They ran around back and tried to torch the part of the temple that housed the library. But they inadvertently triggered a motion sensor alarm, dropped bottles of flammable liquid, and fled into the dark as a monk awoke and called police.

That was in mid-May, during the height of both Sri Lanka’s civil war and the local Tamil population’s protests. More than three months, $65,000 and multiple Sunday school and sermon cancellations later, the Toronto Mahari Vihara Buddhist Meditation Centre has finally reopened for local Sinhalese Buddhists.