Stanley, Harbour Green parks proposed as sites for Komagata Maru memorial in Vancouver
A permanent monument to commemorate the Komagata Maru incident could land at Stanley Park or Harbour Green Park.
The Vancouver park board is seeking public feedback on two proposed sites for the memorial to the 1914 event, which saw more than 300 passengers of South Asian descent denied entry to Canada due to a racist federal law.
Both sites offer views of the mooring location of the Komagata Maru in Burrard Inlet.
In Stanley Park, the site under consideration is the area between the Nine O’clock Gun and Brockton Point.
“This location not only offers South-eastern views towards the Komagata Maru mooring location but it also does not affect the setting of the existing features, monuments or sculptures in the vicinity,” reads a background document on the park board’s website.
In Harbour Green Park, the site being looked at is the grassy area at its east end.
Vision Vancouver park commissioner Raj Hundal told the Straight in May 2009 that he'd prefer to see the monument go up in Stanley Park.
The Komagata Maru monument was proposed by the Khalsa Diwan Society, which has secured funding for the project from the federal government’s Community Historical Recognition Program.
According to the minutes of the October 7 meeting of the park board’s planning and environment committee, the monument is targeted for completion by March 31, 2012.
Lees + Associates, which worked on the Air India memorial in Stanley Park, will lead the process that consists of community consultation, site evaluation, and concept design and review.
Park board staff told the planning and environment committee on October 7 that they expect to bring forward recommendations on the project in early 2011.
Public comments are being accepted until January 3, 2011. They can be submitted by e-mail or snail mail.
Commemorative monument to the Komagata Maru Incident
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Comments
4 Comments
RonS
Dec 2, 2010 at 7:18pm
Before we erect a monument to the East Indians who illlegally tried to enter Canada and were refused, we should erect one to all the natives we, the whites, have interened in church run schools, to natives held on reserves for years without any opportunity to get a job. Discriminated against for not just the last centuary but the previous one as well. It's fine the East Indians are being considered for one but in my opinion they should get in line.
Randy Jogger
Dec 2, 2010 at 9:55pm
There is already a Komagata Maru memorial at Portal Park on West Hastings. It sits directly across from where the ship would have been anchored, and was unveiled I believe by the Park Board in the 1980's.
How about making that one better rather than filling in another piece of Stanley Park?
N'est ce pas?
Dec 3, 2010 at 12:19pm
"A growing population of Indians, primarily of the Sikh religion, were also required to abide by immigration laws starting in 1908, despite the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire. This culminated in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which most of 376 immigrants on the Komagata Maru, most of them from the Punjab in India were not permitted to disembark because they had not complied with immigration laws that required that they come by a continuous passage from their home country." - Wikipedia
Why a memorial?
Ranjit
Dec 7, 2010 at 7:24pm
The biggest law is humantarian law.
Canada is land of immigrants. I do not not why some are considered illegal and others legal. We should take some directions from2012 movie.
I do not totally support monuments but instead of opposing any idea(which is a typical reaction of a common man), I would like to request my friends to propose something that is constructive and helps us to teach our future generations how to live in a community which an be as large as universe.