Calgary Herald, Alberta, Canada
April 23 2005

Genocide commemorated

Sunday is being commemorated as the 90th anniversary of the Armenian
genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

The Ottoman Empire held most of the Middle East in the decades before
the First World War, including the ancient homeland of three million
Armenians. The Ottomans began suppressing the Armenians in the early
1890s, but April 24, 1915, is observed as the day the government
rounded up Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. The genocide
— including the use of Armenian babies for bayonet practice —
continued until 1922, by which time 1.5 million Armenians were dead
and many of the rest had fled to the West.

Today, there are three million living in independent Armenia, and
over four million more in the Armenian diaspora, including one
million in California and 100,000 in Canada.

Calgary’s Armenian community is observing the 90th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide at St. Edmund’s Anglican Church in Bowness, 8340
34th Ave. N.W., on Sunday at 7 p.m. Call 617-3230.