From the fields to the rinks: how Canada’s Sikh community is embracing all things ice hockey
- ‘Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi Edition’ shot to fame in 2016
- Canada’s large Sikh population gravitating towards all forms of the game
Like any regular Canadian boy growing up, Harpreet Pandher was raised on a healthy dose of Hockey Night in Canada – the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship programme that showcases the nation’s most famous pastime.
His father was a rabid fan of Wayne Gretzky, who shone as part of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Edmonton Oilers dynasty in the early 1980s.
“Growing up in Vancouver, it wasn’t until I got into kindergarten that I learned there was a local team, the Vancouver Canucks, because my dad was such a Gretzky nut,” Pandher said.
The sport of hockey has been deeply embedded within Canadian culture for well over a century, and now a new enclave of citizens are adding a new flavour.
The 37-year-old Pandher, whose father and mother came from separate areas of the Punjab region in India in the 1970s, is part of a wave of Sikhs that have migrated to Canada over the past few decades in various diasporas, and have embraced hockey in an interesting form of cultural assimilation. It is estimated there are around half a million Sikhs living in Canada.
