To his closest friends, he was the Superman with a fondness for chili paneer; to his grandma, he was the young visionary who did his immigrant family proud; and to his older sister, he was “Princess,” the favoured child who always managed to get out of doing the dishes.
At the state memorial for MLA Manmeet Singh Bhullar on Sunday afternoon, Calgarians and Canadians were given the privilege of feeling they had known the 35-year-old politician, even if their paths had never crossed.
Since he died last Monday in a motor vehicle accident on the Queen Elizabeth highway — Bhullar had been struck by an out-of-control truck after he stopped to help another driver — numerous politicians, community leaders and journalists have spoken and written about the young man who died just as he had lived: trying to help his fellow man.
Tributes to the illustrious career of the Canadian-born child of Indian immigrants made mention of the many ways in which he served: as a teenage leader at the Calgary Sikh temple where he worshipped; his crowning achievement as the human services minister in the former Tory provincial government, ending a ban on publicizing the names of children who died while in foster care; and his most recent international work, helping at-risk minorities leave Afghanistan.
with thanks : calgaryherald : LINK : for detailed news report.
