Gur Sikh Temple

About

The Gur Sikh Temple stands on a hill in Abbotsford, British Columbia, a quiet witness to the long Sikh presence in Canada. Although outwardly it resembles the wooden frontier houses of early twentieth-century British Columbia, within it carries the unmistakable forms of Sikh devotion: the prayer hall on the upper floor, and below it the langar and community dining room that has fed worshippers and visitors alike since its opening.

First-generation Sikh settlers, who had arrived from Punjab to work the local farms and lumber mills, hand-carried timber from a nearby mill up the hillside to raise the gurdwara. When it opened on 26 February 1911, the ceremony drew Sikhs and non-Sikhs from across the province, marking the public arrival of the Sikh community as a settled part of Canadian life.

The building has been carefully preserved and modestly extended, with new wings added in 1932 and again in the 1960s. In 2002 it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada, and after restoration it reopened in 2007. On the ground floor a Sikh Heritage Museum, inaugurated for the centennial in 2011, tells the story of the early Sikh community in British Columbia.

History

The first Sikh pioneers reached the Abbotsford area in 1905 to work its farms and lumber mills, and by 1908 the young community had begun planning a gurdwara of its own. After acquiring a hilltop property, the settlers carried lumber up the slope on their own backs, and the gurdwara opened on 26 February 1911 before Sikhs and non-Sikhs gathered from across British Columbia. The building was extended in 1932 and again in the 1960s, and after the community built a larger gurdwara across the road in 1983, the original Temple was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on 1 November 2002 and reopened, restored, in 2007.

Significance

For Sikhs across Canada and the diaspora, the Temple stands as tangible proof of the faith and labour of the earliest settlers, who raised a house for the Guru Granth Sahib Ji with their own hands in an unfamiliar land. Its recognition as a National Historic Site remains the only such designation given to a gurdwara anywhere outside Punjab, and the Sikh Heritage Museum, opened on its ground floor for the Temple's centenary in 2011, now carries that history to visitors of every background.

Architecture

Vernacular wood-frame construction resembling early twentieth-century British Columbia frontier houses outside, with Sikh sacred design and craftsmanship within; a two-storey building with a wraparound porch and balcony