A sawmill storage house in southeast B.C. was home to North America's first gurdwara, researcher says

A researcher in B.C.says the first Sikh temple in North America was likely establishedin the province's East Kootenay region.

Colleen Palumbo,who studied old census records as part of her research, says the gurdwarawas established in a repurposedstorage house at a sawmill in Golden, B.C., around 1905.

Palumbo has researched the gurdwara's history since retiringas executive director of the Golden Museum and Archives two years ago. Her researchispart of a Punjabi Canadian Legacy Project (PCLP) programto support local museums' research on Sikh Canadian history, andher findings werepublished on theGolden Museumwebsitein February.

They're also featured in theHaq and Historytravelling exhibition set up bythe PCLP,a program co-organized by the University of the Fraser Valley and Royal B.C. Museum.

Palumbo estimates about a dozen Sikh menin Punjab's forestry industry came to Golden a community in the Rockiesaround 200 kilometres west of Calgary around 1902 to work at theColumbia River Lumber Company sawmill.

To encourage them to stay, Palumbo said, the company allowed the mento turn a storage building near their bunkhouse into a temple.

By the 1920s, she said, census records suggest there were more than 60 Sikh workers in the community.

The gurdwara was torn down in 1927 after the sawmill closed, Palumbo said, and it would be many decades before the town's Sikh community would have another temple.

Today, Golden is home to more than 100 people who identify as Sikh, according to the latest census.

The town is one of seven municipalitiesselectedby thePCLP for its community-based heritage work, which includes oral history interviews with Sikh Canadians, and sponsorship for research projects bylocal museums on Sikh Canadian history.

Abbotsford boasts North America's oldest surviving gurdwara,built in 1911. Vancouver's Khalsa Diwan Society constructed its gurdwarain the Kitsilanoneighbourhood in 1908, which wasrelocated to South Vancouver in1970.

Palumbo, who is white,grew up in Golden in the 1970s alongside the children of Sikh immigrants, and says the Sikh community has always held a special place in her heart.

She said there are no archival photos of the gurdwara, but first-hand accounts collected by the Golden Museum from Sikh residents in 1999 suggest the building was a plain, wooden structure with a gable roof, measuring about 12 feet by 20 feet in size.

"Other than the [Sikh] flagpole, there wasn't anything to indicate that it was the temple," she said, relaying details from those first-hand accounts.

"The inside was covered with all kinds of ornamentsand a beautiful blue rug with designs all over. It covered the floor, and then there was an altar at the far end of the building."

After the gurdwara was closed and torn down,Golden's Sikh community was left without a temple for weddings, funeralsand other social gatherings.

Palumbo says Sikh couples often had to pay a lot to hirecommercial venues instead.

One examplewas sawmill workerSwaranSingh Pataraand his wife Balbir, who,in April 1972, werethe first Sikh couple to get married in Golden. They paid$350 equivalent to $2,515 in today's money to rent a local clubhouse and restaurant, and had to hire a Sikh priest from Vancouver Island to perform the wedding.

A new gurdwara was finally built in Golden on October 1981, on 13 Street South.

Obstacles to heritage preservation

Palumbo says the gurdwara was a safe haven for early Sikh immigrants with limited English proficiency during a time of strong anti-Asian racism.

She points tothe federal government's implementation of a South Asian "head tax"from1908 to 1919, meant to discourage immigrantsfrom bringing their wivesand children to Canada.

Satwinder Kaur Bains, director of the University of the Fraser Valley's South Asian Studies Institute, says the racism alsotranslated into challenges to preserveSikh Canadian history.

She sayscolonial institutions didn't value artifacts of South Asian history as much as those of white Canadian history, and Sikh immigrantsdidn'tsee the importance of keeping records of their lives in Canada.

"The laws of the land were very racist, and people really didn't think they would live there for very long,"said Bains, who is Sikh. "Perhaps that is why the records are so lean and there are no photographs in there."

Bainssays shehopes more historical findings on South Asian Canadian history in B.C. can be digitally preserved for future generations.

The Haq and Historyexhibitionwill be shown at thePort Moody Station Museumfrom May to July, and at the Golden Museum and Archives from November to December.