The
Maritime Sikh Society
The
Maritime Sikh Society
10 Parkhill Road, Halifax, NS,
Canada, B3P 1R3
Ph : (902)-477-0008
Lawyer finds success beyond cultural roadblocks
Saturday June 29, 2002
BRIAN CALDWELL
FOR GRAND RIVER LIFE; The Record
Order of Canada recipient T. Sher Singh stands in front of painting depicting
Sikh history at his Guelph home.
It was the early 1970s and, after a string of interviews, the immigrant from
India had just landed a job as an executive with an international brokerage firm
based in Toronto. All he had to do to firm up the "fat salary" and
start six months of training in Los Angeles was to fill out a few documents down
in the personnel office.
Then the guy in charge, the paper-pusher who could make it all official,
mentioned one last problem. It was about the turban on Singh's head and the full
beard on his face. They had to go.
"I sat down and said, 'I don't think you understand,"' recalled Singh,
52, his beard now grey, but still proudly intact. " 'This is my faith and
it is inseparable.'
"And he looked at me and said 'Yeah, yeah, I understand. Just take it off.'
"
It might have been a defining moment for Singh, the incident of insensitivity
and injustice that raised his ire and stoked his passion for civil rights.
But while he went on to become a lawyer, prominent Sikh spokesman, social
activist as well as a travel columnist in Grand River Life -- a busy blend of
roles that recently earned him an appointment to the Order of Canada for
volunteerism -- it didn't quite happen like that.
Instead of getting mad, Singh calmly walked out of the personnel office with his
head held high.
"Never in all those years did I regret it and say 'Shucks, I should have
taken that job and done what that guy wanted,' " he said. "There are
certain things you don't compromise on.''
It would be years, in fact, before Singh began drawing on his own experiences of
racial and religious intolerance to help fight for others in courtrooms, at
public forums and in print.
But in the meantime, that nonchalant slight had an important impact of a
different kind as he learned to overcome obstacles with hard work and
determination.
Instead of becoming a stock broker, Singh put his degrees in English literature
in a drawer and worked at a string of odd jobs that never paid more than
one-quarter of the salary he passed up to keep his turban and remain an
observant Sikh.
He did manual labour. He was an office clerk. And after he got married and
started a family, he delivered thousands of Toronto newspapers to pay the bills.
"I had a car, I had routes and I would run non-stop for five hours every
morning, from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m.,'' Singh said. "Then I needed more money, so
I started delivering the Bargain Hunter and Buy and Sell in the afternoon.''
It wasn't half-bad, actually, as he earned enough to buy a condominium and
indulge interests in art and the theatre. Making it on his own terms also gave
him confidence that would later prove invaluable. Still, the ink-stained
entrepreneur had a nagging worry as his young daughter grew up -- what would he
tell her when she was old enough to ask what he did for a living?
Before she got the chance, Singh was injured in a traffic accident and used his
time recovering at home to study for entrance exams to law school.
Educated at a Christian school in India, he was fluent in English when his
family immigrated to Canada in 1971. He thought law would make good use of his
communication skills.
Wrongly charged with hit-and-run while working as a courier, Singh had also
successfully defended himself during an ordeal that dragged on for years and
made him appreciate the difficulties other immigrants face. Then approaching 30,
he found the law to be a comfortable fit. It gave him a "rush" to
stand up and argue in a courtroom.
When he was called to the bar, by then divorced and raising his daughter as a
single father, Singh became the only orthodox Sikh lawyer in the country. From
there, one thing simply led to another.
His profession gave him a kind of instant credibility when a series of events --
the Golden Temple massacre, the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, the Air India bombing -- thrust Sikhs into the spotlight in the
mid-1980s.
And though he had never been formally chosen and didn't particularly want the
job, Singh found himself increasingly quoted as a spokesman for the Sikh
community.
Anne Lowthian, executive director of the World Sikh Organization in Canada, said
there was resentment in some quarters of the 400,000-strong group as his profile
increased.
But she said Singh earned widespread respect by doing a bang-up job of
demonstrating, not just espousing, the fundamental Sikh principles of justice,
equality and acceptance.
Dignified and articulate, with liberal dashes of humor and warmth, Singh put a
human, caring face on the previously misunderstood faith, Lowthian said.
"A law degree does not hurt in this case, but his ability to communicate
and work through the media is what has set the standard,'' she said. "He
does what he thinks is right and it turns out it benefits the whole community.''
Singh toured the province as a member of a commission studying police and race
relations, an issue he has pursued with dogged determination.
He once mounted a legal challenge to a government appointment to the Senate, an
effort that ultimately failed but called considerable attention to the issue.
He met with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as part of a student delegation
questioning the notwithstanding clause in the constitution. He had an audience
with the Pope in Rome during a celebration of 2,000 years of Catholicism.
He has written newspaper columns, appeared as a panelist on television current
affairs shows and spoken to countless groups from coast-to-coast.
And when not working on one of his causes -- race relations, religious
tolerance, human rights -- or travelling for pleasure, he has maintained a law
practice in a storefront office in downtown Guelph after moving out of Toronto
several years ago.
"He has a very serious conviction about human rights and dignity, with a
firm belief that this is a multi-cultural, multi-religious country and that it
is one of its strengths and should be celebrated,'' said Rita Deverell, a
founder and executive producer of Vision TV. "But he is also not a
one-issue guy. He's interested in many things -- and he has more humour than one
might think.''
Indeed, though he clearly gets a kick out of having his say, Singh's under no
illusion that his every utterance is shaking foundations.
"Of course it would stroke my ego if people came up to me and told me I had
a wonderful idea and I had changed their minds,'' he said, relaxing in his
tasteful apartment over a restaurant just down the street from his law office.
"Sure, I would fly a bit on that as a human being, but that's not the goal.
"I'm not even sure I want to change the world, or if the world would be a
better place if everybody suddenly switched to my ideas. What's satisfying is
making a difference, doing your bit, knowing you're not just a cog.''
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