After moving to Ottawa to teach high school mathematics in the late 1960s, Inderjit Handa, a vegetarian, was thoroughly appalled by the city’s selection of natural food.
A pioneering member of Ottawa’s Indo-Canadian business community, Handa died suddenly from cardiac arrest earlier this year while visiting India. He was 85. British civil servant Cyril Radcliffe, a man who had never been to India, drew up borders between the two countries, and about 15 million people travelled, sometimes hundreds of kilometres, to resettle among their fellow religious adherents. Many were driven out with violence.
His older brother, Kewal, 27, died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage as he prepared to study in England. Struggling to move past his grief, Handa decided to use his brother’s visa and plane ticket, and travel in his place. In 1969, Handa accepted a teaching position in the United States. En route, he stopped to visit some cousins in Ottawa, members of the Dilawri family, who owned a car dealership. At the dealership, Handa told one of the salesmen, Pat Butler, about his plan to move to Ohio.
When the 1980s recession hit, Handa decided to get out of the health food business and concentrate on the travel industry. He hired many new Canadians into his Handa Travel offices, and began to offer tours to India, many of which he led himself. His whole family often accompanied him.