Slivers of history are sometimes tucked away in the places you most expect, but stay tucked away much longer than expected, for reasons which can vary from innocent to insidious. Consequently, researchers sometimes have the opportunity to accidentally stumble upon absolute treasures.
The images above are two of those treasures that were taken at the very first Nagar Kirtan in Victoria on October 6th, 1912. These images were recently found in the City of Victoria Archives in a happy accident by community historian Jatinder Singh “Jindi” of Victoria. Taken by R.L. Pocock, a one time photographer and later journalist for The Daily Colonist (now The Victoria Times-Colonist) , it seems as though these pictures were never published nor made available for digital access to the public until August of this year.
As with any opportunity to share a new find with the public, this motivated The Nameless Collective team with the help of our friend Jindi Singh to do a deep dive into the context of, and meaningful world-building, around the artifacts.
The openings of major Gurdwaras are often noteworthy and exciting events for the Sikh community, and the early days were no exception. The first built-for-purpose Gurdwara in Canada, the Khalsa Diwan Society, was inaugurated on January 19th, 1908 on 2nd Avenue in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver with much enthusiasm. Newspaper ads taken out by the community leading up to the event described how the Guru Granth Sahib would be installed for the first time at the location and that services would take place in both English and Punjabi. The event itself drew large crowds of Sikhs as well as a considerable number from the white population. While the media covered the opening event of the Gurdwara, the article describing the day was buried almost halfway into the January 20th edition of the Vancouver Daily Province. On the front page of that same paper was a story about 200 Sikh men travelling from Fraser Mills to the celebrations who reportedly refused to give up their seats on the electric train car on the journey home for other white passengers - seemingly the most popular story of the entire event as it was picked up and reprinted by many other newspapers.
1911 and 1912 saw the celebration of two additional Gurdwara openings. The currently oldest standing and second built-for-purpose Gurdwara in North America, the Khalsa Diwan Society Abbotsford, and a small Gurdwara fashioned on the accommodations of Fraser Mills, Khalsa Diwan Society Millside, which would later famously host the funeral rites of Bhai Mewa Singh - and its annual commemoration - until its closing.
While the construction of the Khalsa Diwan Society Abbotsford was completed in 1911, the Gurdwara was formally inaugurated in February of 1912. Professor Sant Teja Singh was an honoured guest at the event in which he delivered services in Punjabi and English. The opening was wonderfully attended by the community from all around the Province and also by, as the Abbotsford Post phrased it, “our citizens.”
The ceremonial openings of these two flagship institutions were noted for their splendour and spirit, but they lacked was a Nagar Kirtan. In his Punjabi novel, Mewa Singh Lopoke, Giani Kesar Singh paints scenes of different types of processions associated with the 2nd Avenue Gurdwara, from larger Nagar Kirtans to more humble Shabad Chaunkis or Parbhat Feris, but it is difficult to place from which source these scenes are imagined.
The earliest account of a procession in Vancouver is from the famous photograph from Gastown above, dated 1905. Details around this image and event are sparse, but in our Series Premiere of The Nameless Collective Podcast, we enjoy speculating about the earliest Sikhs and South Asians in the Lower Mainland around the Gastown area. In October 1911, the opening of the Millside Gurdwara also had a procession from New Westminster to Fraser Mills to transport the Guru Granth Sahib to the newly inaugurated Gurdwara on the grounds of the mill town.
Another noteworthy procession in 1912 was that of the funeral of Bibi Harnam Kaur, an event we revisit multiple times across the first two seasons of the podcast. This procession travelled from Vancouver’s 2nd Avenue Gurdwara to Mountain View Cemetery, where the cremation of Bibi Harnam Kaur’s body took place.
What sets the opening day Nagar Kirtan of the Khalsa Diwan Society Victoria (also known as Topaz Gurdwara) apart is the intentionality and scale of the event. These two processions described above before the October 6th, 1912 opening day of the Khalsa Diwan Society Victoria were primarily for a functional purpose.
The intention of Topaz Gurdwara’s opening Nagar Kirtan is captured in Sant Teja Singh’s own autobiographical writings:
...I arrived in Victoria. At that time, the Gurdwara building was nearly complete. An excitement bubbled up within me that in honour of Sant Ji Maharaj’s* instructions, the most beautiful Gurdwara in North America had been constructed. Guru Granth Sahib Ji should be brought here in great ceremony.
Unlike previous processions, the motivation for this event was more than just functional. Sant Teja Singh continues in his account to detail the preparations and outlines the Nagar Kirtan:
A ‘wheeler’ carriage was arranged and the Sangat very beautifully decorated it before bringing the Guru Granth Sahib inside…about 5,000 Sikhs, beautifully dressed in uniform, lined up in rows of four in service of the Guru. I too took an unsheathed sword in my hands, and sat on horseback presenting myself in service alongside the Guru Granth Sahib. The procession then went through all of the markets of Victoria. The white men and women of Victoria gathered to admire this incredible atmosphere. They were saying that never in Canada had there been such a wonderful parade... After five hours or so the procession reached the Gurdwara where the Guru Granth Sahib was installed underneath a beautiful canopy on the upper floor…the next day all of the newspapers in Vancouver and Victoria wrote about the Nagar Kirtan.
There was indeed ample coverage of the event. The two articles below are digitizations of the two most in-depth accounts of the day, one from the Victoria Daily Times and one from the periodical Canadian Courier. Both articles share more details of the events outlined in Sant Teja Singh’s account.
Community historian Manmohan S. Wirk in his book A History of the Sikhs of Victoria BC identifies the women mentioned in the Canadian Courier as Bibi Harnam Kaur and Bibi Kartar Kaur. While the news articles do not make mention of this, that is quite probable considering that Bhai Balwant Singh and Bhai Bhag Singh were identified among guests of honour from Vancouver for the event, as Professor Sant Teja Singh had been an honoured guest at the opening of the Khalsa Diwan Society Abbotsford earlier that year.
The images above are additional glimpses of the event and preparations that have been publicly available until now. Jindi’s accidental discovery, found while researching for a separate project, renewed our interest in the subject and allowed an opportunity to recall this momentous occasion centring the voice of Sant Teja Singh. That created the chance for us to do some deeper work around archival material, such as the translation of Sant Teja Singh’s account from Punjabi to English.
Moments like this one remind us how important it is for institutions to invest in the digitization and correct labelling of their materials. Even one unassuming artifact can open up a whole world of research.
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