Sikh-Canadians 2nd Largest Faith Group in Vancouver

According to Sikh Chic "Canada is fast changing its colors as visible minorities are outgrowing the ‘white’ population. 

According to projections done for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 60 per cent residents of the Greater Vancouver area by the year 2031 will be ‘non-whites‘.

Daniel Hiebert of Vancouver-based University of British Columbia, who is an expert on immigration and did this projection, says, "There is no European city with anything like this demographic structure nor will there be in 2031."

The good news is that Sikhs and Punjabis will be the second biggest group after the Chinese by 2031. And Sikhism will be the second biggest religion in the Greater Vancouver area in the next decades, says the study.

But Surrey city on the outskirts of Vancouver is already a 'Sikh city'. More than 40 per cent of its population is Sikh and of Punjabi origin. Surrey reported more than 94,000 speakers of Punjabi in the last year's census which pegged the city's population at about 500,000. [The official census figures are conservative, given the shortcomings of the census questionnaire.]  

"In that sense, the city has become the largest Sikh settlement outside Punjab," says Balwant Singh Sanghera, who heads the Punjabi Language Education Association (PLEA) of Canada. 

At the other end of Canada, in Toronto, which is the country's biggest city, the ethno-demographics are set to change even faster.

According to projections, Toronto will have only 37 per cent ‘white’ population by 2031. Again, Sikhs are going to be one of the biggest ethnic groups in the Greater Toronto area. In fact, in Brampton on the outskirts of Toronto, Sikhs are already the biggest ethnic group after whites.

Brampton, which is in Ontario province, and Surrey and Abbotsford, in British Columbia province, are the three cities which are recording the highest growth of the Sikh community in Canada. And these three cities also boast the highest numbers of gurdwaras. In fact, Abbotsford is home to North America's oldest  gurdwara currently standing … it was built in 1911. [Earlier built gurdwaras such as the one in Golden, B.C., have since been replaced with new ones.] 

The city proclaimed 2011 as the Year of the Gurdwara.

To put things in perspective, Sikhs -- now numbering well over half a million in Canada -- are by far the biggest group among those hailing, or descending from immigrants, from the subcontinent. Since they were the first group from the area to land in Canada's British Columbia province in the last decade of the 19th century, it is not surprising that Sikhs made history in Canada when Ujjal Singh Dosanjh was elected as the premier of British Columbia in Feb 2000. Today, eight out of the nine MPs in the Canadian parliament are Sikhs Punjabis, including two -- Joginder ‘Jinny’ Kaur Sims and Neena Kaur Grewal."