Century of Struggle and Sucess The Sikh Canadian Experience by Sandeep Singh Brar Part I The Struggle Begins

The media meanwhile were busy enforcing racial stereotypes and feeding the flames of anti-Asian sentiment. "The class of Hindu that have invaded British Columbia, are commonly known as Sikhs, entirely dependent upon their physical capabilities - those who have no set aim in life. They are the coolies of Calcutta. In stature the average Sikh is slender and his body gaunt. The complexion is dark-brown while his hair is long and black. In dress he copies the European with the exception of the head adornment which is substituted by the turban." "Experience has shown that immigrants of this class, having been accustomed to the condition of a tropical climate, are wholly unsuited to this country and that their ability to readily adapt themselved to surroundings so entirely different inavitably brings upon them much suffering and privation, also that were such immigrants allowed to reach by considerable dimensions, it would result in a serious disturbance of the industrial and economic conditions in portion of the Dominion and especially in the province of British Columbia." Immigration laws combined with the unions made sure that the few Sikh immigrants already in the country were only allowed to work on low skill manual labour jobs on farms, the railways or in the saw mills. Irrespective of their education or background, machinists, doctors or engineers, it did not make any difference they had no chance of securing a job in their field of study or expertise. "I operated a resaw on my summer holidays. There were very few of our people who were allowed to operate a machine. When the gora operator would go off to the washroom or to have his smoke, I would operate the machine and I could do it just as well as he could, but he was very conscious of the fact that he better not relinquish the machine to me for too long, because then he might have to relinquish it to me outright somewhere down the road. You sort of understood that there was a level at which you could function, beyond that it was out of your reach." (Dedar Singh Sihota) "The labouring groups were the Chinese and the Punjabis. The Japanese managed to get the better jobs that involved more technical training. The best jobs, the engineers and people who were the bosses at the mill, went to the Europeans." (Dedar Singh Sihota)