Kanwaljit ‘Daisy’ Bains knows the importance of having a solid community around her.
When she came to Canada in the '80s, she had that support built in and now she’s working to make sure others have that same feeling.
“When I came, I already had a family here, but I missed my family back home too,” says Bains about her move to Canada. “Every Saturday and Sunday was Gurdwara Day.”
“There’s going to be prayers, there’s going to be food and you’re going to meet the family,” she says. “It was nice, and my kids were also involved, and it’s the same for these kids coming to Timmins.”
That feeling led to her and her husband opening the Gurdwara Sikh Sangat of Timmins in January of this year.
The Gurdwara is not just a place where Sikhs can worship; it is a place anyone can seek help if they are in need and a source of comfort for those who are new to Timmins.
“We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to serve the community, not just my community but the community of Timmins,” says Bains. “Canada has given us a lot, and this is our moment to give it back.”
She says she met so many young people from India and that they needed someone to help them find comfort in their new home.
Because her husband wears a turban, she says he stood out to a lot of these young people as someone who was safe.
“To them, he’s like a father figure, because that’s how you look at a person with a turban,” she says. “So that’s how we were approached.”
The couple took on the role as an auntie and uncle to many of these young people, and the desire to help and make sure they were comfortable grew, leading to the eventual opening of the Sikh temple.
Since the opening, she says many of the students that they have helped have taken over a lot of the day-to-day tasks that go into running the Gurdwara.
“Now the kids are managing it,” says Bains. “They come in at any given time they come in and they help.”
She says she feels a sense of responsibility because she understands the comfort having the Gurdwara can give to parents back in India.
“This is a place they can trust,” says Bains. “They put all their faith and trust into the Gurdwara and hope for the best for their children.”
Her own children studied abroad and she says that knowing there was a community around them made the distance easier to deal with.
“Every time we visit somewhere we asked, is there a Gurdwara there,” says Bains.
She said that knowing there was a place of worship and community close to her children when they were far away was a comfort, and it’s one she wants parents sending their children to Timmins to have too.
“We have all these newcomers and students in the middle of nowhere, where this is all so new to them, they’ve never seen snow or cold, they’re in a completely new country,” says Bains. “A place of comfort is much needed.”
Bains children have noticed the work their parents have put into the temple and the community in Timmins and her husband put it very succinctly to her.
“He says ‘I did my duty to our kids, now these kids need me', and I support him, and I think the same way,” says Bains. “These children in Timmins need us.”
