<p>Canadians categorize Indo-Canadians as visible minorities, yet the<br>histories of their communities remain invisible. In <em>Jewels of the<br>Qila,</em> Hugh Johnston draws on memoirs and interviews, newspaper<br>articles and photographs, to tell the story of three generations of a<br>remarkable Sikh family and the communities they lived in and supported<br>in both Canada and India.</p><br><br><p>The Siddoos are Punjabi. Kapoor Singh, father and grandfather,<br>arrived in British Columbia in 1912 and overcame racial prejudice and<br>legal discrimination to transform himself from day labourer to lumber<br>baron, publisher, philanthropist, and community leader. As he<br>campaigned for citizenship and immigration rights for his people, he<br>and his wife, Besant Kaur, fostered in their daughters a vision of<br>service that, as adults, they fulfilled by establishing a family-run<br>hospital in Punjab and by introducing a Westernized version of an<br>Indian spiritual tradition to Canada.</p><br><br><em>Jewels of the Qila</em> is about long, bitter struggles rooted in<br>prejudice, race, and empire and about friendships built on shared<br>goals, values, and experiences. The Siddoos are the heart of the story,<br>but their history tells a larger tale of an immigrant community's<br>triumphs and tribulations and the strong connections that<br>Indo-Canadians continue to forge with their homeland.<br><p><br><p><b>Hugh J.M. Johnston</b> is a historian affiliated with<br>Simon Fraser University. He is the author of two previous books on<br>Punjabis in Canada, <em>The Voyage of the Komagata Maru</em> and<br><em>The Four Quarters of the Night: The Life Journey of an Emigrant<br>Sikh.</em></p>