Union Zindabad! — South Asian Canadian Labour History in British Columbia

For more educated and fluent immigrants it
was still a struggle to find work.
Nina Dhillon came from England to
Coquitlam with her family as a teenager in the
early 1980s, and later moved to Quesnel with
her husband who worked in a sawmill. After
struggling to find a job she returned alone to the
Fraser Valley. She spent a year as a farmworker
before working in a kitchen at a non-unionized
health care facility. Though initially not a union
supporter, she eventually helped to organize the
union at her work and was subsequently hired by
the Hospital Employees Union (HEU) to organize
and assist other workers.
Nina defied cultural norms multiple times in
her life. Her decision to seek work after marriage
was a challenge; even more so to go to Abbotsford
alone to find a job. Eventually, her husband joined
her, and together they navigated non- traditional
gender roles with Nina as the breadwinner and her
husband raising their children.
“I was not a stay-at-home person. I was one that
wanted to be out there to be working, and that
day when I did leave, it was against my husband’s
will.
When we decided that I would be working, it
was only because I spoke English. He didn’t have
education other than the mill job that he was
doing in Quesnel, where English wasn’t a big issue.
It was easy for him to go and look for a job where
education wasn’t a factor. So that was one of the
biggest reasons.” 45
Baljit Kaur, who was educated as a teacher in
India, recalled how she ended up in the northern
city of Prince George. “A lot of my students were
here in Prince George and BC in general. There
was this one student of mine, he became so close
to me when he was my student in India. He told
me to come to Canada to meet him. When I came
here, he asked me if I wanted to stay and live here
then I should apply. A week later, I went to the
immigration office, the immigration officer started
laughing. He said, “Who would not like to have
you in our country?” and within one month, I
became a Canadian.” 46
While this demonstrates the relative privilege
which educated female South Asian immigrants
possessed when they entered the BC workforce, it
doesn’t mean that their integration came easily.
Baljit “Bally” Bassi recalled, “I would apply for
jobs and I would speak on the phone and it was
all amazing. Everyone was pleasant, receptive and
so forth. And there was one organization I won’t
name; they’d asked me to come in and drop off
my cover letter and resume when I phoned them.
When I went down there, I couldn’t get past the
reception, and for me, it was an eye-opening.
Because I had grown up in England with racism.
45 Nina Dhillon, interview by Anushay Malik, May 6, 2021. Union Zindabad! Interview Collection.
46 South Asian Studies Institute, History Across the Regions Project. “Prince George Stories”, 2018. YouTube video.
https://youtu.be/HNfokMpwNwU
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