Gujarat Confidential: Canada’s honour

The investiture ceremony is scheduled to be held at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on March 19.

Gujarat-born doctor Chandrakant Shah has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian honours. Shah, 89, is a native of Limbdi in Surendranagar district. The appointment was announced by the Governor General of Canada on December 31, 2025. The Order of Canada recognises individuals whose contributions have enriched the lives of others and strengthened the fabric of the nation. Among the three levels of the order — Member, Officer and Companion — Shah has been appointed to the Officer category which is broadly comparable to India’s Padma Bhushan, Shah’s family said in a statement on Thursday. Shah completed his MBBS from BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad and migrated to the United States for further studies and eventually settled in Canada. A Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Shah is the author of the book ‘Public Health and Preventive Medicine in Canada’. The investiture ceremony is scheduled to be held at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on March 19.

The 14th Ahmedabad International Flower Show 2026 on the theme ‘Bharat:Ek Gatha’ has set two new Guinness World Records on its first day Thursday, achieving a hat-trick of world records for the third consecutive year. The first record is for the world’s largest flower mandala, while the second is for the world’s largest flower portrait, that of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The flower mandala was measured using DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System) technology. According to the official survey report, the diameter of the flower mandala was around 33.6 m, and its total area recorded as 886.789 sq m crossing the previous benchmark of 706.86 sq m. The portrait was measured using ‘Total Station Survey’ and measuring tape. The total length of Sardar Patel’s flower portrait was 41.17 m, width of 8 m, and the total area as 329.360 sq m, achieving the recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Largest Flower Portrait” surpassing the previous benchmark of 50 sq m. The Ahmedabad International Flower Show has consistently secured a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the past three years. The flower show received recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the ‘longest flower structure’ in 2024 and the ‘world’s largest flower bouquet’ in 2025.