[4] Additional British Indians, soldiers stationed in East Asia, including Hong Kong and Shanghai, traveled after the Boxer Rebellion period.

[21] The second Gurdwara to be built in Canada was in 1908 in Kitsilano (Vancouver), aimed at serving a growing number of Punjabi Sikh settlers who worked at nearby sawmills along False Creek at the time.

The first large contingent of South Asians first arrived in 1904; nearly all were Punjabi Sikhs originating from the Chinese cities of Guangzhou (Canton), Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

[24] Small towns on Vancouver Island including Paldi were prominent sites for early South Asian settlement (primarily Punjabi Sikhs) that revolved around the sawmill industry, while a minority also found employment in agriculture in the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford.

Nevertheless, many Indians continued to arrive on the shores of British Columbia through 1908; in effect, this renewed the hostile feeling of the Canadian people towards East and South Asians.

[50] South Asians continued the attempt to immigrate to Canada; the Komagata Maru Incident, involving a ship with 376 Punjabi Sikh, Muslim and Hindus being denied entry into British Columbia, occurred in 1914.

[50] By 1923 Vancouver became the primary cultural, social, and religious centre of British Columbia Indo-Canadians and it had the largest Indian-origin population of any city in North America.

[66] Victoria became another centre of Indo-Canadian business activity and members of the ethnic group also settled Coombs, Duncan, Fraser Mills, New Westminster, and Ocean Falls.

Sihota, who was born in Duncan, British Columbia in 1955, ran as the NDP Candidate in the riding of Esquimalt-Port Renfrew two years after being involved in municipal politics, as he was elected as an Alderman for the City of Esquimalt in 1984.

[84] While wide-scale urbanization of the South Asian community had been ongoing for decades, the most statistically significant populations nonetheless continued to exist across rural parts of the province through the late 20th century; a legacy of previous waves of immigration and settlement patterns that existed earlier in the 20th century, as Punjabi Sikh Canadians and new immigrants continued to seek employment in the provincial forestry sector at sawmills throughout the island and interior.

Eventually the British Columbian forest sector collapsed in the early 2000s; this prompted many South Asians - mainly Punjabi Sikhs - residing in sawmill-based towns throughout the interior to relocate to urban areas.

In terms of ethnic origins, of BC's Indo-Canadians, 183,650 were East Indian, 16,565 were Punjabi, 6,270 were Pakistani, 6,160 were South Asian, n.i.e., 2,295 were Sri Lankan, 1,185 were Tamil, 560 were Bangladeshi, 450 were Sinhalese, 305 were Nepali, 295 were Bengali, 250 were Goan, 205 were Gujarati, and 55 were Kashmiri.

According to a 2022 study conducted by Statistics Canada, British Columbians with South Asian ancestry will grow to between 807,000 and 1.1 million by 2041 or 13.4 to 14.7 percent of the provincial population overall.

[99] Due to the prominence of Punjabi in British Columbia, some provincial and federal institutions in some municipalities across the province have literature and office signage using the Gurmukhi script.

In 1971, the Canadian government introduced a policy of multiculturalism, and this resulted in the South Asian community establishing urban places of worship using traditional architecture styles.

[1] Similarly, a large minority of British Columbians are second generation, numbering 1,068,595 people and forming 21.74% of the total provincial population as of the 2021 Canadian census.

[1] According to the 2021 census, regional districts in British Columbia with the highest proportions of South Asian Canadians included Fraser Valley (16.9%), Metro Vancouver (14.2%), Fraser−Fort George (4.3%), Okanagan−Similkameen (3.9%), Thompson−Nicola (3.6%), Squamish−Lillooet (3.5%), Capital (3.4%), Central Okanagan (3.4%), Peace River (2.6%), Kitimat−Stikine (2.4%), and Nanaimo (2.1%).

[148] As per the 2021 census, metropolitan areas in British Columbia with large South Asian Canadian communities include Vancouver (369,295), Abbotsford-Mission (49,835), Victoria (13,715), Kelowna (7,420), Kamloops (4,420), Prince George (3,905), Chilliwack (3,275), Nanaimo (3,175), Squamish (1,530), and Vernon (1,305).

Sikh temples exist in Campbell River, Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Lake Cowichan, Duncan, and most notably in the historic settlement of Paldi.

A millwright and union official, and known as a sportsman and philanthropist as well as a lumberman, he eventually owned six sawmills and was active in community affairs serving on the boards or as chairman of a variety of organizations, and was instrumental in helping create Mission's municipal tree farm.

A humanitarian with strong pro-labour beliefs despite his role as a mill-owner, he ran unsuccessfully for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (the precursor of today's New Democratic Party) in the provincial election of 1956.

[245] Irene Bloemraad, author of "Diversity and Elected Officials in the City of Vancouver," wrote in 2009 that Indo-Canadians from British Columbia are demographically "over-represented" in the Canadian Parliament and that they had "made remarkable inroads to politics" in the period between 1999 and 2009.

[248] The Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society of Prince George, founded by Baljit Sethi, serves Indo-Canadian communities in the northern part of the province.

In addition the Abbotsford Addictions Centre, in conjunction with the police department, offers an Info-Canadian support group available in English, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu.

[255] In 1929 Perry wrote that Sikh men in Victoria were "almost without exception well and comfortably dressed, wearing modern Canadian clothes" with the only items that were unique being the bangle and turban.

[257] The mid-to-late 20th century second wave of Indo-Canadian Sikh immigrants had tendencies to acquire material goods such as automobiles and residences and to engage in upward mobility.

[258] By the 1960s a group of Canada-born people with a lack of fluency in Punjabi and a feeling of confusion between the two cultures had formed; they were shaped tremendously by exposure to Canadian mass media.

[259] Ram P. Srivastava of the University of Calgary wrote that young Indo-Canadians of the 1960s had only limited control from their parents and were "closer to other teenagers in their love of music, adventure, romance, and excitement, than to their own traditional East Indian values.

[269] Ames and Inglis stated that land ownership was still a trait prized by British Columbia Sikhs; young men were expected to buy property with funds they accumulated over the years, and parents had a habit of giving houses to their newlywed children or allowing them to live in them rent-free.

In 1976 Lal stated that the book was outdated due to new evidence and that it "focuses" its attention on the subject "in a rather general way", but that it was still "the most important single work on the East Indians.