Gurdev Singh Gill walking up a staircase with the Premier of BC David Barrett, Dr. Setty Pendakur (Vancouver city councillor), Khar Sekhon (Dr. Gill's friend), Parlad Singh Gill (Dr. Gill's brother).Courtesy of family
Gurdev Gill was only 18 when he arrived in Canada in 1949, having travelled from the Punjab region of India to Pasadena, Calif., where his grandfather helped him get on a train to Canada.
He started working in the mill in the Vancouver Island community of Duncan almost immediately, alongside his father, Dilbag, who had immigrated years earlier.
But unlike many other young South Asian men of that era, he wanted more. He believed education was a powerful tool and decided to go to university to become a doctor. It was a risky move. A friend who had gone to law school at the University of British Columbia but wasn’t allowed to graduate, presumably because of his race, remembered Dr. Gill’s grandson, Imran Gill.
He went anyway and became the first Indo-Canadian doctor in Canada when he graduated in 1957.
“He never spoke about what that was like, but one thing I noticed: He did not like injustice. Whenever he saw it, he wanted to do something to alleviate it,” said Mr. Gill.
That passion for justice, especially for Indians in Canada and back home, drove the man fondly called “The Doc” or just “Doc” his entire life, up to the day he died suddenly of heart failure in Chandigarh, India, on Dec. 17. He was 92.
Dr. Gill set up a general medical practice in New Westminster, B.C., near Vancouver, shortly after graduating. Over the years, it became much more than just another doctor’s office for hundreds of people, especially new Canadians from India. People passed around his name and office address as a resource for new arrivals. Many showed up not just for medical care but for help adjusting to life in Canada.
Dr. Gurdev Gill with his sister Darshan Kaur Gill.Courtesy of family
“His office would always be full of families – some new immigrants. He helped everyone when they first came from India,” said Gary Pooni, a development consultant who was delivered by Dr. Gill.
Dr. Gill’s efforts to help the Indo-Canadian community extended beyond his doctor’s office.
He also owned and ran a seniors’ housing facility in New Westminster as part of his efforts to help people in the community with special needs.
He was involved for years with Vancouver’s main Sikh temple, which was originally located in Kitsilano to serve the many families who lived in that area, as a number of men worked in the sawmills around False Creek.
“He showed me that involvement in your community was equally or more important than your job,” Mr. Pooni said.
When the mills started to shut down and the work shifted to the Fraser River, Dr. Gill was a leader in the effort to sell the Kitsilano property and build a new temple in South Vancouver. Despite some opposition, the gurdwara, designed by a very young Arthur Erickson, was eventually seen as a huge success when it opened in 1970.
Dr. Gill was also an advocate for South Asian immigrants, helping to start several civil-rights organizations over the decades, beginning with the East Indian Student Association at UBC in 1951. He co-founded the East Indian Welfare Society in the 1960s at the height of the civil-rights movement. That organization fought to reduce wait times for immigration applicants from India with common illnesses such as trachoma and hookworm and lobbied for the right of wives to join their husbands in Canada, among other initiatives.
In 1974, he founded the Indo-Canadian Friendship Society of British Columbia. After he retired from his practice in 1996, he worked through that organization to improve sanitation and infrastructure in poor villages in Punjab.
Former MP and cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal, who is still involved with the society, said Dr. Gill raised money village by village to combat the huge health problems caused by open sewers and a lack of running water or paved roads.
He started with his own birthplace, the village of Kharaudi in the Hoshiarpur District, where he had been born on Nov. 28, 1931. The society eventually went on to bring improvements to 27 villages.
“It was about health, about women’s empowerment, really giving people dignity,” Mr. Dhaliwal said. “And he wanted to show people this can be done, so other people could copy us. He started a mini-revolution, where people are doing it all over now.”
Dr. Gill secured some money from the Canadian International Development Agency in the early years, along with funds from the Punjabi government. He also raised millions from average Canadians.
After he retired, he spent six months of each year in India overseeing new projects.
The work attracted a lot of interest, including from Simon Fraser University. In 2007, four SFU students went to his villages to help out in classrooms, teaching about health practices or computer skills, all the while studying the impact of the improvements.
“Dr. Gill arranged for where they stayed. It was such a wonderful experience,” said Joanne Curry, SFU’s vice-president of external relations, who helped co-ordinate the student experience.
Throughout all that, say his many friends and colleagues, he never aspired to fame or any kind of political standing and was always remarkably modest about his achievements.
“I remember Dr. Gill telling me the story once: ‘They all wanted me to become president of the gurdwara on Second Avenue.’ He hid in the toilet of the building to avoid it, but they found him,” recalled Mr. Dhaliwal.
Dr. Gill served as president of the Khalsa Diwan Society, North America’s oldest Sikh organization, responsible for the temple and other religious activities, five separate times between 1954 and 1970.
A few times, people suggested he run for city council in New Westminster, but he always said no.
“He had no problem intervening politically when he knew it was the right thing to do, but he wasn’t interested” in formal politics, Mr. Pooni said.
He was awarded the Order of B.C. in 1990 and an honourary doctorate of science from UBC in 1996, when then-president David Strangway wrote that Dr. Gill “has consistently devoted himself to the cause of intercultural understanding and friendship for the betterment of all Canadians.”
In 2021, just before his 91st birthday, the Indo-Canadian Friendship Society held a fundraiser for his village projects, along with a celebration of his life. More than 200 people attended, including former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh and former NDP cabinet minister Moe Sihota.
Dr. Gill was predeceased by his first wife, Narinder, parents Dilbag and Gurbachan and siblings Parlad, Darshan and Bhagwant. He leaves his wife Jasinder, his children, Sanjiv (Mala), Jasmine, Simran (Drish) and Tina (Jagat), grandchildren Imran (Chelsey), Rahul, Javed (Veer) and Iqroop, as well as his great-grandson, Arjan.
Frances Bula