Century of Struggle and Sucess The Sikh Canadian Experience by Sandeep Singh Brar Part III Community Strength

To further guard community Sikh interests, the leading intellectual of the time Professor Teja Singh established the Guru Nanak Mining and Trust Company in December 1908. The organization had 251 members and a board of directors of the leading Sikhs of the time. The goals of the Trust were to look after the economic welfare of Sikhs by investing in businesses, real estate & farms, banking and building homes. Most Sikhs took it upon themselves to look out after their fellow Sikh and this really helped strengthen the community by providing the immigrants with a social safety net. "We all really cared and looked after one another. Of course we played jokes on each other, but only in good humour, never to hurt the other person's feelings. We would all share any newspaper that we would get. Sometimes we would even get a newspaper from India. One of the good things about our people at that time was that if someone had just come from India, we would help that person find a job. We would go from one mill to the next asking, and until the job was found, we would pitch in and pay their room and board. If someone was visiting from another area even then, we would not let them pay. If a fellow villager from India came, they would ask if he owed anyone money back home, or if anyone there needed any money. If there was a need of money they would give him their cheques and tell him to send the money to India and he could pay them back slowly." (Sardara Singh Gill) This strong sense of community was the key to the survival of the Sikhs during the worse economic times of the Depression years in the early 1930's. Mills were being closed and workers were loosing jobs. The Gurdwara helped provide the lifeline of many unemployed Sikhs because the community decided to be self-sufficient during these hard times rather than depending on government handouts. "Our temple committee openly stated that Sikhs will not ask for relief, as the other people were asking. We will take care of our own people, we don't need your handouts. We looked after our people first class. We never let the food supplies run out at the Gurdwara, I know that. There were piles of flour sacks. The wood was always piled high. There was plenty of tea, cans of milk, boxes of butter, salt, spices, peppers. There was one man, Chinta, and whenever he would come to the Gurdwara he'd bring two pounds of hot peppers. He'd say, 'I only have these pepper, that's all I can give. I hope you'll remember me for that!' That's how we managed during those tough times, by sticking together." (Lachman Singh Thandi) The strong sense of community would be one of the primary reasons for the famous and tragic Komagata Maru challenge of 1914. To directly challenge the continuos passage rule, prominent Sikhs at great expense chartered a Japanese freighter to bring Sikhs to Canada. The ship picked up passengers from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama as well as a load of coal to sell from Japan before finally arriving in Vancouver on May 23, 1914 with 376 Sikhs. Immigration authorities would not even let the ship dock so it had to be anchored in port, where it would remain for two months before being forcefully escorted out of Canadian waters by a Canadian Navy cruiser with orders to blow up the ship if it resisted. All of this while a ship full of Chinese immigrants was allowed to land without any problems. The local Sikh community unsuccessfully appealed to all levels of government with legal challenges and promised to even pay the required $200 per person. The community would end up spending over $70,000 on food supplies, charter costs and all other expenses for the ship and the unfortunate Sikhs on board.