Tara Singh Hayer
Canadian journalist

Tara Singh Hayer (November 15, 1936 – November 18, 1998) was an Indian-Canadian newspaper publisher and editor who was murdered after his outspoken criticism of fundamentalist violence and terrorism. In particular, he was a key witness in the trial of the Air India Flight 182 bombing.
Hayer was the founder of the Indo-Canadian Times, the largest and oldest Punjabi-language weekly newspaper in Canada and the leading Punjabi-language newspaper in North America. The paper—distributed in Canada, the United States, and England—was regularly used by Hayer to speak out against violent extremist groups.
He is the first, and one of the few journalists in Canada, to have been killed specifically for his work.
History
Personal life
Hayer was born in Paddi Jagir, a small village in Punjab, India. He emigrated to Canada in 1970, where he worked as a miner, teacher, truck driver, manager of a trucking firm, and journalist before establishing a community newspaper, the Indo-Canadian Times, in 1978. He is the father of Surrey MLA Dave Hayer.
Publishing career
Hayer established a community newspaper, the Indo-Canadian Times, in 1978. The Times would go on to be the largest and oldest Punjabi-language weekly newspaper in Canada and the leading Punjabi-language newspaper in North America.
“Tara Singh Hayer” enters the record as canadian journalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tara, Singh and Hayer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Tara Singh Hayer” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tara, Singh and Hayer provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7685139. VIAF identifies the subject as 26194061. The Library of Congress control number is n89166735. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1998, 1970 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tara Singh Hayer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.