Day Two of Remembering Air India Flight 182: A 40th Anniversary Conference began with “Memorializing Air India,” a panel during which family members and scholars discussed remembrance of loss through memoirs and memorials. Sanjay Lazar; Rajiv Kalsi; Dr. Amy Fung, Carleton University; and Dr. Angela Failler, the University of Winnipeg; with moderator Dr. Amber Dean, reflected on visions for cross-cultural solidarity and justice, examining how remembrance, justice, and cultural memory of Flight 182 continue to unfold across generations. Sanjay Lazar opened the panel, sharing personal reflections on navigating the bombing as the lone surviving member of his family. His memoir, On Angels’ Wings, chronicles this journey and his ongoing fight against injustice. Rajiv Kalsi then reflected on the memorial practices that have helped his family cope with the loss of his sister, alongside the institutional indifference faced when attempting to introduce the tragedy into local school curricula. Drawing on her research into grief and racialized public memory, Dr. Amy Fung presented on how the Canadian state has historically framed the bombing as a foreign tragedy, despite the overwhelming loss of Canadian lives. Contradictions across state apologies have routinely othered victims and failed to recognize them as fellow Canadians, thus perpetuating the erasure and marginalization of racialized communities in the Canadian historical record. Finally, Dr. Angela Failler spoke to her longstanding research on cultural public memory and the shifting afterlives of the 1985 bombings across film, literature, archives, and community-based remembrance practices. This work highlights the societal impacts and lasting patterns of racial marginalization of the bombings, including their use to justify counterterrorism policies that disproportionately affect minority and Indigenous communities. Through personal testimony and critical scholarly insight, this panel emphasized the ongoing struggle to keep the tragedy in public consciousness to prevent the re-victimization of Air India Flight 182 families and the reoccurrence of such violence. Memorialization must be framed as an ongoing practice – one that engages community activism, education, scholarship, and public memory work to honour victims and ensure that the cultural afterlife of the bombings remains present for future generations. 

Featuring Nisha Thampi and Dr. Angela Failler, “Remembrance as a Difficult Return: Envisioning an Air India Public Exhibit” explored what it could mean to create a national public exhibit dedicated to the Air India bombings. The session wove together personal history, public memory, and curatorial practice to illuminate the complexities of returning to a trauma long silenced within Canada’s national narrative. Nisha Thampi opened the presentation, describing her difficult return to the Flight 182 tragedy following decades of silence after the loss of her mother. The motivation to counter the erasure surrounding the bombing led Nisha to working on a public exhibit with Dr. Angela Failler, Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory at the University of Winnipeg, and the Air India Victims’ Families Association. Dr. Failler then spoke to the significance and the limits of existing memorials, positioning the Air India Flight 182 Archive and exhibit as reparative interventions tied to the Thinking Through the Museum project. The session highlighted how exhibits can counter public distancing by foregrounding families’ agency, intentional learning, and community justice, alongside the need for careful and ethically attuned approaches when dealing with trauma. Through intentional curation and community collaboration, the presenters hope an exhibit will bring the tragedy fully into Canada’s national consciousness, prompting audiences to reflect on grief, justice, and belonging, while reckoning with histories the nation has long refused to see.

For the closing session of Remembering Air India Flight 182: A 40th Anniversary Conference, Dr. Amber Dean welcomed filmmaker and author Eisha Marjara to screen and discuss clips from her upcoming film, Calorie (2025). As the first full-length feature film to discuss the Air India Flight 182 tragedy, Calorie presents a commentary on the legacies of violence and intergenerational trauma surrounding  the bombings. The fictional narrative follows three generations of Sikh women whose present and past lives collide as their stories reveal the history of the bombings. This film screening and Q&A saw Eisha Marjara explain her work and processes, alongside her aims to represent subjective truth through her writings and her films. Using fictional characters to examine the nature of cycles of violence, Marjara seeks to complicate the simplified binaries through which we understand tragic events, and navigate the complexities of individual, national, and collective silences.