Plane Crash Leaves Iranian Diaspora in Canada Grief-Stricken

Flowers, chocolates, photographs and candles were set outside the offices of the faculty members who perished, in departments where students studied and on the steps of Alberta’s sandstone legislature.

Flags have been lowered throughout the city of just under one million people. A railway bridge spanning a deep river valley that defines Edmonton geographically has been lit with red and white lights — the colors of the Canadian flag — in memorial.

In this multicultural nation, Iranians are comparative newcomers: Most arrived after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Today, by some counts, Canada has the third-largest number of expatriate Iranians in the world and its universities are a top destination for Iranian graduate students.

Iranian-Canadians are an accomplished group academically and professionally. In Edmonton, as across Canada, they include physicians, dentists, engineers and academics.

“It’s a gift to Canada, and you know what, it’s the regime’s loss in Iran,” said Payman Parseyan, the past president of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton, speaking of the contributions the immigrants have made to Canada. “They’ve suppressed the people, the people are upset with the government and so they leave. The best minds learn to get out.”

Mr. Parseyan, a 30-year-old former municipal police officer who now inspects oil and gas line construction, refers to himself as Persian rather than Iranian to distance himself from the government in power in his homeland.

His parents, both geologists, brought Mr. Parseyan to Canada when he was 8, along with his two siblings. After briefly staying with distant relatives in Toronto, they took a four-day train trip to Edmonton, a city about which they knew nothing.