Thousands gather for Khalsa Day parade Canada

In spite of Sunday’s gloomy grey skies, Toronto was ablaze with bright blues and oranges as thousands of festively-attired Sikhs celebrated the birth of their religion and its values of peace, harmony and kindness.

“It was nice to come out and see the unity,” said Brampton’s Sonia Pabla, who attended the Khalsa Day celebrations with her husband and two children. "This type of atmosphere is what we mostly are all about: peaceful togetherness."

Toronto’s annual Khalsa Day parade celebrates the birth of Sikhism in 1699 and Sikhs from as far as Montreal and Windsor travelled to join friends and family in the GTA. The day kicked off with traditional music, hymns and prayer at the CNE grounds before taking to Lake Shore Boulevard for a parade.

Police estimate some 12,000 people attended the parade and another 30,000 gathered at Queen’s Park for the event's conclusion; organizers, however, claim a total attendance of some 100,000.

Sunday’s festivities were in stark contrast to recent violence plaguing the local Sikh community. A prominent lawyer was stabbed outside a Brampton temple April 12, allegedly with a kirpan, the ceremonial dagger Sikhs are required to wear at all times as an outward symbol of their religion. Two weeks later, a brawl broke out at another temple in Brampton where machetes, hammers and construction knives were brandished.

The incidents were on the minds of some of the celebrants.

“To be honest, I’m really ashamed of what happened,” said Amar Singh, 26, who travelled from Guelph to attend the parade. He says he only uses his kirpan for ceremonial purposes, the last time being a year ago when he dipped the dagger into prasad, which he described as a treat made of sweet flour, clarified butter and water. “If you dip the kirpan into it, the guru eats it,” he explained.

But for event organizers, the destructive behaviour of just a handful of individuals does not represent the greater Sikh community.

“This year, amongst all the negativity, what we came out with was such a positive aspect of Sikhism and that’s what you saw firsthand,” said event coordinator Manjit Parmar, who is with the Ontario Sikh and Gurdwara Council.“We represented what Sikhs are (today).”

Other OSGC event organizers also did not want to discuss the kirpan issue at all.

“We’re not talking about these things today. We are celebrating,” said Beant S. Charma.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, federal NDP leader Jack Layton, federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and immigration minister Jason Kenney were among those attending; all covered their heads with saffron head scarves, or romalas, as a gesture of respect. Blue — the colour of meditation — was also prominently displayed by Khalsa Day participants.

There was some speculation McGuinty — who ignited outrage earlier this month by welcoming Indian minister Kamal Nath to Ontario, a man accused of participating in the 1984 massacre of more than 3,000 Sikhs in the wake of the assassination of Indian leader Indira Gandhi — might skip out on this year’s festivities

In his address to the crowd, McGuinty alluded to the incident but did not issue an apology, as some members of the Sikh community had hoped.

“Just a few weeks ago, I conveyed my sympathies to my fellow Ontarians who still feel the pain of the atrocities that occurred in 1984,” McGuinty said. “Thousands of lives were lost and that pain is still felt very deeply today. In Ontario, we are thankful that together we condemn extremism and intolerance and we never forget those who lost their lives.”

Jagdip Grewal of Brampton would have liked to hear the premier apologize for welcoming Nath to Ontario, adding the incident had left him “disgusted.”

“That’s like inviting someone who was involved in other war crimes, like a Nazi or something . . . that’s how bad it was for us,” he said. “I was hoping McGuinty would go down that path and apologize but it just didn’t happen.”

But Grewal, who celebrated Khalsa Day with his wife and baby, still had fun at the celebrations, saying he especially enjoyed Layton’s attempts at speaking to the crowd in Punjabi.

“It was good,” he said of the day. “My newborn, he’s almost three months, so it’s his first parade.”

Toronto’s Khalsa Day celebration has grown from 2,000 people since its inauguration in 1986 to become Toronto’s third-largest parade after Pride and Caribana.

Charity is an important component of the Sikh faith and prasad, samosas, sweet rice and hot beverages were distributed free among the crowd as they trudged through the rain under umbrellas and plastic raincoats. Donations for charity were also collected.

Source: Thestar.com