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Jewels of the Qila: The Remarkable Story of an Indo-Canadian Family
It is tempting to liken Hugh Johnston's remarkable Jewels of the Qila: The Remarkable Story of an Indo-Canadian Family to an Horatio Alger story.
Having reached San Francisco in 1906, the modest hero, Kapoor Singh Siddoo, arrives in British Columbia in 1912, dispenses with his Sikh turban and cuts his hair-while the Komagata Maru is still stranded in the Vancouver harbour-and overcomes racial prejudice and legal discrimination to transform himself into a forestry millionaire.
It gets better. Inspired by their thoroughly admirable mother, Besant Kaur, Kapoor's two daughters attend Kitsilano High School, enter medical school, create a short-lived Krishnamurti School on Vancouver Island and eventually establish a hospital named after their father in the Punjab-following their meeting with Prime Minister Nehru.
But Johnston's Jewels of the Qila is not just a success story about one unusual family. This is a splendidly serious, smart and multi-faceted investigation of events and characters in both India and Canada. Using Kapoor's wide-ranging life as a prism, Johnston has provided an authoritative and engaging overview of Sikhs in B.C.
Born in Punjab in 1885, Kapoor, at age nine, was engaged to marry
Besant Kaur, aged four. Educated and pious, she would marry him at age 15 but would remain unable to join him until 1923. At age 33, she would become the first South Asian woman in Kapoor's multi-racial logging villages on Vancouver Island.
Persuaded to leave India by his friend Piara Singh Langeri, Kapoor sailed third-class steerage to San Francisco. After six years of labouring jobs, he was refused entry to Canada at the Blaine border, but landed in Victoria in 1912, where he bought a small dairy operation.
Kapoor's role in the origins of Sikh journalism on the West Coast, as outlined below, is but one sliver of Jewels of the Qila.
In Victoria, Kapoor met up with his friend Piara Singh Langeri who introduced him to two literate activists, Dr. Sundar Singh and Kartar Singh Hundal, nicknamed "Scissors."; This highly educated pair was producing Sansar [The World], handwritten in Punjabi and dubbed 'The Only Hindustani Paper in Canada,' as well as an English-language monthly, the Aryan.
Kapoor soon joined their efforts to gain equality for British subjects who were Sikhs, as promised by Queen Victoria. Whereas the foursome wanted their printing press on Speed Avenue to produce a secular paper, other devout Sikhs wanted a faith-based publication, leading to the short-lived rival paper, Hindustance.
During the Komagata Maru incident-when 376 Punjabis arrived in the Vancouver harbour, only to be refused entry-militants threatened to destroy the moderates' headquarters, setting fire to the Sansar office.
With the Komagata Maru marooned in the harbour, England-educated Dr. Sundar Singh rushed to Ottawa, hoping to resolve the crisis, but his charm offensive with federal politicians failed. Kartar Singh Hundal, Piara Singh Langeri and Kapoor Singh Siddoo all followed him to Ontario nonetheless where, before he mysteriously vanished, Dr. Sundar Singh started a new publication, Canada and India: A Journal of Information and Conciliation.
While Kartar assimilated into Toronto society as a Theosophist, Piara would not forsake his turban and beard, and so he urged Kapoor to return to India with him to fight for independence with the Ghadar movement. Piara would soon be imprisoned in India for sedition, and narrowly escaped hanging, while Kartar was hobnobbing at the Toronto Literature Club with the likes of poet Bliss Carman and influential McClelland & Stewart editor Donald French.
Kapoor took the middle path between Piara and Kartar.
In 1917, former bunkhouse cook Mayo Singh, while he was winding down his logging venture in Chilliwack, sent Kapoor money for his passage back to B.C. to work as his bookkeeper and English spokesman. They undertook logging and milling operations in the Cowichan Valley, at the village of Paldi (originally called Mayo) and the village of Kapoor, both northwest of Duncan, and near the Sooke River. Neither man wore turbans; both shaved.
Eventually Kapoor became an equal partner in the Mayo Lumber Company Ltd., as well as partnering with Doman Singh, father of future forestry magnate Herb Doman. Despite several incidents of suspected arson, racial resentment and economic depressions, the partnership with Mayo Singh endured for 26 years until Kapoor started his own lumber mill in Vancouver.
The Mayo Sawmill was on the E&N Cowichan Subdivision. The Kapoor Lumber Company mill was located at Mile-35 on the CNR line at Sooke Lake, now part of the Greater Victoria Watershed. The Kapoor Mill operated from 1928 to 1940. Kapoor Lumber Company still owns lands in the area and the Kapoor Regional Park Reserve, at the end of the Galloping Goose Regional Trail, includes almost two kilometres of riverfront land.
Kapoor remained active in moderate politics. By 1920, he was elected as the first president of the B.C. branch of the United India Home Rule League (affiliated with Mahatma Gandhi's Congress movement), then as president of the Hindustani Sabraj Society and the Canadian Hindustani Congress.
When nobel prize-winning author Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) made his only visit to Canada in 1929, the Bengali poet spoke four times in Vancouver and once in Victoria, to overflow crowds.
Revered as a writer and as a spokesperson for Indian independence, Tagore was joined by his English translator and editor Charles Freer Andrews, a missionary who was a close associate of Gandhi.
Kartar returned to B.C. from Toronto to serve as a translator and guide for Tagore and Andrews. "Do your best to prove yourselves 'Good Canadians',"; Tagore advised.
With Kapoor's support, Kartar stayed in Vancouver and published seven more bilingual monthly issues of India and Canada: A Journal of Interpretation and Information, in 1929 and 1930. Both men befriended Theosophist and Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris, who also introduced Theosophy to Emily Carr and novelist Ethel Wilson.
In 1935, Kapoor brought his family to live in the Kitsilano house he had built at 2416 York Avenue in 1921, but they found their renters were still occupying the house upon arrival. Rather than risk the indignity of possibly being rejected by a Vancouver hotel, the well-to-do family slept in their Chevrolet for two nights beneath a steel bridge over the Capilano River.
The last issues of India and Canada were produced from Kapoor's basement in Kitsilano in 1936 by Kartar. One of those Vancouver-produced editions contains a brief biography of Kapoor, calling for Canada to grant the vote to Punjabis such as Kapoor who had proven their worth.
The story of how Kapoor Singh Siddoo's moderation eventually won the day-South Asians of Canada gained the right to vote in 1948-is ably told in Jewels of the Qila, which also outlines the considerable accomplishments of Kapoor's daughters Jackie and Sarjit Siddoo who currently maintain a Krishnamurti Centre on Swanick Road in Victoria.
978-0-7748-2217-6
[BCBW 2012]
Having reached San Francisco in 1906, the modest hero, Kapoor Singh Siddoo, arrives in British Columbia in 1912, dispenses with his Sikh turban and cuts his hair-while the Komagata Maru is still stranded in the Vancouver harbour-and overcomes racial prejudice and legal discrimination to transform himself into a forestry millionaire.
It gets better. Inspired by their thoroughly admirable mother, Besant Kaur, Kapoor's two daughters attend Kitsilano High School, enter medical school, create a short-lived Krishnamurti School on Vancouver Island and eventually establish a hospital named after their father in the Punjab-following their meeting with Prime Minister Nehru.
But Johnston's Jewels of the Qila is not just a success story about one unusual family. This is a splendidly serious, smart and multi-faceted investigation of events and characters in both India and Canada. Using Kapoor's wide-ranging life as a prism, Johnston has provided an authoritative and engaging overview of Sikhs in B.C.
Born in Punjab in 1885, Kapoor, at age nine, was engaged to marry
Besant Kaur, aged four. Educated and pious, she would marry him at age 15 but would remain unable to join him until 1923. At age 33, she would become the first South Asian woman in Kapoor's multi-racial logging villages on Vancouver Island.
Persuaded to leave India by his friend Piara Singh Langeri, Kapoor sailed third-class steerage to San Francisco. After six years of labouring jobs, he was refused entry to Canada at the Blaine border, but landed in Victoria in 1912, where he bought a small dairy operation.
Kapoor's role in the origins of Sikh journalism on the West Coast, as outlined below, is but one sliver of Jewels of the Qila.
In Victoria, Kapoor met up with his friend Piara Singh Langeri who introduced him to two literate activists, Dr. Sundar Singh and Kartar Singh Hundal, nicknamed "Scissors."; This highly educated pair was producing Sansar [The World], handwritten in Punjabi and dubbed 'The Only Hindustani Paper in Canada,' as well as an English-language monthly, the Aryan.
Kapoor soon joined their efforts to gain equality for British subjects who were Sikhs, as promised by Queen Victoria. Whereas the foursome wanted their printing press on Speed Avenue to produce a secular paper, other devout Sikhs wanted a faith-based publication, leading to the short-lived rival paper, Hindustance.
During the Komagata Maru incident-when 376 Punjabis arrived in the Vancouver harbour, only to be refused entry-militants threatened to destroy the moderates' headquarters, setting fire to the Sansar office.
With the Komagata Maru marooned in the harbour, England-educated Dr. Sundar Singh rushed to Ottawa, hoping to resolve the crisis, but his charm offensive with federal politicians failed. Kartar Singh Hundal, Piara Singh Langeri and Kapoor Singh Siddoo all followed him to Ontario nonetheless where, before he mysteriously vanished, Dr. Sundar Singh started a new publication, Canada and India: A Journal of Information and Conciliation.
While Kartar assimilated into Toronto society as a Theosophist, Piara would not forsake his turban and beard, and so he urged Kapoor to return to India with him to fight for independence with the Ghadar movement. Piara would soon be imprisoned in India for sedition, and narrowly escaped hanging, while Kartar was hobnobbing at the Toronto Literature Club with the likes of poet Bliss Carman and influential McClelland & Stewart editor Donald French.
Kapoor took the middle path between Piara and Kartar.
In 1917, former bunkhouse cook Mayo Singh, while he was winding down his logging venture in Chilliwack, sent Kapoor money for his passage back to B.C. to work as his bookkeeper and English spokesman. They undertook logging and milling operations in the Cowichan Valley, at the village of Paldi (originally called Mayo) and the village of Kapoor, both northwest of Duncan, and near the Sooke River. Neither man wore turbans; both shaved.
Eventually Kapoor became an equal partner in the Mayo Lumber Company Ltd., as well as partnering with Doman Singh, father of future forestry magnate Herb Doman. Despite several incidents of suspected arson, racial resentment and economic depressions, the partnership with Mayo Singh endured for 26 years until Kapoor started his own lumber mill in Vancouver.
The Mayo Sawmill was on the E&N Cowichan Subdivision. The Kapoor Lumber Company mill was located at Mile-35 on the CNR line at Sooke Lake, now part of the Greater Victoria Watershed. The Kapoor Mill operated from 1928 to 1940. Kapoor Lumber Company still owns lands in the area and the Kapoor Regional Park Reserve, at the end of the Galloping Goose Regional Trail, includes almost two kilometres of riverfront land.
Kapoor remained active in moderate politics. By 1920, he was elected as the first president of the B.C. branch of the United India Home Rule League (affiliated with Mahatma Gandhi's Congress movement), then as president of the Hindustani Sabraj Society and the Canadian Hindustani Congress.
When nobel prize-winning author Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) made his only visit to Canada in 1929, the Bengali poet spoke four times in Vancouver and once in Victoria, to overflow crowds.
Revered as a writer and as a spokesperson for Indian independence, Tagore was joined by his English translator and editor Charles Freer Andrews, a missionary who was a close associate of Gandhi.
Kartar returned to B.C. from Toronto to serve as a translator and guide for Tagore and Andrews. "Do your best to prove yourselves 'Good Canadians',"; Tagore advised.
With Kapoor's support, Kartar stayed in Vancouver and published seven more bilingual monthly issues of India and Canada: A Journal of Interpretation and Information, in 1929 and 1930. Both men befriended Theosophist and Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris, who also introduced Theosophy to Emily Carr and novelist Ethel Wilson.
In 1935, Kapoor brought his family to live in the Kitsilano house he had built at 2416 York Avenue in 1921, but they found their renters were still occupying the house upon arrival. Rather than risk the indignity of possibly being rejected by a Vancouver hotel, the well-to-do family slept in their Chevrolet for two nights beneath a steel bridge over the Capilano River.
The last issues of India and Canada were produced from Kapoor's basement in Kitsilano in 1936 by Kartar. One of those Vancouver-produced editions contains a brief biography of Kapoor, calling for Canada to grant the vote to Punjabis such as Kapoor who had proven their worth.
The story of how Kapoor Singh Siddoo's moderation eventually won the day-South Asians of Canada gained the right to vote in 1948-is ably told in Jewels of the Qila, which also outlines the considerable accomplishments of Kapoor's daughters Jackie and Sarjit Siddoo who currently maintain a Krishnamurti Centre on Swanick Road in Victoria.
978-0-7748-2217-6
[BCBW 2012]
Submitted on September 4, 2012 in By David.
