Kids Corner

1984

Bridge People

SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN

 

 

 



Do I Belong? Two Sikh-Canadian authors -- Shauna Singh Baldwin and Priscila Uppal -- joined other award-winning writers to share their stories in a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) series on 'Belonging' to explore: Where do I belong? How do I belong? Why do I belong? When do I belong? Who do I belong to?

The following is Shauna Singh Baldwin’s essay.

 

 

 

BRIDGE PEOPLE

My parents arrived in Canada on a snowy February day in 1962.

My father had a Masters in Business from University of Wisconsin Madison, and experience working at two multinational companies. When he applied for jobs in Montreal, he was told he could have one, if he would take off his turban and cut his hair.

That wasn’t unusual, it still happens to Sikh men.

But a bridge person stepped in -- a Jewish man, Len Gelfand. Uncle Len, as I called him in Punjabi fashion. It took Uncle Len two years to persuade Canadian National Railways to hire my father, turban and all. A WWII veteran, Len understood the dangers of exclusion, the importance of refusing exclusion, of demanding to belong, and demanding that others belong as well.

Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome opened in Montreal in 1967, a visual symbol of the power of synergetics from connections for “Man and His World.” I was watching Captain Kirk going in search of aliens, while my father’s white turban and Uncle Len’s crew cut head leaned over our kitchen table, drawing up two lists.

One for me to carry in my Red River coat pocket: names of friends I should contact if my parents were ever deported – people with multiple allegiances. The second for my mum: items for a runaway bag that would stand in the closet beside the front door to our apartment. From the history of his people, Len could advise us what our runaway suitcase should hold.

In 1968, after my brother was born, my parents packed suitcases for India. They wanted him to wear a turban, and believed India could better accommodate visual differences than Canada.

However, after the State-sponsored Anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984 in India, my brother removed his turban and cut his beautiful long hair.

Welcomes can change to exclusion and violence in an instant. All it takes is permission and inaction from an authority.

Uncle Len visited us in India. The caste system and the high value Indians placed on genealogy irked the old socialist.

In 1985, he and my father split on the issue of my marriage. My father could not figure out why Len would encourage me to “go astray,” and Len could not figure out why my father believed he had the right to decide what his daughter could do with her body and her life. They didn’t speak for years.

When Len was dying, I asked my father to call him. My non-Sikh husband and I had been married 26 years. Perhaps we are all created different to teach us how to love.

My father called; they made their peace.

Len transformed our family’s story of exclusion to one of inclusion. He lived the idea that our Guru advocated, that if we want inclusion for ourselves we must fight for belonging for all.

So here’s to Len and bridge people of all faiths, in all times.


[Herself an acclaimed and award-winning novelist, Shauna Singh Baldwin has sat on the jury for the Governor-General Literary Award for Fiction. She is currently on the jury for the 2014 Giller Prize. Her 2000 novel, “What the Body Remembers” won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.]

[Courtesy: CBC Books]
October 31, 2014

Conversation about this article

1: Harinder Singh (Punjab), October 31, 2014, 8:42 AM.

Shauna must open a school of writing in Punjab. We need to learn from her the art and science of writing.

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