The Gur Sikh Temple Opens at Abbotsford

Built by hand, on a hillside

Sikh settlers reached British Columbia’s Fraser Valley from about 1905, working the sawmills and farms. In 1908 the community at Abbotsford secured a hillside plot, and carried the timber up from the mills themselves. The Gur Sikh Temple opened on 26 February 1911.^1,2

Two earlier Canadian gurdwaras — Golden in 1905, Vancouver’s Kitsilano in 1908 — no longer stand, which leaves Abbotsford as the oldest surviving gurdwara anywhere in North America.² In 2002 it became a National Historic Site of Canada: the only gurdwara outside India and Pakistan to hold such a designation.^1,3

The law they built it under

The timing is the part usually left out. The building went up in the middle of Canada’s effort to shut Indian migration down altogether — the Continuous Journey regulation of 1908, which required migrants to travel from their country of origin without stopping at a time when no shipping line ran direct from India. It was designed to be impossible to satisfy, and it was the instrument used to turn away the Komagata Maru and its 376 passengers at Vancouver in 1914.

So the men carrying lumber up that hill were building a permanent institution in a country actively legislating against their presence. The building is the argument.

What came of it

Canada now has the largest Sikh population outside India — 771,790 at the 2021 census, around 2.1 per cent of the country, and more than England and Australia combined. Sikhs are recorded in every province and territory; British Columbia, where the Abbotsford community started, holds 290,870 of them.⁴

The Gur Sikh Temple is still in use, with a Sikh Heritage Museum on the ground floor.