.
 
And then the project stalled. I would revisit the story idea several times a year, but added very little to what I had already written.
 
Then I retired from teaching in 2019. That gave me time.
 
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. More time—and no more excuses.
 
By mid-pandemic the composition of the story had doubled. I worked hard to put as much of the bungled Air India investigation into the novel as I could. I created characters—leaders, spies, and terrorists. I got to know these characters through the unfolding narrative of the protagonists, Declan Keenan and Karuna Patel. Finally, in the spring of 2021, the book was good enough to be given the status of ‘first draft.’
 
It feels like there were many drafts between the spring and the book’s publication in November 2021. I have endeavoured to iron out as many wrinkles as possible. My hope is that the book, and this blog, will help expose Canadians to the travesty that is the Air India tragedy.