TERRORISM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

The attacks in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11 shocked the world. The loss of so many thousands of lives at the hands of suicidal assailants left North Americans shaken and grief-stricken. Here in British Columbia, a continent away from the strikes, many people have family and friends who were directly involved in the tragedy.

Air India Flight 182 at a Canadian airport on the morning of the disaster. Courtesy of the RCMP Air India Task Force.

It has been said in the wake of September 11 that the destruction of the World Trade Center and the other suicide assaults brought world terrorism to North America. Certainly the September attacks were unprecedented in their scale and the disruption they have left in their wake. However, British Columbians have experienced other occasions when terror, murder and attacks on civilians were used to further a political cause. Most recent was the case of Ahmed Ressam, the terrorist who was convicted earlier this year of building bombs in Vancouver and attempting to smuggle them into the United States to be exploded during the millenium celebrations. But there have been other incidents.

AIR INDIA BOMBINGS

The most notorious terrorist incident relating to British Columbia was the bombing of Air India Flight 182 on 22 June 1985. All 329 people on board died when the plane, enroute from Toronto to Delhi, exploded in the air off the coast of Ireland, making it Canada's deadliest terror attack and, until the events of September 11, the worst case of aviation terrorism in history. Investigators believe that the bomb that destroyed Flight 182 was contained in a suitcase originating in Vancouver. The suitcase travelled from Vancouver to Toronto where it was loaded onto the Air India flight. At almost the same time as Flight 182 exploded, a second suitcase exploded as it was being unloaded from a Canadian Airlines flight in Narita, Japan. The flight had originated in Vancouver. Two baggage handlers died in the explosion.

	A memorial to the passengers and crew of Air India Flight 182, Cork, Ireland. Courtesy of the RCMP Air India Task Force.

It is widely believed that the bombings were the work of militants who desire an independent Sikh homeland in India. In 1991, a BC resident, Inderjit Singh Reyat was convicted of manslaughter for his role in the Narita explosion. Subsequently, Mr Reyat and two other BC men were charged in October 2000 with murder and conspiracy in connection with both Air India bombings. Their trial is expected to begin in Vancouver next year.

In a possibly related incident, newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer was shot and killed outside his Surrey home on 18 November 1998. The murderer has never been found, but members of Mr Hayer's family believe the shooting was connected to information the publisher had about the Air India bombings.

SONS OF FREEDOM

The other significant acts of terrorism in BC were carried out by a radical religious group known as the Sons of Freedom. The Sons of Freedom were a minority group of Doukhobors, a sect of Russian Christians who began migrating to BC from the Canadian Prairies in 1908. For the most part the Doukhobors settled in the Kootenay and Boundary districts in the southeastern part of the province where they followed a communal, agricultural lifestyle. Their historical experience in Russia, and their pacifism, made them resistant to government authority. This resistance took several forms, including withholding children from school, hunger strikes and public nudity, but the Sons of Freedom went further, using violence against the state and against other Doukhobors.

Incidents of arson began in 1923, when schools were burned in the Kootenay after police had attempted to seize Doukhobor property in payment of fines for withdrawing children from the public school system. It was widely believed that members of the Sons of Freedom were behind the fires, which were the opening salvo in a guerilla campaign that continued for the next 40 years. On 29 October 1924 a railway coach travelling between Brilliant and Grand Forks blew up, killing nine passengers, among them Doukhobor leader Peter Verigin. It has generally been supposed that Verigin was the target of an assassination plot, though no one was ever arrested in the case. Meanwhile, the Sons of Freedom continued with a campaign of nude demonstrations, arson and dynamiting aimed at schools and other buildings. On occasion, bombs were planted in public places, though aside from the train explosion no one was killed except one or two bombers who accidently blew themselves up. Hundreds of such incidents took place--entire communities were burned down--while mainstream Doukhobors and government authorities seemed powerless to stop them. It was partly a civil conflict--radicals against mainstream Doukhobors--and partly a sustained campaign against the outside society. In 1953 the newly-elected Social Credit government decided to take a hard line with the Sons of Freedom. Dozens of adults were jailed while Doukhobor children were seized and held, sometimes for years, at an institution at New Denver. The violence peaked in the early 1960s, culminating in the Great Trek of 1963, a march of several hundred Sons of Freedom to Vancouver. After that the movement seemed to exhaust itself and an era of violent protest drew to a close.

SQUAMISH FIVE

Certainly less violent, and in the end far less serious, than the Air India bombings or the Sons of Freedom was a small group of political saboteurs that came to be called the Squamish Five. Nevertheless, these self-styled "urban guerillas" raised a storm of media attention in 1982 with their attacks on pornographers and the military-industrial complex. It was the era of the Red Brigades in Europe and the Weather Underground in the United States, and for a short time it seemed as if BC had spawned its own terror movement.

In BC, the Five created a sensation by bombing a hydroelectric transformer station at Dunsmuir north of Parksville on Vancouver Island. Nation-wide they were better known for their October 22 bombing of a Litton Industries plant near Toronto in which several people were injured. The plant was targeted because it produced cruise missile guidance systems for the American "war machine". The group also firebombed a couple of pornographic video stores. They were known as the Squamish Five because evidence of their activities was found by police at a remote clearing near the highway to Squamish. Eventually they were captured and jailed. But their notoriety continued; in 1988 director Paul Donovan made a movie based on their exploits.

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