The Case of the Gurdwara, the Lumber Barons and the KKK

Driving down Abbotsford’s South Fraser Way, you are presented with a landscape of big-box offerings in strip malls. There’s the Michaels, Leon’s furniture, the Best Buy and a few auto repair shops, with the likes of Tim Hortons, Shoppers and London Drugs sprinkled throughout.

Across the street from a Red Robin is the oldest structure around.

It stands on a prominent knoll, a 2 1/2-storey building with a gabled roof, wraparound veranda and columns holding it up on all sides. Completed in 1911, it looks like a remnant from a frontier town. A grand set of blue-painted stairs leads up to a parapet with the name of the building proudly displayed at the top: Gur Sikh Temple.

This is the oldest existing gurdwara in the Western Hemisphere, preceded only by a 1908 gurdwara once located in Vancouver’s Kitsilano before its demolition. Gurdwaras are religious institutions, but they also serve as sacred, cultural, social and political spaces for the community. The one in Abbotsford and the former one in Kitsilano were just two of many built by Sikhs across British Columbia.

“South Fraser Way is one of the most popular and busiest real estate sites in all of Abbotsford,” said historian Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, who is a sessional instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley and a senior program adviser for Canadian Heritage.

“This street is where all the businesses are. Everything comes through here. So you can imagine this building being of high value, monetary-wise. Luckily... it was preserved as a national historic site of Canada in 2002. So now, it can’t be touched.”

A complicated story

Sandhra has been giving tours of the building for 15 years. In the past, she has also co-curated exhibits in the Sikh Heritage Museum established on its bottom floor, open every day to the public.

Many gurdwaras were founded near places where Punjabi Sikhs found work, particularly in the lumber industry, such as Kitsilano, Queensborough and Paldi. Abbotsford was no different, with Sikhs under the employ of the Abbotsford Lumber Co., owned by the Trethewey brothers. Abbotsford Lumber Co. was the largest logging operation in the Fraser Valley and, at its height, was the third-largest in B.C.

In 1908, about 50 Sikhs decided to build a gurdwara in Abbotsford. The head of the project, Sunder Singh Thandi, along with Arjan Singh, purchased the one-acre property on South Fraser Way.

“Everything was flat,” said Sandhra. “It was all agricultural farmland. The men chose this site because it was on the top of a little hill and they wanted to make sure the flagpole would be visible from as far away as possible.”

The mill workers asked the family company if they would donate some lumber for the construction of the gurdwara. They were told they could have whatever they could carry on their backs.

So the Sikh men lugged the lumber from Mill Lake to the site of the property, an uphill trek of about two kilometres. The foundational scene is depicted in a painting that hangs in the gurdwara’s prayer room by artist Jarnail Singh (who happened to pass away in early February of this year).

An article in the Abbotsford Post in 1912, the year the gurdwara opened, highlighted the gulf between the Sikh and white settlers of the city. A parent said her daughter asked if they could “go up and see a Hindoo being burned.” Sikhs were often misidentified as such.

The family went up to the gurdwara, where “mobs of school children and their wondering parents” were in attendance. What was actually taking place was a cremation. For years, Sikhs had to secretly cremate friends and family in forested areas because there was nowhere to conduct traditional last rites. The gurdwara finally allowed for this, but attracted “voyeurism” from white locals, said Sandhra.

Non-white workers at the mill — Sikhs but also Chinese and Japanese employees — were paid less than their counterparts and were often made to do menial or dangerous jobs. Still, the story of the gurdwara’s origins has been told for years as a happy example of interracial solidarity.

In her tours of the gurdwara, Sandhra used to tell visitors happy stories about the lumber donation.

That all changed in 2020.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, the Heritage Abbotsford Society posted to its website a message on the history of racism in the city.

The post pointed to an edition of the Abbotsford, Sumas and Matsqui News from Dec. 3, 1925, covering the founding of a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Speakers “outlined the Klan’s attitude towards Negroes, Hebrews and Roman Catholics” and their desire to “maintain forever ‘white supremacy.’”

The initial fee to join the local chapter of the KKK was $10. Membership rules were strict, allowing only residents born in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and northern Europe who were white, male, Protestant and “of sound mind.”

According to the article, “Mr. S.D. (Samuel) Trethewey” — one of the brothers at the lumber company — “was the first to proffer his application.”

Ever since, Sandhra has told the story of the gurdwara’s origins a little bit differently.

“I add a little twist to it,” she said. “‘Children, do you know what white supremacy is?’”

The KKK in Abbotsford

Sandhra believes in sharing the true and full history with visitors, even if they might be kindergarteners.

Samuel Trethewey’s son Howard participated in an infamous KKK parade down Essendene Avenue in 1928. That same year, he wrote a letter in support of the parade and the KKK’s public lectures, which warned about the “white race slipping.”

There were a number of other groups connected to the KKK at the time: the Native Sons of Canada, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, the Brethren of the Fiery Cross and the Kilsgaard Kare Klub.

After lobbying local MPs for three years, the Native Sons of Canada successfully pressured the Tretheweys to fire 40 to 50 “oriental” workers, mostly Sikhs. A 1930 news article on the firings noted many of those workers had been with the company for “two to three generations.”

“The teachers are sometimes shocked,” said Sandhra. “I say to them, ‘If they’re old enough to experience racism, they’re old enough to learn about it.’”

Reckoning with history

It’s not just children who are learning to grapple with this.

The wider community in Abbotsford is as well, with the revelations having sparked a debate about the renaming of Trethewey House, the home of Joseph Ogle Trethewey, one of the brothers. It has been retained as a heritage site and is open for public tours. There is also a Trethewey Street in Abbotsford that is named after Samuel, who lived on the street.

The Tretheweys have been celebrated in the Fraser Valley as a founding family. Beyond lumber, the family has also been involved in development, mining, waterworks and electricity.

Descendants, such as Alan and Vivian Trethewey, have remained active in the community. Alan and Vivian are founding donors of the Abbotsford Community Foundation and have given to a number of other local organizations involved in health care and the environment.

“We’re really proud of what Abbotsford is today, in terms of the diversity of the city and our contribution to it,” Tessa Trethewey, 47, the great-great-granddaughter of Joseph Ogle Trethewey, told The Tyee.

“So when this story came up, it was honestly a shock. It’s painful. It’s not something we’re proud of. But it’s something that as a society, we’ve got to look at, acknowledge, try to understand — and how we can learn from it.”

Tessa said the family learned about Samuel Trethewey’s KKK membership and his son’s involvement only when the Heritage Abbotsford Society shared their findings in 2020. The family was contacted by some media at the time, but the journalists did not follow up for comment.

Tessa told The Tyee she’d spoken about the situation with her grandfather J.O. Jr. — Joseph Ogle’s grandson — who is in his 90s today. J.O. Jr., Tessa said, was not surprised by the revelation about his great-uncle Samuel.

In a statement to The Tyee, J.O. Jr. echoed Tessa’s feelings about the “painful” revelation.

“Our family has always been proud of this connection [the lumber donation for the Gur Sikh Temple] to Abbotsford’s history, which makes it all the more difficult to learn about racism within our extended family’s past,” J.O. Jr. wrote.

“We believe it’s important to acknowledge that history while celebrating how much the community and society has grown, shaped by the diversity of Abbotsford and the lasting contributions of its Sikh community.”

Their forebear, Joseph Ogle, was one of five Trethewey brothers involved in the operation of the mill. Arthur ran the mill, while Joseph Ogle was the main financier.

“It was under Arthur that wood was given to the temple,” said Tessa. “He’s often credited with how the company worked with employees.”

She notes that the family understood that workers were always allowed to take home good-quality wood after their shifts, not scraps.

According to the 1994 book on the family, Go Ahead or Go Home: The Trethewey Story, Arthur was cheated of wages as a teenage shingle packer on the Burrard Inlet, which led to his desire to treat workers fairly. The book notes that he was well liked and chatted with all workers. He told his son, “My boy, every one of these people, no matter how lowly they are, has an idea, and if I don’t talk to them, I’ll never know what the idea is.”

As for Samuel, he is described in the book as a “strange, engaging maverick.”

“Without trying to play it down, Samuel was a very secondary player,” said Tessa, adding that he does not represent the legacy that other members of the family have built.

Samuel owned his own mill that burned down, spent time ranching in Alberta and returned to help run the family mill for a time when Arthur was sick. It is believed that Samuel’s leadership was rough for the company, with evidence of rifts in mill management. In 1926, a year after he joined the KKK, he resigned from the mill. Go Ahead or Go Home describes Samuel’s son Howard as being “as weird as his father.”

That being said, Tessa knows that the family mill paid non-white workers less at the time — which is “absolutely not OK,” she told The Tyee.

Tessa has taken up the role of the family historian, one that comes with challenging questions.

“We have to come to terms with all this and try to understand: Why did it happen? What would happen today? How do we avoid it today? How do we accelerate progress today?

“You have to confront these truths. I think that’s the only way of moving beyond the systemic racism then and now.”

Daylighting difficult truths

When Christina Reid joined the Heritage Abbotsford Society as the curator and collections manager in 2009, she came across some notes that had been put together back in 1980 about the KKK in Abbotsford and the involvement of Samuel and Howard Trethewey.

While Reid started mentioning these facts in her presentations about local history, there was no reaction from audiences. It was only when the society posted details online in 2020 that they gained any traction.

The society accompanied its post with a trigger warning for white supremacy, which Reid knew was important because the details of the KKK’s activities and messaging were upsetting to her staff.

“We got no end of threats because we put a trigger warning,” Reid said. “That’s [society’s] white fragility showing.”

The society’s office is in Trethewey House, the former home of Joseph Ogle.

One summer, the society’s Indigenous interns were harassed by a visitor on-site for simply being there. They were called racial slurs and blamed for the debate about changing the house’s name.

Other residents who read the revelation about the two Tretheweys have told Reid things like “Put this in the archives, but don’t share it” and “Well, that’s what it was like back in the day.”

Such comments, which are made whenever staff surface histories that challenge white nostalgia, frustrate Reid.

“The Fraser Valley is, to this day, home of the KKK in Canada,” she said.

In 2016, KKK flyers were left on the doorsteps of Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack residents. The flyer included a popular phrase used by U.S. white supremacist David Lane: “Yes, white lives do matter. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” There was also a number for a hotline to call. In 2017, flyers were distributed again.

“I got one on my car when I went to the mall one day. I got another in the parking lot here at work,” said Reid. “We never found out who did it.”

In the years since the 2020 revelations about Samuel and Howard Trethewey, there appears to have been a generational split in what people remember. Older Fraser Valley residents know of the Tretheweys only as founders of the community. As for younger residents, “the only side of the story they’re going to know is the KKK,” said Reid.

A university student who once interviewed Reid about the duo mistakenly wrote that Joseph Ogle was the one who joined the KKK, misleading some people to think that Trethewey House was home to a member of the Klan. Reid suspects that this led to the house being graffitied.

It’s been frustrating for her when retellings of history are incorrect, but also when they are told only in part.

“Our mission statement is to collect and tell the stories of Abbotsford — all of Abbotsford,” stressed Reid. “I don’t believe in shutting up. I believe racism thrives in the dark.”

In her tours of Trethewey House, she tries to give the full picture: acknowledging the unceded territory of the Stó:lō people, the truth about Samuel and Howard Trethewey, and the stories about the rest of the family who established Fraser Valley institutions.

As for the gurdwara, Reid suspects the donation of lumber might have been a “business decision” to keep the Sikh workers happy, alongside the company’s provision of bunkhouses.

However, “we can also verify things like they really did protect their workers, they kept them on longer than they probably should have,” said Reid, noting that local banks played a role in pressuring the family to fire non-white employees.

“If you talk to the elderly people in the city of the South Asian community... I’ve had them in here actually fall apart crying, because [the Tretheweys] were so lovely to deal with. It’s nuanced,” Reid added.

The fact that the gurdwara has stood for over a century — a nurturing space for the Sikh faith in the middle of B.C.’s “Bible Belt,” established when white supremacist groups paraded the streets — speaks of resistance and its role in the community.

It’s important for people to tour the gurdwara, Reid said, to get a more fulsome sense of local history — one that expands beyond white founding families. “They have a lot of things to talk about that are more important!”

A light in the valley

Indeed, there have been long-standing omissions of racialized people in the archive, from Sikhs mislabelled as “Hindoos” in newspapers to historical accounts speaking of the community vaguely and leaving out the names of key figures.

That’s part of the important work of the Gur Sikh Temple and the Sikh Heritage Museum: making sure that those neglected stories are publicly told.

There is a tall pole at the front of the property from which flies the Nishan Sahib, the Sikh flag. Beside it is the base of an older pole.

“It had a light bulb at the top,” said Sandhra, the historian. “The story goes that one of our earlier Sikh settlers, Paul Dhaliwal — who was this bulky, strong wrestler — was the only one who could climb all the way up to replace the light bulb.”

At 80 feet tall, it watched over the landscape.

“The light bulb could be seen by Sikhs across the American border. And so they would come looking for the closest Sikh sacred space. They knew if they followed the light bulb, they would be able to find their way here.”

That wasn’t the only thing the light bulb attracted. The gurdwara was established at the time of the Ghadar movement, with the diaspora fighting against British rule in India. Vancouver was a hotbed of activism, and Canadian immigration officials planted moles to infiltrate their base. Following the light bulb, activists sought out the Abbotsford gurdwara too.

“They would make their way here and recite anti-colonial poetry in the gurdwara space,” said Sandhra. “I think it connects us transnationally to this incredible movement and moves us away from this being just for Abbotsford.”

Inside the building, the ground floor has all of its original wainscotting, with panels covering the walls and ceilings. This used to be the langar hall — where Sikhs welcome all for a vegetarian meal, regardless of their religion, caste, gender, race or economic status — and is a perfect place to house the Sikh Heritage Museum and share stories.

The museum is currently profiling Sikh settler families, though there have been special exhibits on the Komagata Maru, the Ghadar movement, Sikh feminism, weddings and the role of hockey, a sport that can’t be more Canadian, in the lives of people of colour.

A newer, larger gurdwara was built across the street in 1983. But there are still many who visit the Gur Sikh Temple, which holds a special place as the historic hub of the community.

Visiting the old langar hall, sitting in the prayer hall and walking the veranda, you indeed cannot help but marvel at the wood, from the beams to the columns.

“It’s the exact same lumber carried on the backs of the Sikh men,” said Sandhra. “The fact that it has stood the test of time since 1911 is pretty incredible.”

Sandhra likes to imagine the conversations that have happened within its walls over the years.

“I’m drawn to the way that we as communities hide a lot of memories, hide a lot of history and hide a lot of archives because we want to put ourselves forward as being something we’re not.... That’s where power comes in: when you’re trying to create a narrative around white nostalgia.

“We are complicated characters. That’s how history operates. What pisses me off is that we’ve erased that history. We don’t even allow ourselves to analyze that history.

“We’ve created a benevolent history about ourselves [in Canada]. Let’s complicate that a bit. That doesn’t mean it’s this ‘cancel culture’ narrative where it’s all our nothing. For me, it’s about how we tell our stories.”