Jewels of the Qila

The saga of three generations of a Sikh family in Canada who lived at the centre of a community’s struggles for survival and success.

This story about a remarkable Sikh family living in British Columbia tells a larger tale about an immigrant community’s triumphs and tribulations and the strong connections that Indo-Canadians continue to forge with their homeland.

In Jewels of the Qila, Hugh Johnston draws on memoirs and interviews, newspaper articles and photographs, to tell the story of three generations of a remarkable Sikh family and the communities they lived in and supported in both Canada and India.

The Siddoos are Punjabi. Kapoor Singh, father and grandfather, arrived in British Columbia in 1912 and had to overcome racial prejudice and legal discrimination to transform himself from labourer to lumber baron. As he campaigned for citizenship and immigration rights for his people, he and his wife, Besant Kaur, fostered in their daughters a vision of service and activism that, as adults, they fulfilled by establishing a family-run hospital in Punjab and by introducing a Westernized version of an Indian spiritual tradition to Canada.

The Siddoos are the heart of the story, but their history tells a larger tale of an immigrant community’s triumphs and tribulations and the strong connection that Indo-Canadians continue to forge with their homeland.