VANCOUVER: When he came to Vancouver from India in 1925 at the age of three, Norman Ginder Singh immediately became a part of his new neighborhood in Canada. He still owns his family house there. And now 70 years later he was recently recognized as Vancouver’s good neighbor of the year for his more than 40 years of community service to the Khalsa Diwan Society, Children’s Hospital and the Canadian Cancer Society. Last month, the 74yearold father of two received the Vancouver Good Neighbor Award at a special ceremony at Heritage Hall. The award is presented by the Association of Neighborhood Houses to someone selected from community nominees. Ginder Singh didn’t even know he’d been nominated until he received the letter telling him he won. “It’s a great honor,” he said on receiving thrower His father was one of the province’s first Sikh immigrants, arraying in 1906 to work in the forest industry. In earlier years, Indian immigrants were not allowed to bring their wives and families olive with them, so many returned annually to India. When Singh and his mother finally joined his father, there were still relatively, few Indo Canadians in Vancouver They went regularly to the gurdwara, and continuously struggled for improved working conditions and rights for immigrant laborers. It was a struggle that Singh joined as a young man, first getting involved in the lobby for franchizement for Indo Canadians in the late 1940s, and later flying to Ottawa as a Vancouver community leader to push for higher immigration levels for Indian nationals. He has remained involved in his community in the last few years and is a strong believer in multiculturalism. “It works just great.”
Article extracted from this publication >> December 23, 1994
