Reasons For Moving
The Indo-Canadian community started around the beginning of the 20th century. The pioneers were men, mostly Sikhs from the Punjab; many were veterans of the British Army. In 1897 a contingent of Sikh soldiers participated in the parade to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in London, England. On their subsequent journey home, they visited the western coast of Canada, primarily British Columbia which at the time was very sparsely populated and the Canadian government wanted to settle in order to prevent a takeover of the territory by the United States
Upon retiring from the army, some of these men found their pensions to be inadequate, it was dangerous in India or else their lands were in the clutches of money-lenders. They decided to try their fortunes in the countries they had visited. They joined an Indian diaspora, which included people from Burma through Malaysia, the East Indies, the Philippines, and China. They were able to get work in the police force and some were employed as night-watchmen by British firms. Others started small businesses of their own or drove taxis. These were modest beginnings but they had bigger ideas. At that time thousands of Chinese and Japanese migrants were going to Canada and the United States and sending substantial sums of money back to their families at home. The Sikhs, who had seen Canada, recommended the New World to fellow Sikh people who were in a position to venture out and seek new fortunes. They were guaranteed jobs by agents of big Canadian companies like the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Hudson's Bay Company. Overcoming their initial reluctance to go to these countries due to the treatment of East Asians by the white population, many young men chose to go, having been assured that they would not meet the same fate. They were British subjects; Canada was a part of the British Empire; and the British Empire owed much to the Sikhs. Queen Victoria had proclaimed in 1858 that throughout the empire the people of India that they would enjoy "equal privileges with white people without discrimination of colour, creed or race."
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Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons and/or moving:
“Could truth perhaps be a woman who has reasons for not permitting her reasons to be seen? Could her name perhaps be—to speak Greek—Baubo?... Oh, those Greeks! They understood how to live: to do that it is necessary to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore the appearance, to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically
digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one. The
knowledge of reasons and their conclusions constitutes abstract, that of causes and their effects, and of the laws of nature, natural science.”
—John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871)
“Photographs may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)