31model minority · reportageFEBRUARY 2018The Vancouver Sikh community organised
around the issue, spending thousands of dollars
trying to get their compatriots clearance. The
city’s Khalsa Diwan Society—founded in 1907 to
manage the affairs of Vancouver’s gurdwara—
became heavily involved. The community even
offered to pay every passenger’s 200-dollar admit-
tance fee, but to no avail. Eventually, the Canadian
navy forced the Maru and its despondent tenants
to sail for India. When it reached Calcutta, British
officers attempted to arrest many of the ship’s pas-
sengers, and a scuffle broke out. Ensuing gunfire
from a nearby British boat killed multiple passen-
gers. Others were sent to jail.
The incident demoralised Canada’s Sikhs, many
of whom went back to India in disgust. But it
galvanised those who remained into organising
for more rights. In 1919, the government finally
allowed the wives and young children of Sikh
Canadians to migrate to join them, and, gradually,
Canada’s Sikh population began to increase. The
year before that, there were only 700 Sikhs left
in British Columbia. By 1920, the slow trickle of
Indians into Canada resumed.
Indo-Canadians—including Sikhs—gained
political rights in the middle of the twentieth
century. In 1947, the government granted Indians
the franchise, several months after India itself was
granted independence. The NDP’s predecessor—
the labour-oriented Cooperative Commonwealth
Federation—endorsed and aided Indians in their
quest for the right to vote. It was a significant
shift. Previously, the CCF leader JS Woodsworth
had referred to Sikhs as “profoundly grotesque.”
Despite gaining voting rights, discrimination
against Sikhs persisted. The same year that Sikhs
got the right to vote, the Canadian prime minister,
William Lyon Mackenzie King, declared that it
was “clearly recognised with regard to emigration
from India to Canada, that the native of India is
not a person suited to this country.”
Canada’s immigration laws were eventually
liberalised, and, during the 1960s and 1970s,
Canada’s Sikh population began to grow dra-
matically. In 1962, new regulations allowed all
Canadian citizens and permanent residents to
sponsor close relatives and non-adult children for
immigration. A few years later, the government
adopted a points-based system to help determine
immigration eligibility. Points were assigned on
the basis of such things as educational attainment,
occupational skills, employment prospects and
age. Anyone who received 50 points or more out
of a possible 100 was allowed to enter the country,
irrespective of race or national origin. By 1969,
over 5,000 Sikhs a year were moving to Canada—a
67-percent increase over arrivals in 1968, and a
650-percent one over arrivals a decade before.
The country’s official attitude towards its mi-
norities soon changed radically. On 8 October 1971,
Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau—the father
of the current prime minister—announced that the
government would adopt a policy of multicultur-
alism. In 1976, Trudeau appointed the aboriginal
Canadian Len Marchand as his minister of small
businesses, making Marchand the first non-white
federal minister in Canada’s history. Two years
later, Trudeau selected the Palestinian-born MP
Pierre De Bané to serve as the minister of supply
and services. Bané became the first visible-minori-
ty member of the country’s cabinet.
“Cultural pluralism is the very essence of Ca-
nadian identity,” Trudeau declared, and no ethnic
group should “take precedence over any other.”
The policy was largely symbolic at first, with
few financial resources flowing towards helping
minorities promote their identities and participate
more fully in society. But it has since gatheredopposite page:
In the early
twentieth century,
the Canadian
government made
it impossible for
those it pejoratively
called ‘Hindoos’ to
bring their families
into the country.
below: The first
Sikhs to travel to
Canada found ready
work as unskilled
and cheap labour
in the railways,
forestry and lumber
industries.courtesy vancouver public library vpl7641