The Couple with a Mission – Kulvir and Birender Gill

Kulvir and Birender belong to a generation that is well-settled in Canada, has excellent education and high powered career, yet they are not satisfied. This generation wants to give back to the country that afforded their parents a good life. So their priorities shift to giving back to the community; be it in the form of youth programs or food banks. For Kulvir it is as if “we have spiritual deficit and material surplus; that we have everything but nothing.” This is also one of the challenges that the younger generation of South Asians face here in Canada.

When Kulvir Singh Gill and Birender Kaur Gill decided to move from Calgary, Toronto and New York were two places they saw as their destination of choice. However, being “proud Canadians” they decided to stay in Canada. Kulvir and Birender are both graduates from University of Calgary. This young couple is on sabbatical to rediscover meaning of their lives.

Kulvir and Birender are working on several projects to serve the people. One of these projects is called the Toronto Sikh Youth Retreat. Every January, the retreat takes place in location outside the GTA. The idea is for participants “to remove themselves from their daily lives and from the pressures at home,” says Birender. Talking more about the program, Kulvir says that the project is meant to “interpret their Sikh faith in a contemporary world.”

Another of their projects is called Sikhs Serving Canada where they have collaborated with Mississauga Food Bank to serve but the mainstream. They have identified serveral postal codes where there is a need for a new food bank to be organized by Sikhs.

The couple feel that the Sikh community has moved on to the next level of philanthropy where it is the responsibility of the second and third generation to serve their neighbourhoods. The first generation of Sikh Canadians served Sikhs and South Asians by setting up gurdwaras and other community institution; however the next step is for the next generation of Sikh-Canadians to give back to the community at large, and that is what Kulvir and Birender have set out to do.

Any community work or setting up of an organization can be marked by

The couple were involved with the Spinning Wheel Film Festival at Royal Ontario Museum, however Kulvir feelt that when people started calling it “Kulvir’s event,” he had to move on and hand it over to others “to instill fresh ideas” in such festivals. With their new projects they are cautious of any branding that would make an institution theirs rather than community’s. “It’s not about who’s running the projects, it’s about creating platform for passion to be put in practice,” says Kulvir.

Birender has worked as a CA with Deloitte. When recession hit Canada last year, Birender was close to making a partner, nonetheless she chose to leave her position to serve the community.

Kulvir has worked as a management consultant for several years before starting his own consulting practice. Their careers have allowed them to travel all over the world.

Spiritual by nature, this young couple has matured quite a bit in their years. One of their friends remarked “this is an old couple in young people’s bodies.” Joking about being a Sikh, Kulvir says that corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on branding their products. However, the Sikh Gurus were very smart “masters of marketing” as they left Sikhs with a brand of its own. His feeling is that Charter of Rights is so much more humane that it could just as easily be written by a Sikh. Nonetheless when it comes to Canadian politics, Kulvir says “that there’s nothing that gets ordinary Canadians out of the chair.”

The incident of September 11th of 2001 has had almost every community redefine itself in new light.

For Sikhs, Kulvir believes, it was a wakeup call to be neither neutral nor silent about their identity; in fact “it’s a bad thing that people don’t know about us.”

As for the persecution of Sikhs in 1984 in India, the second and third generation of Sikhs are increasingly more aware of the human rights violations that took place. “25 years later, we embrace this issue. In fact many Sikhs who immigrated to Canada moved as a direct result of events of 1984,” says Kulvir. Birender adds that “for a long time, our families were so hush hush on the issue,” and even though she has been born and raised in Canada, she felt the issue at her home. The couple is angry at the Canadian government for allowing Minister Kamal Nath to visit Canada. Kulvir dismisses the claims that since Mr. Nath was allowed to enter Canada before, “he should be allowed to be paraded in again since no one said anything the first time.”

Often South Asians are much more vocal about their attachment with their parent’s motherland more than with Canada. Kulvir questions “why can’t we have two homes; why can’t I be Calgarian at heart” and still be Torontonian or why can’t my motherland be Punjab and Canada at the same time. He feels that the term South Asian “is a label of convenience.” He is of the view that “let’s not whitewash our differences [within South Asian community]. There’s a time for us to be South Asians and there’s a time for us to be Sikhs, Hindus or Muslims. Each of this group can have its own needs..and Canada has a beauty of cherishing all these faiths and cultures.

Vaisakhi, Kulvir feels is, “celebrated with a lot of gusto here in Canada.” The couple has actually received Amrit, the Sikh initiation ceremony of being admitted to the Khalsa. With fewer years in the world and more maturity under the belt, Kuvlir explains that he has made his mistakes on his way. One being; taking the letter of the law (read rules) dogmatically rather than understanding the essence of laws.

One would imagine that with Kulvir being vociferous, his wife would probably be less impressionistic; nonetheless she holds her own ground, being firm in her beliefs and ideas. Together they make an ideal couple with a mission.