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Too close to home: Burnaby woman in disbelief after Ontario anti-Muslim attack

"It was really just, you know, not being able to register what happened"
Jess Balzer
Jess Balzer
1268621-chaudhry
Burnaby resident and council byelection candidate Mehreen Chaudry.Contributed

It hits too close to home for Burnaby resident and council byelection candidate Mehreen Chaudry. 

A family out for an evening walk in London, Ont. on the evening of June 6 were killed when a car jumped the curb, killing four and leaving a young boy in critical condition in hospital, in what police say was a targeted, intentional attack because of their Islamic faith. 

Madiha Salman (44), Salman Afzaal (46), Yumna Afzaal (15) and Talat Afzaal (74) were killed. 

Fayez (9) survived the horrific tragedy and remains in hospital. 

The family immigrated from Pakistan 14 years ago.

The accused, 20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman, faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. 

"It was really just disbelief. It was really just, you know, not being able to register what happened," Chaudry said. 

"I'm from Pakistan and what I found out today ... was this family is related to one of my colleagues that I worked in Pakistan with. That's his nephew that's in the ICU.

"I also have a 10-year-old. It's just so many things, it's so many emotions. It's disbelief and it's shock, grief and it's anger."

Chaudry was born in Ontario but grew up in Pakistan. She then moved to the United States to pursue her education, earning a Bachelors Degree with Honours in International Business and Economics and an MBA from the University of Illinois in Springfield.

"When I was doing my undergrad, that was pre 9/11. So I had that experience as a student in the U.S., before 9/11 happened and it was the most wonderful experience. Very accepting, it was just you know amazing."

Sept. 11, 2001, marked a day of terror across the United States and Chaudry's life changed after that.

"When I went for grad school, for my MBA, in Illinois, that was after 9/11 and that was a whole different experience," she said. "I've witnessed the birth of Islamophobia in the U.S. From a Muslim perspective, from a coloured person's perspective and from a woman's perspective, it was a day-and-night difference. It's never been the same."

She remembers traveling post 9/11 with her ex-husband, who held a Pakistani passport. She held a Canadian passport, but the two were not treated the same.

"I always had a Canadian passport," she said. "When we landed in the U.S. and this was after 9/11, he got a different treatment because his passport was Pakistani. There are all these layers of racism in your interactions, there are these little things that I've faced and that I've seen."

The attack on June 7 in London, Ont. has given Chaudry more motivation for the upcoming City of Burnaby byelection scheduled for June 26.

If elected, she would become the first Muslim woman elected to city council in Burnaby. 

"It's also, 'How do you make a difference?' 'How do you fix things?' and that's what's going through my head," she explained.

"How do we prevent this from happening? Because it's not just about the Muslim family. We know that there's more. Because of this pandemic, there's a high increase in racism against Asian peoples. It's overwhelming."

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Burnaby saw a 350% jump in anti-Asian hate crimes offences, according to Burnaby RCMP. 

In 2019, the detachment responded to six hate crimes with an Asian victim or target – that number jumped to 27 in 2020, police said.

Of all the hate-motivated offences reported to police in 2020, 63% (27 out of 43) were identified as having an Asian victim or target – that was up from 30% (six out of 20) in 2019.

While the United States has seen a massive rise in anti-Muslim incidents and targeted attacks, especially after 9/11, some people express shock when those types of events happen in a country like Canada - something Chaudry said she also thought was a truth.  

"When I moved here five years ago, with my two boys, I wasn't expecting that Canada would be like this," Chaudry said. "When I moved here, I think to a certain extent, I was also under that impression. Of course, nobody is perfect but I didn't realize the extent of it." 

"I think it's something that we in Canada, we brush it under the rug type of thing. I think that is a reason that this impression has been created in the world because we don't talk about it. 

"We're too polite. It's an uncomfortable conversation to be had and it pushes us to deal with things that are not nice and we don't want to talk about it. And when we don't want to talk about it, we're not going to fix it or address things like this." 

After the London, Ont., attack earlier this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the attack terrorism, adding he was "horrified" by the event. Trudeau did acknowledge that Canada is susceptible to Islamophobia, racism and hatred. 

He said these types of actions have to stop. 

Chaudry worries for her children, saying she doesn't want her kids to have to experience the things she, and other people in the country and around the world, have to face daily and have faced.

"It pains me to know that my children will experience this. I don't want any child to experience this," she said. "They're so innocent. They don't know these things, they don't understand these things. For them to even learn and to go through that process, is so painful."

Should she be successful in her bid for one of the two council seats available, Chaudry says one of her first priorities would be to implement an anti-racism task force, something she says is overdue and needed now more than ever. 

"There's a lack of understanding and exposure and we want to make sure we educate people, we want to make sure there is engagement and dialogue, that there's a safe space for people to come and speak about these things. Unless you give them that safe space for dialogue, you're not going to find solutions."

After the recent events in London, Ont., Chaudry says she will be much more mindful, especially when out for a walk, worrying something similar could happen to her.

"Because why take the risk?." 

- With files from the Canadian Press,Chris Campbell and Cornelia Naylor, Burnaby Now