Mayo Singh Manhas

Mayo Singh Manhas was a Sikh sawmill owner who founded the mill town of Paldi on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and named it after his birthplace in Punjab. South Asian Canadian Heritage says he was born Mayan Singh and took the name Mayo in Canada. He built a business that hired immigrants of many origins at a time of widespread discrimination, the Lake Cowichan Gazette writes, and the Sikh temple at Paldi opened on 1 July 1919.

Key moments

• Arrival: the Lake Cowichan Gazette says he reached California in 1904, aged 18, following his older brother Ganea and his cousin Doman, who were already in British Columbia. South Asian Canadian Heritage says he left his village in 1906 and came to Canada by way of San Francisco. He worked on the railway and in mills, and lived in bunkhouses with other single Punjabi men.
• First World War: many mills shut as men went to war. He gathered twelve to fourteen men to pool their money and lease the Mesachie mill, which became highly profitable. With the profits he bought about 1,300 acres that became Paldi (South Asian Canadian Heritage).
• 1914 to 1918: the sources date the start of the business differently. The Gazette says Mayo Bros. Lumber Co. was incorporated in 1914 and reached a peak payroll of 600. Wikipedia says the town was founded in 1916 by Mayo, his brother Ganea and his cousin Doman Singh. The Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada dates the Paldi sawmill of the Mayo Lumber Company to 1917, and South Asian Canadian Heritage dates his logging operations there to 1918.
• 1 July 1919: the Paldi Sikh temple, built by the Mayo Lumber Company, opened on Dominion Day. The Gazette says Paldi became home to the largest Sikh congregation in Canada up to that time.
• 1923: South Asians in British Columbia ran seven logging camps, six lumber companies, two shingle factories, 25 farms, 60 fuel dealerships and two grocery stores (South Asian Canadian Heritage).
• 1933: the mill burned down, a loss the South Asian Canadian Heritage timeline calls tragic for the South Asian community.
• 1955: he died. The Gazette says he was 64, and that he gave to a hospital and an auditorium in India, to St. Joseph's Hospital in 1934 and to a University of Victoria scholarship. South Asian Canadian Heritage says his mill collapsed soon after his death.

Wikipedia says the town was first called Mayo and was renamed Paldi in 1936, after the village in Hoshiarpur district that the three founders came from, because the post office saw confusion with Mayo, Yukon. Paldi was a mixed community of East Indian, Japanese, Chinese and European families and its population peaked at about 1,500 in the 1950s. Its post office and school closed in 1969, and the Paldi gurdwara was designated a historic site by the Cowichan Valley Regional District in 2014.

Remembered for: founding a multi-ethnic mill town around a Sikh temple, on Vancouver Island.