His soft-spoken words, tinged with 25 years of suffering and the determination to bring justice and dignity to what Harper called "cowardly acts," ripped through me as I watched Dr Bal Gupta, head of the Air India Victims' Family Association, urge Canadians and Indians alike to let the memories of the precious lives lost in 1985 be our light for a better future. "Let us cherish our memories," he said.

I was two years old when Air India Flight 182 exploded over the Atlantic, near the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. But when Gupta spoke, squarely meeting the eyes of the crowd assembled before him, I was transported back to a day of barbarism and "pure evil," as Harper put it.

In an instant after midnight on June 23, 1985, Gupta become a single father of two sons. In 1986, he helped form the Air India Victims' Family Association to keep the families and friends of the victims connected and supported in through their pain.

The Canadian government has finally acknowledged this was not simply an "Indian affair," but a Canadian tragedy. And yet this does not lessen the bitter knowledge carried for 25 years by the families and friends of those murdered that they were failed by their leaders, treated with "scant respect" and their loved ones' killers are still roaming free.

I grew up surrounded by garlanded portraits of Sikh 'martyrs' on the walls of one local GTA temple. One of these martyrs is Talwinder Parmar, the man alleged to have been the mastermind behind the bombing of Air India Flight 182. In a place of worship, there are revered portraits of turbaned men gazing down at me, strapped to the nines with ammo and guns, eager to build a the Sikh separatist state of Khalistan on top of the corpses of innocent men, women and children.

Yes, I know the Sikh community was filled with anger for the countless numbers of young Sikhs dying in the Delhi and Punjabi riots in the aftermath of then Indian PM Indira Gandhi's assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. But when is more violence the answer to violence?

Today, apart from our past differences with a majority Hindu Indian government, some of our GTA Sikh leaders settle their differences with one another by stabbing each other with weapons outside our places of worship. To the shame of the greater Sikh community, we squabble over who gets to manage the contemptible abundance of money flowing into our temples in service of 'God.'

Never mind that a certain number of these pious men reside in huge houses with extensive property, sporting jiggling bellies to boot.

I am a Sikh, but I am not proud to call myself a Sikh of today's Sikhism. These Sikh leaders who fight over money and power do not care about the suffering they are causing others, just as, 25 years ago, a few revenge-thirsty Sikhs and their supporters did not care about blowing up a flight at the end of the Canadian school year carrying 80 children under the age of 12.

To end the hate that drove a few Sikhs in British Columbia in 1985 to murder 331 lives, our community needs more leaders like Dr. Gupta. The majority of Sikhs are shocked at what has taken place in our recent bloody history, but it is not enough as long as we allow photos of Sikh 'martyrs' like Talwinder Parmar to stare down at us in a place of peace, meditation and love for God.

As Harper commented at the end of his speech, there is no end when immigrants refuse to "build new bridges" in a new land, instead dragging with us "bloody feuds from our past." If we truly adopt this, would there be less stabbings outside Sikh gurdwaras and a smaller spike, perhaps, in the crime rates attributed to Sikh gangs across the nation, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver? I don't know. I do know one thing, however - that I shook the hand of a great man that day.

I snapped Dr Gupta's photo very quickly before he turned to leave the memorial, hoping to capture his strength and the kind of courage that I believe has been lacking in my community for 25 years.

Harper might have stolen the media limelight, but I can say without a doubt that for one Sikh Canadian woman, the most memorable person at Toronto's Humber Bay Park was a hero named Dr Bal Gupta.

- Sandeep Punia, Toronto