Scholarship honours victims of Flight 752
AVIATION DISASTER SOON OVERSHADOWED BY COVID
Today is the first anniversary of the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 tragedy. It's a date that Mahda Jahromi, a lecturer at Simon Fraser University's School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, will never forget.
Jahromi, a member of the Persian community, doesn't remember where he was when he heard that Flight 752 had crashed, but he can't shake the grief that followed: Colleagues, acquaintances and friends were among the souls lost that day.
Ardalan Hamidi, 49 — who perished on the flight alongside his wife, Niloofar Razzaghi, 45, and their son, Kamyar, 15 — worked with Jahromi's wife, Negar Roghanian, at Metro Testing and Engineering. Just two weeks before the tragedy, Jahromi had passed a convivial evening at a Christmas party, chatting with Hamidi.
“I still get choked up when I think about how similar each one of the victims were to people like myself and my family. A lot of them were young, educated immigrants with families and so many hopes and dreams; lives to live,” Jahromi said.
The plane was shot down six minutes after takeoff in Tehran by a pair of Iranian surface-to-air missiles. The 176 people killed included 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents and at least 14 people with ties to B.C. The tragedy hit Canada's academic community hard. Among the lost were students from Langara College, the University of B.C. and the University of Victoria.
“One by one, we found out who was on the flight, and then when Ardalan didn't show up for work, we found out he was on that flight,” Jahromi said.
The community's grief was compounded when it became clear the flight had been shot down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
“That came down like a bucket of ice water on us, it built so much anger in everyone. I thought the best thing that we can do as a community is not to let this story be forgotten,” Jahromi said.
He organized a memorial for the victims, with families and high-profile representatives from UBC, members of the government, including Premier John Horgan, in attendance. The memorial, scheduled for last March 15, was cancelled due to COVID-19.
The pandemic interrupted any chance to collectively grieve.
“Ten years from now, 20 years from now we don't want these people and their lives and their stories to be forgotten,” Jahromi said.
So he channelled his energy working with SFU to create a memorial scholarship in honour of the victims of Flight 752.
Jahromi said the support has been overwhelming. The Djavad Mowafaghian Foundation donated $30,000 and SFU has added $10,000, which they hope to match through public contributions to create an endowment that will be a permanent legacy to the victims.
The Flight 752 Memorial Graduate scholarship will support SFU grad students who are advancing Persian culture and the Iranian community through voluntarism and research.
“This is about telling the families that we share their grief. It is about saying that they won't be forgotten and we did everything we could that we could to keep their memory alive,” Jahromi said. “Our message to the families is that `this isn't a pain you're going through alone. There are other people that are empathizing with you, and sharing that pain. We haven't forgotten you.'”
To support this initiative, go to give.sfu.ca
Some news breaks fast and hard. A jolt of adrenalin smacking eyewitnesses before crashing through social media, into news bulletins and live TV, seizing attention as people scramble for more and more information.
Often, though, the true impact of what's happening, even something huge, comes more slowly, with a dawning realization of personal impact; like knowing there's a big car crash, then noticing a family member is late returning home, or hearing of a shooting then learning it's where family work.
The alchemy of distance does a remarkable thing to news.
One year ago today, when an airliner took off from the Iranian capital of Tehran destined for Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, it would be hard to conceive how much that plane meant to Canada.
It is a quirk of immigration and airline routing that this passenger jet, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, was filled with Canadians and those living in Canada and those loved by Canadians.
The crashing of any passenger jet is alarming and tragic, exponentially so when it is shot from the sky, but there was a slow dawning of the large, direct impact for Canada and how it would tear at our emotions.
Soon after the plane plunged back to earth after takeoff on Jan. 8, 2020, as friends and family of travellers looked for information and journalists started documenting what happened, Canadian connections soon popped up. The crash came at night, Eastern time.
By morning, names and faces of victims were emerging: From Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Calgary. The trickle became a flood: Victoria, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Windsor, Halifax, London, Ajax, Waterloo, Kingston, Guelph and more.
By day's end, it was clear: Almost all of the 167 passengers were heading to Canada; 138 of them, including 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents of Canada and 53 others, many of them studying here, according to the government's most recent tally.
As the ache of loss turned to anger over its cause — the jet was brought down by two surface-to-air missiles fired by Iran's military, Iranian officials finally admitted — the story blossomed into one of a frustrating coverup, of international intrigue and strained foreign relations, and a search for answers and justice.
It was an enormous news story everywhere, but particularly in Canada.
In those early days of 2020, it looked to be the biggest story of the year. It's hard — these days — to believe this was only a year ago.
There's another element of alchemy that does strange things to news: time.
While the loss for the families of the victims from Flight PS752 remains as strong and awful as ever, the narrowing distance that brought the tragedy home to Canada is countered by the widening effect of time.
Time heals all wounds, the aphorism says, but the passing year hasn't offered that kind of time, the nurturing, replenishing kind.
It hasn't been a time of reflection and healing, but a time of more wounds and more affliction, heaped and then heaped again with the knowledge the worst may yet still come.
Time exposed us to a different kind of horror.
Time, in a year of pandemic, saw our attention and shared public grief devoured, the news overwhelmed, fear recalibrated. Time pushed the loss of life further across Canada and deeper into the daily lives of even more Canadians.
It seemed near impossible in the aftermath of Flight PS752's destruction, as the bodies were gathered in the scorched field outside Tehran, and weeping relatives held photos of their lost family, that it wouldn't be the biggest calamity for Canadians by year's end.
But here we are. Imagine, 2020 became a year when Flight PS752 isn't the biggest tragedy, for most of us.
Time and distance play their game on COVID-19, as well, of course.
News of a new, deadly contagion also seemed a faraway story when we first learned of it, also a year ago.
Wuhan, China, was a city many, likely most Canadians, had never heard of when the first victims fell.
Like with the early reports on Flight PS752, for Canada, it seemed a foreign oddity, a distant concern. As COVID-19 crept closer to Canada, it became more real, more alarming and directly deadly.
The pandemic allows neither the restorative of time nor the prophylaxis of distance. It remains right here, right now.
Writing obituaries on the passengers who died on Flight PS752 was a grim task. So much sorrow. Such needless pain.
The passenger manifest was achingly long, the impact of death so obvious and heartbreaking.
Despite that immense tragedy, though, the death toll was finite.
During COVID-19, the officially tabulated death toll stands at more than 16,500 in Canada; too many obituaries to write.
For families of the victims of Flight PS752, the crash and its trauma remain oppressively huge. Their need for support and compassion remains.
Distance still mutates the outcome. Many still fight for the return of their relative's belongings from Iran, including missing valuables and sentimental items.
They fight for compensation. They search for answers, accountability and justice in a land far from Canada, even if it was once their home, with access restricted even more by COVID-19.
Not only is travel constrained, but vigils to mark the tragedy on its first anniversary — to gather in large numbers for public remembrance, comfort or protest — are impossible for most.
It's that damned pandemic again.
Just before Christmas, Canada designated Jan. 8 as an annual National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters. Maybe communities across the country can close their distance and remember them together, next time.