Naranjan Singh Grewal
ਨਰੰਜਨ ਸਿੰਘ ਗਰੇਵਾਲ
Won a seat on the city council of Mission, British Columbia, in 1950, recorded as the first Sikh elected to any level of government in Canada.
Naranjan Singh Grewal won a seat on the city council of Mission, British Columbia, in 1950. The Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada's timeline records him as the first Sikh elected to any level of government in Canada. The same timeline says that British Columbia gave South Asians the provincial vote on 2 April 1947 and municipal voting rights in September that year, ending a disenfranchisement that began about forty years earlier, in 1907.
Wikipedia's article on Mission spells his name Grewall and calls him the first Indo-Canadian elected to public office there, citing the Mission Museum. Its article on Sikhism in Canada says he ran for a seat on Mission's board of commissioners and calls him the first Sikh in Canada and North America elected to public office. The sources found give no dates of birth or death and nothing else about his life or his time on council.
Remembered for: being the first Sikh elected to government in Canada, three years after Sikhs in British Columbia won the vote in municipal elections.
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Sources
- Timeline of Sikhs in Canada (1947 and 1950 entries), Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada. shmc.ca
- Mission, British Columbia (citing Lovleen Mahil, Indo-Canadian Community in Mission, Mission Museum; used because nothing better loaded), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
- Sikhism in Canada (used because nothing better loaded), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org