‘He was always about the community’
Coquitlam gathers to mourn family of three killed on plane in Tehran
The impact of Ardalan Ebnoddin-Hamidi on Tri-City’s Iranian community was on display under a bleak Coquitlam sky Sunday, as hundreds of mourners waited quietly and patiently outside a condo tower so they could access elevators to attend a memorial service for Ebnoddin-Hamidi and his family — wiped out in a few moments of terror last week.
“He was always about the community and participating in social and political activities,” said Behzad Abdi, who was on the Tri-City Iranian Cultural Society board of directors with Ebnoddin-Hamidi and first met him at university in Tehran in the 1990s. “He worked a lot so everybody knew him. I’m very happy that right now he can see the amount of people he impacted. He would say thank you, and be very interested.”
Ebnoddin-Hamidi, his wife, Niloofar Razzaghi, and 15-yearold son, Kamyar Ebnoddin-Hamidi, all perished last Wednesday when a Ukraine International Airlines flight from Tehran to Toronto, via Ukraine, crashed shortly after takeoff killing all 176 souls on-board. That included at least 57 Canadians, of whom at least 14 were from B.C.
“They are wiped out,” Abdi said, showing the strain of five days of mourning.
He said he struggled to find a gathering space at short notice on a Sunday, so settled for the party space on the second-floor of a condo tower in Coquitlam Town Centre.
The space, where visitors shared stories and looked over family photos, was booked for three hours, but most arrived at the 3 p.m. start of the event.
There was no chaos or frustration shown by any of the hundreds of people who joined a long line in the light rain to enter the elevators. Some were sad, others smiled, but all showed great patience.
“We are just supporting the family emotionally,” said Abdi. “He had one son and his immediate family is gone. But his sister and brothers also lived here and you see the family in the people here today.”
Close to 48,000 people in B.C. describe their ethnic origin as Iranian, roughly a quarter of the 210,000 Iranian-born Canadians across the country. Most in B.C. live on the North Shore and in the Tri-Cities.
Abdi said Ebnoddin-Hamidi — a civil engineer — and Niloofar — a schoolteacher — worked hard to encourage Iranian Canadians to engage in the political and democratic process at all levels of government, something not allowed in present-day Iran. Their son Kamyar was everything to the couple, said Abdi. Kamyar was a talented soccer player who attended Riverside Secondary School in Port Coquitlam.
The Tri-City Iranian Cultural Society is hosting a seventh-day vigil Tuesday from 6-8 p.m. at Glen Spirit Square Park (across from city hall) at 3000 Burlington Dr. in Coquitlam.
Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — speaking at a memorial in Edmonton — said it’s been “gut-wrenching ” to listen to stories from relatives of the 57 Canadians who perished in the downing of the Ukrainian jetliner.
Trudeau said he had learned many of the victims came to Canada in search of new opportunities for their families, but those families were now consumed by grief and outrage.
The plane was shot down by an Iranian missile moments after taking off from Tehran on Wednesday. Iran has admitted the plane was mistaken for a hostile target amid soaring tensions with the U.S.