How Canada exoticised its early Indian migrants

On a summer day in 1942, in the small settlement of Fraser Mills near Vancouver, an Indian family prepared to cremate a young woman. Part of a minuscule community working in a local sawmill, the family stood out in a country that, at the time, highly restricted immigration from non-European nations. As a group of Indians gathered for the rites of Mrs. Assa Singh, they felt intimidated by what a local wire report described as “a crowd of curious white spectators” who had assembled to witness the private ceremony.

“The unseemly behaviour of the onlookers so offended the Hindus that they later performed their funeral services in the early hours of the morning with as much secrecy as possible,” the wire report said.

Despite the intrusion, the community handled the “simple and impressive” ceremony with dignity, the report noted. The deceased was “dressed in her best clothes and wrapped in an orange pastel silk robe”, the traditional colour for “women whose husbands survive them”. “Her body was laid on a pyre of wood, about four feet high, which was set ablaze by the officiating priest, Kartar Singh, as forty Hindu men and women mourners stood by with hands clasped in silent prayer.”

The ceremony was treated...

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