By Michael Bramadat-Willcock | The Terrace Standard | Canada |
Growing up Sikh in Terrace, Chetanveer Singh Dhillon noticed a gap in the mainstream telling of the city’s history, that he says leaves out his community. He’s looking to fix that with a documentary video called the Sikh History Project.
“There’s nothing to signify the Sikh Punjabi community that’s been here for more than half a century. The Sikh community has been here for a long time and has always been a significant community,” Dhillon told The Terrace Standard.
“Our stories have never been told or heard about, it’s been a little bit washed away.”
He said there’s an attitude among some in Terrace that Sikhs are new to the community, when that’s not the case, adding that many Sikhs moved to the area around 50 years ago to work in the lumber mills.
Dhillon’s project will take a deep dive into Sikh and Punjabi demographics in Terrace through interviews with people from each generation on Terrace Sikhs, from elders in the community to the younger generation.
“We had a much larger community back in the day before the lumber mill was closed down,” he said, explaining the rise and fall of Sikh demographics in the city.
The first Sikh to reside in Terrace according to his research was a man named Isher Singh, a retired truck driver who moved to Terrace around 1952 and passed away in Dec. 1955. There was a boom in Punjabi immigration to northwest B.C. to work in the lumber mills in the 1970s after Pierre Trudeau opened things up for immigrants from India in 1972.
The first Sikh Temple in Terrace, called the Medeek Temple, was built in 1978. There are now two temples in the city after the Walsh Street Sikh Temple broke off from the original one over theological differences in the early 21st century.
There were 675 Punjabi speakers listed in the 1991 census, accounting for almost 6 per cent of the population.
Read the full story here.
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(Asia Samachar, xx 2022)
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