Khalsa Diwan Society

Traces to the Khalsa Diwan Society founded in 1906, which built the first Sikh gurdwara in North America at 1866 West 2nd Avenue, Vancouver, inaugurated January 1908\. The society played a central role in the Komagata Maru affair (1914), in which Canadian authorities turned away a ship of Indian (mostly Sikh) migrants under discriminatory immigration laws. The congregation moved into its current, much larger home on Ross Street in 1970, timed to Guru Nanak's 500th birth anniversary — a landmark building designed by architect Arthur Erickson (who traveled to Agra and Amritsar for inspiration) to evoke a lotus rising from water.