Sikhism in Canada
is the fourth-largest religion in Canada, with nearly 800,000 adherents, or 2.1% of Canada's population, as of 2021. The largest Sikh populations in Canada are found in Ontario, followed by British Columbia and Alberta. As of the 2021 Census, more than half of Canada's Sikhs, Approximately 52.9% can be found in these 4 cities: Brampton, Surrey, Calgary, and Edmonton.
Canada is home to the largest national Sikh proportion in the world, and also has the second-largest Sikh population in the world, after India. British Columbia has the third-largest Sikh proportion amongst all global administrative divisions, behind only Punjab and Chandigarh in India. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Yukon hold the distinction of being three of the only four administrative divisions in the world with Sikhism as the second most followed religion among the population.
History
Background
In 1809, Charles Metcalfe, acting as the representative for the British East India Company, signed a treaty with Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire, which led to the safeguarding of the cis-Sutlej states. Metcalfe would form a relationship with a Sikh lady from the Lahore court, who would birth three sons. Metcalfe later moved to Canada and served as the Governor General of the Province of Canada and Lieutenant Governor of Canada West and Canada East, from 1843–1845.On 9 April 1867, in a letter written by John A. Macdonald to Sir Henry Sumner Maine on the topic of a potential future war between England and the United States, he stated: "War will come someday between England and the United States and India can do us yeoman's service by sending an army of Sikhs, Ghoorkas, Belooches etc. etc. across the Pacific to San Francisco and holding that beautiful and immortal city with the surrounding California — as security for Montreal and Canada."
The British East India Company annexed most of the Punjab after the Second Anglo-Sikh war in 1849, incorporating the territory and its inhabitants into the colonial-empire. Sikhs were recruited into the British military forces immediately after, with Sikhs being rewarded with military ranks due to their loyalty to the British cause during the Indian rebellion of 1857.
Early immigration
Though not a religious Sikh, the first-person of Sikh ancestry in Canada was Prince Victor Duleep Singh, son of maharaja Duleep Singh. Victor Duleep Singh was posted to Halifax in 1888 as Honorary Aide-de-Camp to General Sir John Ross. Victor Duleep Singh returned to England in February 1890.Kesur Singh, a Risaldar Major in the British India Army, is credited with being the first Sikh settler in Canada. He was amongst a group of Sikh officers who arrived in Vancouver on board Empress of India in 1897. They were on the way to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Sikh regiments were brought to Canada for the 1897 celebration.
File:Sikh men in turbans sitting and standing on rocky bank with bags and supplies, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, April 1906.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Punjabi Sikhs in Whitehorse, Yukon, April 1906
A notable moment in early Sikh history in Canada was in 1902 when settlers first arrived in Golden, British Columbia to work at the Columbia River Lumber Company. This was a theme amongst most early Punjabi Sikh settlers in Canada to find work in the agricultural and forestry sectors in British Columbia. Punjabi Sikhs became a prominent ethnic group within the sawmill workforce in British Columbia almost immediately after initial arrival to Canada.
Sikhs found employment in laying the tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railway, in lumber mills and mines. Though they earned less than white workers, they made enough money to send some of it to India and make it possible for their relatives to immigrate to Canada. In 1902, a local Khalsa Diwan chapter was already established in the United States, it would not be until 1906 until a Khalsa Diwan chapter was established in Vancouver. In 1904, Man Singh brought over a Guru Granth Sahib scripture to Canada.
From 1904 to the 1940s, 95% of all South Asian immigration to Canada were Sikhs from the Punjab. Between the years 1903 to 1906, the early Sikh pioneers in Canada living on the west coast of British Columbia received little government or press attention, with them finding their newfound home welcoming and inviting. At the time, the Canadian government was focused on restricting Chinese and Japanese immigration, so the early Sikh migrants went relatively unnoticed between those years. However, this would not last long and in 1906, after 700 South Asian migrants arrived in Canada, their disenfranchisement began.
| Years | Numbers of immigrants |
| 1904–05 | 45 |
| 1905–06 | 387 |
| 1906–07 | 2,124 |
| 1907–08 | 2,623 |
| Total | 5,179 |
The early settlers in Golden built the first Gurdwara in Canada and North America in 1905, which would later be destroyed by fire in 1926. The second Gurdwara to be built in Canada was in 1908 in Kitsilano, aimed at serving a growing number of Punjabi Sikh settlers who worked at nearby sawmills along False Creek at the time. The Vancouver Sikh temple's original structure was heavily influenced architecturally by the Chief Khalsa Diwan temple in Hong Kong, which was a common stopping-point for Sikhs on the journey to Canada. The Gurdwara would later close and be demolished in 1970, with the temple society relocating to the newly built Gurdwara on Ross Street, in South Vancouver.
As a result, the oldest existing Gurdwara in Canada today is the Gur Sikh Temple, located in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Built in 1911, the temple was designated as a national historic site of Canada in 2002 and is the third-oldest Gurdwara in the country. Later, the fourth Gurdwara to be built in Canada was established in 1912 in Victoria on Topaz Avenue, while the fifth soon was built at the Fraser Mills settlement in 1913, followed a few years later by the sixth at the Queensborough settlement in 1919, and the seventh at the Paldi settlement, also in 1919.
Early Sikh pioneers also settled in the Abbotsford area in 1905 and originally worked on farms and in the lumber industry. Although most of the immigrants from South Asia at the time were Sikhs, local ignorance of Eastern religions led to them frequently being assumed to be Hindus. About 90% of these Sikhs lived in British Columbia. While Canadian politicians, missionaries, unions and the press were opposed to Asian workers British Columbia industrialists were short of labour and thus Sikhs were able to get an early foothold at the turn of the 20th century in British Columbia.
As with the large numbers of Japanese and Chinese workers already present in Canada, many white workers resented those immigrants and directed their ill-will toward the Sikhs, who were easily recognized by their beards and turbans. Punjabis were accused of having a caste system, an idea that goes against the foundations of Sikhism. They were portrayed as being riddled with trachoma and as being unclean in general. To strengthen these racist characterizations, a song called White Canada Forever was created. All this eventually led to a boat of Sikhs arriving in Vancouver being sent to Victoria. In 1907, the year that Buckam Singh came to British Columbia from Punjab at the age of fourteen, race riots broke out in Vancouver between Whites and Asians. Punjabis were initially also targeted but “sent attacking white mobs fleeing” as majority of the Punjabis were former soldiers of the Sikh regiment and Punjab regiments, many of whom even after retirement and migrating to Canada, kept their service muskets and bayonets and at the minimum, daggers and swords in their households, often ceremonial religious swords which had been kept as sidearms during war.
Most of the Sikhs in Canada in 1907 were retired British army veterans and their families. These Punjabis had proved themselves as loyal soldiers in the British colonies in Asia and Africa. However, the Canadian Government did not prevent the use of the illegal scare tactics being used to monitor immigration and prevent Sikhs from seeking employment, and this soon resulted in the cessation of all Indian immigration to Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier claimed that Indians were unsuited to life in the Canadian climate. However, in a letter to the viceroy, The Earl of Minto, Sir Wilfred voiced a different opinion, stating that the Chinese were the least adaptable to Canadian ways, whereas Sikhs, which he mistakenly referred to as Hindus, were the most adaptable. Nevertheless, 1,072 Sikhs left for California in 1907. In the same year, the Khalsa Diwan society was set up in Vancouver with branches in Abbotsford, New Westminster, Fraser Mills, Duncan Coombs and Ocean Falls.
In March 1907, provincial legislation was introduced in British Columbia to bar Sikhs from the right-to-vote. A month later in April, Sikhs were disallowed from voting in municipal Vancouver due to an amendment made to the Municipality Incorporation Act. As a result, Sikhs were effectively blocked from being able to vote in federal elections. This deprivation of the right-to-vote of Sikhs would continue for the next forty years.
In 1908, Indians were asked by the Canadian Government to leave Canada voluntarily and settle in British Honduras; it was stated that the "Mexican" climate would better suit Indians. A Sikh delegate was sent to what is now Belize and stayed in the British colony for some time before returning. Upon his return, he advised not only Sikhs, but also the members of other Indian religious groups, to decline the offer, maintaining that conditions in Latin America were unsuitable for Punjabis, although they might be more amenable to South Indians. In 1908, 1,710 Sikhs left British Columbia for California. The first plans to build a temple were made in 1908. After a property was acquired, the settlers carried lumber from a local mill on their backs up a hill to construct a gurdwara.
William Lyon Mackenzie King visited London and Calcutta to express the Canadian view of Indian immigration. As a result, the Indian Government stopped advertising facilities and employment opportunities in North America. This invoked the provisions of Emigration Act of 1883 which stopped Sikhs from leaving Canada. The Canadian Government passed two laws, one providing that an immigrant had to have 200 dollars, a steep increase from the previous requirement of 20 dollars, the other authorizing the Minister of the Interior to prohibit entry into Canada to people not arriving from their birth-country by continuous journey and through tickets purchased before leaving the country of their birth or citizenship. These laws were specifically directed at Punjabis and resulted in their population, which had exceeded 5,000 people in 1911, dropping to little more than 2,500.
The Immigration Act, 1910 came under scrutiny when a party of 39 Indians, mostly Sikhs, arriving on a Japanese ship, the Komagata Maru, succeeded in obtaining habeas corpus against the immigration department's order of deportation. The Canadian Government then passed a law intended to keep labourers and artisans, whether skilled or unskilled, out of Canada by preventing them from landing at any dock in British Columbia. As Canadian immigration became stricter, more Indians, most of them Sikhs, travelled south to the United States of America.
The Gur Sikh Temple opened on February 26, 1911; Sikhs and non-Sikhs from across British Columbia attended the ceremony and a local newspaper reported on the event. It was the third Gurdwara to open - after Golden and Kitsilano - not only in North America, but also anywhere in the world outside of South Asia, and as the oldest existing Gurdwara in Canada in the contemporary age has since become a national historical landmark and symbol, the only Gurdwara to have similar status outside India. The Khalsa Diwan Society subsequently built Gurdwaras in Vancouver and Victoria. The first and only Sikh settlement in Canada, Paldi, British Columbia was established as a mill town in 1916.
Though the objectives of the Khalsa Diwan Society were religious, educational and philanthropic, problems connected to immigration and racism loomed in its proceedings. Alongside the Sikh Diwan, other organizations were set up to counteract the policies of the immigration authorities. The United India League operated in Vancouver, and the Hindustani Association of the Pacific Coast opened in Portland, Oregon. Gurdwaras became storm centres of political activity. The Ghadar Party was founded in America in 1913 by Sikhs who had fled to California from British Columbia as a consequence of Canadian immigration rules. Despite originally being directed at the racism encountered by Sikhs in the Sacramento Valley and in Sacramento itself, it eventually moved to British Columbia. Thousands of Ghadar journals were published with some even being sent to India.