Monday, May 28, 2012

More "honour" in Canada's Sikhest community

Agent 3 says he can remember when Chinguacousy Township, in Peel Region, northwest of Toronto, was all farmland -- a nice, quiet, prosperous, agricultural community. Oh, and white too. Of course, he says, that was before Pierre Trudeau's ultra-Liberal government opened the floodgates of immigration from "south Asia".

Today, the eastern part of the old township is now the eastern part of the City of Brampton. It has developed into a "planned community" which at one time bore the name "Bramalea", after the developer who began its transformation into a Canadian Levittown. Well, errr... not Canadian exactly. The area in question, now officially called "Springdale", is more popularly and accurately known as "Sikhdale".

Where there are Sikhs, it seems, there are, from time to time, "honour killings". Not that these crimes are confined to "the Indo-Canadian community", of course. They are common enough in other immigrant communities, such as the small but growing Afghan-Canadian community. Readers will remember Agent 3's reports on last year's sensational Shafia murder case.

Today, a Sikhdale woman is dead and her husband under arrest following an early morning "domestic incident". The oh-so-PC Toronto Star did not give any names or reference to the ethnicity of the deceased or the accused. All it said was "There are no names being released as police attempt to notify the woman’s next of kin..." Hm. Not much reading between the lines was required to guess that those next of kin were not 1000 miles away from the Punjab.

The Toronto Sun laid any doubt to rest. It quoted next-door neighbour Sweety Shergill as saying she "didn’t know the family well, but knew the victim was from the Luddhiana district of Punjab, India". Bingo.

Agent 3 will keep us updated on the progress of the case. Don't be surprised if the motive has something to do with "family honour".

Footnote: Readers familiar with the ways of Indian immigrants would not have been surprised to read this paragraph, from the Sun's report: Shergill said a husband and wife lived in the house with their two children as well as the husband’s nephew. Another couple lived in the basement, she said.

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