Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney Died at age of 84

Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, widely regarded as one of the country's most popular leaders in recent memory, passed away on Thursday at 84.

• Mulroney, who first became PM in a landslide victory in 1984, was also the country's leader when it suffered its worst-ever terror attack
• Attack was the bombing of Air India flight 182, the Kanishka, by Khalistani extremists in 1985 leading to the loss of 329 lives.
• Mulroney's death was announced in a post on X by his daughter, Caroline Mulroney, a provincial Cabinet Minister in Ontario. 

Life history of Mulroney

• Brian Mulroney was the leader of the Conservative party and achieved a significant victory in the 1984 Federal elections, winning 211 out of 282 seats in the House of Commons. 
• He defeated the incumbent PM Pierre Eliot Trudeau, whose son later became the PM. Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939, in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, and served as the Prime Minister of Canada for almost nine years from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993.
• Mulroney was greatly appreciated for his efforts in drafting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and for being one of the first Western leaders to challenge South Africa's apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela expressed his gratitude to Mulroney for this. 
• When a terrorist bombing happened on the Kanishka flight, which mainly affected Canadian citizens, Mulroney had been in office for just over nine months. 
• According to a memo reported by Globe and Mail in November 2006, he conveyed his condolences and sympathies towards the victims to his counterpart, Rajiv Gandhi.

India-Canada row: Recently the ties between India and Canada were tense after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in September 2023 assumed the involvement of "India’s agents" in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023 who was a Khalistani terrorist