Book On Lumber Mogul Asa Johal!

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Pioneer Sikh lumber mogul Asa Singh Johal’s biography titled Asa Johal and Terminal Forest Products will be releasing in October and we got an early copy this week. Looking forward to reading Johal’s story and the lumber mills that defined our community’s long labour history in BC. My own brush with Terminal Forest goes back to my early journalism days in the mid 1990s when we reported on the mill’s labour strike and wrote against one of its non-Punjabi managers Albert Kovlaske. The reporting upset the Easter European manager, who subsequently sued The Link for defamation. But we were right in our reporting and we won the case. Interestingly, Kovlaske, who was close to Asa Johal, has a quote on the back cover of the Biography. Also my recent feature comedy-drama DESI ANGREJ: The Fusion Generation was partly based on a family similar to this real-life Lumber Mogul Johal family.

****By R. Paul Dhillon