Canada claiming 'special relationship' with India's Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi is the first world leader to visit Canada since the newly elected Barack Obama six years ago to be described as a "rock star."

His scheduled landing in Ottawa on Tuesday will also be his first visit to Canada as India's prime minister, and yes, the first by anyone with that title since the 1970s.

But describing Modi's visit as a "first" of any kind belies the surprisingly intimate relationship with Canada that he's coming to nurture.

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You have to look back nearly a decade to see evidence of what officials describe as a pre-existing "special" relationship with Canada.

Insiders relish telling the story of this rare example of a Canadian "in" with a world leader whom others have only belatedly come to woo.

Long before he became that "rock star," at a time when Modi was persona non grata in much of the West, Canada was one of the few countries that did not turn its back on him.

While others, including the U.S., wouldn't even issue the future prime minister a visa, Canadian officials were opening doors — and a trade office in Gujarat, the business-friendly Indian state he ran.

At issue then (and still now, for some) was the extent of Modi's culpability in Gujarat's 2002 inter-communal riots, which resulted in the killing of 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.

At the time, he was the newly established chief minister of the state. And he was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by an investigation overseen by India's Supreme Court and confirmed by a Gujarat state court in 2012.

But years before those verdicts, while other countries remained squeamish, Canadians were engaging with a chief minister who had transformed his state into arguably one of the most prosperous in India. Bombardier and McCain Foods invested there.