KITCHENER, On: The annual Sikh Remembrance Day ceremony was held on Sunday, November 7 at the military grave of Canadian World War I hero, Private Buckam Singh, in Kitchener, Ontario. It is the only military grave in Canada of a Sikh soldier from the World Wars.
“Sikhs have a long tradition of military service,” said Sandeep Singh Brar, Curator of SikhMuseum.com and the chief organizer of the annual event. “The Sikh community has organized this Remembrance Ceremony every year at the historic location of Private Buckam Singh’s military grave to remember the 117,000 Canadian soldiers like Singh that have died since we became a nation and the 83,000 Sikh soldiers of the British Indian Army that died in two World Wars,” said Brar.
This year’s program featured youth from the community participating in the ceremony as well as students from the new Private Buckam Singh Public School in Brampton, Ontario. COVID-19 safety precautions were carefully followed at the ceremony attended by members of the Canadian Armed Forces, Police Services, Royal Canadian Legion branches, veterans and elected officials from Federal, Provincial and municipal governments.
The ceremony is the largest annual gatherings of Sikh soldiers and veterans in North America. This year’s ceremony was live streamed and the program can be viewed at this link: https://bit.ly/3kfw8zt
Buckam Singh came to B.C. from Punjab in 1907 at age 14 and eventually moved to Toronto in 1912/1913. He enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the spring of 1915. He’s one of the earliest known Sikhs living in Ontario at the time as well as one of only 9 Sikhs that we know of that served with Canadian troops in WWI.
Private Buckam Singh served with the 20th Canadian Infantry Battalion in the battlefields of Flanders during 1916. Here this brave hero was wounded twice in two separate battles. One of the interesting discoveries included the fact that after being shot Private Buckam Singh received treatment at a hospital run by one of Canada’s most famous soldier poets the Doctor Lt. Colonel John McCrae.
While recovering from his wounds in England Private Buckam Singh contracted tuberculosis and spent his final days in a Kitchener Ontario military hospital, dying at age 25 in 1919.
His grave in Kitchener Ontario is the only known WWI Sikh Canadian Soldier’s military grave in Canada. While he never got to see his family again and died forgotten almost 100 years ago, his heroic story is now being reclaimed and celebrated every year. Sikhs have a long martial tradition that extends back 400 years to the time of the 6th Sikh Guru, Guru Hargobind who said that Sikhs had to be both saints and soldiers.
Over 65,000 Sikh soldiers fought in WWI as part of the British Army and over 300,000 Sikhs fought alongside the allies in WWII.
