Refugees remember fellow passenger on MV Sun Sea
Alleged McArthur victim took perilous journey in 2010 to get to Canada
The last time Gobi Pathmanathan saw his roommate, Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam, he was trying to stop him from leaving their home at Kennedy and Ellesmere Rds.
The two men had been friends for 15 years, starting when they were neighbours in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Their bond was strengthened during a perilous voyage from Thailand to Vancouver aboard the MV Sun Sea in 2010. By the fall of 2015, Kanagaratnam was trying to escape a deportation order he’d received. His work permit had expired, his refugee claim was denied and the appeal refused, Pathmanathan said — he was desperate to hide.
Pathmanathan couldn’t stop him. He prayed his friend stayed safe. Two months after Kanagaratnam left, a mutual friend saw him in downtown Toronto. The friend told Pathmanathan his beard and moustache had grown out; his hair was longer and unkempt. Some time after this, Toronto police allege Kanagaratnam was killed by Bruce McArthur, and the remains of his body buried in planters. McArthur has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in connection with the disappearances of Toronto men.
Pathmanathan told the Star about his friend at a memorial for Kanagaratnam on Sunday in Scarborough, surrounded by around 100 fellow Sun Sea passengers — many wearing white shirts as a sign of unity. Some were legal refugees, others still undocumented.
It was the first time they had been in a room together since the100 days they spent aboard a rickety two-deck cargo ship more than seven years ago. They used to fear gathering as a group — worried the RCMP or Canada Border Services would be alerted. Many of those in attendance instantly recognized Kanagaratnam in the picture shared by police a month earlier of a then-unidentified victim of the alleged serial killer.
“I know his face,” said Pathmanathan. “It was him.” No one, however, went to police. They just told each other. “Our cases were still pending,” Suganthan Mahadeva, a Sun Sea passenger whose refugee appeal is coming up, said through a translator. Last year, Kanagaratnam’s brother made a three-way call to him and another friend, asking them to search for him.
“We all believed he was hiding,” Mahadeva said, adding that for this community, not hearing from someone for months is a normal occurrence.
At the solemn memorial held at St. Mother Teresa Catholic Academy, the echoes of Kanagaratnam’s two Toronto cousins sobbing filled the hall, as a slide show of images from his past, along with pictures of the MV Sun Sea and the Sri Lankan civil war, played quietly on the side of the room.
“We never expected he would die,” said Sutharsan Thanigasalam, Kanagaratnam’s cousin.