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3 Indians Among 100 Most Influential British Columbians

A P Kamath

From a lumberyard worker, Mayo Singh went on to own timber mills and become one of the most successful Indian businessmen in British Columbia.

But this week when he was named among 100 people who have shaped British Columbia, he was remembered for his civic activities and his efforts in getting voting rights for Indian Canadians.

Singh (1899-1955) is joined in the list by Duari Pal Pandia (1904-99), another voting right activist, and Herb Dhaliwal (1952), the first Indian Canadian cabinet minister at the federal level. Punjab-born Dhaliwal, who is a millionaire businessman in Vancouver, is currently Canada's fisheries minister; earlier he had held the revenue portfolio.

Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, one of the most influential of British Columbians and the front-runner in the race for the province's premier, is not on the list.

The list of 100 British Columbians was created at the behest of the Vancouver Sun newspaper which asked a panel to choose men and women who have shaped the history of the province.

The list would constitute, according to the newspaper, an 'amazing array of visionaries, scoundrels, activists, artists, entrepreneurs, writers and athletes and scientists' who shaped the province.

The panel included a historian, a writer, and a labor expert.

The Sun will publish next week a list nominated by its readers.

The panel also ranked the 100 candidates. Singh was 25 on the list and Pandia, 77. Dhaliwal, who was number 45, scored higher than the acclaimed film-maker Atom Egoyan (Felicia's Journey), who was Number 49.

Mayo Singh's fight for the civic rights of Indian Canadians was helped considerably by his brother Kapur Singh who also owned lumber mills. The brothers were among a handful of Sikhs who established a settlement on Vancouver Island and named it Paldi after a village in Punjab in which Mal Singh, one the Sikh businessmen of British Columbia, was born.

Their success story was on the minds of many Sikhs who rebelled against a Canadian government proposal to settle them in a colony in central America.

The idea to send Indian Canadians (who happened to be mostly Sikhs) was promoted many years after the 1908 immigration curb.

Canada curbed Asian Indian immigrants by denying entry to immigrants who had not come by "continuous journey" from their homelands (there was no direct shipping between Indian and Canadian ports). Around that time Asian Indians were driven out of a couple of American cities in California.

The Canadian government plan was called the British Honduras Scheme.

The government approached the Sikhs to move to British Honduras (Belize) with the option of better employment, land offers, and better wages.

But the Sikhs were not going away that easily. They first sent a delegation to represent the community. When the delegation arrived in Belize they found that the living conditions and sanitary conditions were inferior to those in Vancouver. The delegation left Belize and reported their findings to the congregation.

The plot angered the Sikhs and they unanimously declined the offer. They then began to organize themselves and prove to the government that they were self-sufficient and not living on charity.

The Sikhs in British Columbia owned 250 acres of land. They also pooled their resources to invest in a gold mine in Jacksonville.

They wrote to the government about the lumber companies run by Mayo Singh and Kapur Singh.

After the Canadian government decided against the "resettlement" plan, Sikh leaders began to realize that unless they had voting rights, they would not be able to live in peace in Canada.

Mayo Singh and his brother were among the first to fight for voting rights, which were granted in 1947, the year India became independent.

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