British Columbia gives South Asians the vote after forty years

Who: Sikhs and other South Asians in British Columbia, with the Khalsa Diwan Society and the community behind them; the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the International Woodworkers of America and the Canadian Trades and Labour Council, which backed them; and the government of Premier John Hart.

What: South Asians lost the vote in 1907. The Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada's timeline says Sikhs lost the right to vote in Vancouver and were excluded from federal voting by default. Carol Lee explains in BC Studies that a clause of the Dominion Elections Act disfranchised in federal elections anyone barred from the provincial vote on racial grounds, so British Columbia's decisions carried federal weight. In March 1943 a twelve-man delegation that included Khalsa Diwan Society members such as Nagindar Singh Gill met Premier Hart, who would not consider the matter until after the war. In 1945 the Legislature gave the vote to Japanese, Chinese, "Hindus" (the period's word for South Asians) and native Indians who had served in the Canadian forces, but a bill to enfranchise East Indians failed by 18 votes to 21. In November 1946 representatives of Chinese Canadians and East Indians appeared before a special committee on the elections act, and the committee recommended votes for them but not for Japanese Canadians.

The amended Elections Act came before the Legislature on 2 April 1947 and passed unanimously, according to the Abbotsford News; the Sikh Heritage Museum timeline says it was enacted into law that day. Federal voting rights followed automatically, and the municipal franchise followed in September 1947. Japanese Canadians were enfranchised later, in 1949.

Where: British Columbia, Canada. The Legislative Assembly decided the question, but because of the Dominion Elections Act the change reached federal elections too.

Why it mattered: The Sikh Heritage Museum timeline says Sikhs had been barred from the political process in Canada for forty years. In 1950 Naranjan Singh Grewal became the first Sikh elected to any level of government in Canada, to the city council of Mission, British Columbia. The exhibit "(Dis)Enfranchisement 1907-1947: The Forty-Year Struggle for the Vote" opened at the Sikh Heritage Museum at the Gur Sikh Temple in Abbotsford on 19 February 2017.