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June 23, 2025, marks the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Air India (AI) Flight 182. Though this tragedy remains “the largest mass murder in Canadian history” (Hon. John C. Major, Air India Commission of Inquiry) and resulted in Canada’s longest and most expensive criminal investigation, it is little known in national public memory (Angus Reid Institute 2023). As the 40th anniversary of this tragedy approaches, our planned conference and outreach activities (May 23-25th, 2025, to be held at McMaster University) will remember the lives lost and seek to recognize the ongoing grief and activism of those left to mourn, while also generating new knowledge about the bombing and its aftermath and making this knowledge more accessible to a wider Canadian public. Many Air India family members will participate in our conference, which will offer a venue for AI family members to meet, speak, and be heard, as they share their stories with each other and a wider audience. For the opening night, Sampradaya Dance Academy Director & Founder Lata Pada will create an original dance and spoken work performance to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the tragedy. Pada is an Order of Canada recipient and lost her husband and two daughters in the bombing of Flight 182.
Haiku Comics of the Hamilton Bay combines comics (sequential art) with haiku — a form of short poetry that originated in Japan and continues to evolve. Its original form, typically in three lines following a 5 -7-5 syllable structure, contemplated some aspect of nature. Specific to this particular body of work, the haiku and comics focus on moments of playful or contemplative encounter with the urban wild around the Hamilton Bay/Hamilton Harbour. This urban wild includes animals, seasonal movements, soundscapes, local landmarks, as well as other humans at Bayfront Park, the Waterfront Trail, and Cootes Paradise. The aim of printing and ultimately disseminating the chapbook is not only to share and showcase a body of art work, but to tell a series of small stories through this work that, like the unassuming vehicle of haiku itself, tell a larger story — about place, about the remarkableness of unremarkable moments, about the joy of encounter and contemplation within the urban wild, AND through all of this, about the city of Hamilton itself, particularly its lesser-known (even within Hamilton!), less acknowledged natural and even contemplative face.
HAL is an activist project with a community focus operated by a collective of artists and writers. HAL publishes Hamilton Arts and Letters, a biannual magazine presenting new literary works, graphic novel excerpts, exploratory writing, poetry, literary non-fiction, and the work of visual, audio, and film artists.
The Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archives (founded in 2018) began through a donation by Michael Johnstone, who lovingly captured more than 50 years of Hamilton’s LGBT2SQ+ history – serving as a self-appointed archivist for a segment of the population that has long been marginalized. The collection contains news clippings, photos, meeting minutes, newsletters and more. Cole Gately and Bill MacKinnon were appointed Community Stewards of the archives, and since that time Cole has been working to collect and record oral history interviews with 2SLGBTQ+ seniors in the Hamilton community. This summer and fall, we plan to complete editing on the oral history interviews in order to make them available through our website. We plan to also produce a new “video story” focused on the history of the Women’s Bookstop, a feminist/queer bookstore in Hamilton (1985-2001).
The foundational inspiration for the genesis of this festival is to carry on the torch for sex workers in the lineage of Carol Leigh. It has also been greatly inspired by the sociological theory The Spiral of Silence by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. Which states, in effect, that we in society will censor ourselves based on the status quo and majority opinion to avoid being discriminated against. Thus, there lies a responsibility with the media to represent marginalized communities fairly and with dignity, nuance, and affirmation which promotes their human rights and civic engagement. Simply put, produced media has the power to transmute prejudice into empathy. We hope to change your hearts. In the words of David Lynch: “Fix your hearts or die.” The target audience for this festival is sex workers from all parts of the industry, their communities and allies, as well as people who wish to learn about sex work or who are curious about the spectacle.