photo: Cowichan Valley Museum & Archives 1997.2.7.5.
One man's global village
From 1917 onward, immigrant businessman Mayo Singh built a multicultural community in his mill town on southeast Vancouver Island, fostering racial tolerance in Paldi during an era of considerable prejudice in Canada.
In the late 1920s, any visitor to Mayo would have sensed immediately that this was no ordinary Vancouver Island mill town. Yes, it had the typical trappings: a sawmill and company office; bunkhouses and cookhouses for single men, bungalows for workers with families; a general store, post office, and school. But in their midst were two prominent and surprising structures: a brightly painted, two-storey Sikh temple enclosed by a fence, and a less flamboyant but clearly designated Japanese temple.
In many ways, the early 20th-century was an era painfully marked by racial intolerance in Canada. And yet, in a period of punitive head taxes for Chinese immigrants, denial of entry for many immigrants’ wives and children, and other transgressions, a multi-ethnic community thrived on southern Vancouver Island. Between the first and second world wars, people from India, Japan, China, Britain, and other European countries coexisted amicably in Mayo—renamed Paldi in 1936.
Read more in the current issue of British Columbia Magazine
