They shoot, they score for the community
How the Sikh community turned Brampton into a haven for ball hockey
Once upon a time, in a hockey rink not so far away, a game was being hotly contested. The rink is known as Century Gardens. Have you ever been? Located on Vodden Street East, in Brampton, the Gardens is a massive site with two ice rinks, a swimming pool, a fitness centre, and an auditorium. Architecturally, the building is very much in that twenty-first-century suburban style, and it literally houses gardens.
Brampton has been rapidly changing for decades. Forget the influx of people or the increased traffic and suburbanization. Just look at what is physically there. A lot of Brampton was farmland until the 1990s. Open fields sold off by farmers who couldn’t push back against the changing times.
As for recreation and active living, the great urbanization of Brampton meant that the city built it and they came. Promoted by former Brampton mayor Susan Fennell, the ‘Making Great Things Happen’ initiative delivered two new community centres and two renovated and expanded recreation centres as part of a $120 million capital program in 2008. In June 2007, the Brampton Soccer Centre at Dixie Road and Sandalwood Parkway opened to much fanfare. Later that same summer, Earnscliffe Recreation Centre on Eastbourne Drive reopened following an expansion and extensive renovations. The Cassie Campbell Community Centre at Sandalwood Parkway and Chinguacousy opened in fall 2008, honouring one of the stars of Canadian women’s hockey.
So, when Fennell finally christened the newly renovated Century Gardens, she was more than happy to flag its benefits for the community. “The renovation and expansion of Century Gardens is part of a City-wide initiative to provide high-quality and responsive recreation facilities and programs to everyone in Brampton,” Fennell said in an official statement. “This is part of the City’s focus on creating healthy and active lifestyle opportunities for people of all ages.”
What distinguishes this particular venue is that it adds space for organized sports that take place on large municipal rink complexes. Indeed, Century Gardens is perhaps best known around Brampton as the venue for one of the region’s largest and most anticipated ball-hockey tournaments — an annual event called the Khalsa Cup, which features teams whose athletes are mostly Canadians of Sikh descent.
In many predominantly South Asian neighbourhoods in Peel Region, which includes Mississauga and Brampton, hockey is a consuming passion. The Punjabi broadcast of “Hockey Night in Canada,” which started in 2011, draws tens of thousands of viewers.
Local efforts to introduce ice hockey to South Asian kids have sprung up in recent years. There’s even a movie on the subject: “Breakaway.” A 2011 Canadian sports comedy, it tells the story of Rajvinder, a Hindi Punjabi-Canadian player who struggles against traditional family values and discrimination from mainstream hockey players. It has sports, romance, and an exploration of Rajvinder’s obsession with a game that doesn’t exactly love him back.
The Khalsa Cup is a ball-hockey tournament with a loyal following — hundreds have taken part. In its first year, a three-day event in 2014 at Huron Park Arena in Mississauga, there were 180 players on twelve teams. That number grew to about 200 in the 2019 tourney. In 2014, the tournament raised about $6,000 for the Khalra Centre for Human Rights Defenders, which is based in Delhi. They have since raised tens of thousands of dollars more.
The event, a fundraiser collaboratively organized by the Sikh Youth Federation, the Champions Ball Hockey League, Toronto Singh’s Camp, and the World Sikh Organization of Canada, is well attended. Unlike most sports fundraisers, the Khalsa Cup incorporates the Sikh concepts of seva and sarbat da bhalla. Seva in Sanskrit refers to selfless service; sarbat da bhalla refers to blessings for everyone, a Sikh prayer that all will prosper. “That was very intentionally designed into the tournament so it’s not just any other event,” says Jaskaran Singh Sandhu, a lawyer, campaign strategist, and one of the fundraiser’s organizers. “There’s a very specific goal here beyond just the sport.”
He explains it to me: “How do you continue to build those events around everything you do? And how do you encourage young kids to start thinking like that about every action they take in their life, that higher living is not siloed off when you go to the gurdwaras or when you go to the mosque or your church or whatever it is on the weekend. It’s supposed to be a philosophy that you fill into everything you do.”
Events like the Khalsa Cup fit neatly into his world view. “Sport is like this equalizer of sorts, a common platform where everyone can come hang out and talk. It becomes this meeting place where folks that otherwise would never engage with one another engage with one another and expand networks … and that strengthens the community in multiple ways.”
In the run-up to the 2019 cup, the players engaged in some healthy trash talk while expressing a deep appreciation for the moment at Century Gardens. Before the first match, Harjaap Singh, a local host for the Sikh Channel, spoke to the captain of the Khalsa Snipers, a tight-knit ball-hockey team based in Brampton.
“So what we’re hearing is that the Khalsa Snipers are pretty favoured for this competition. They have a great history,” he said.
“They suck!” chirped an opposing player from the Brampton Predators.
“So we have a lot of healthy criticism, as well!” Harjaap replied.
Harjaap got back on track and asked the captain of the Snipers, Amritpal Kooner, about the team, its history, and their goal for the final. “The team was started about fifteen years ago, and that was the original Khalsa Snipers team,” the captain replied. “They played together for years and years. And when we were all little kids — around maybe twelve, thirteen — we started playing together at the Powerade Centre. The older Khalsa Snipers guys would coach us, they could come to practice with us, and every day we’d be praying, practicing, and slowly more people would be joining our team.”
This club was a family and still is. “I’ve been playing with everyone since I was in Grade 9, and since then our team has grown to about twenty-five guys,” says Kooner. “It’s honestly become like a family — that’s what we do. We like to play hockey; we like to hang out.”
But Sandhu points out that the appeal is rooted in the complexities and limitations of the immigrant experience. “These are second — and third — generation guys who grew up loving hockey, from immigrant families that can’t necessarily afford to take the kids to ice hockey. The criticism of ice hockey is that it lacks diversity, it is not a place that new immigrants and new Canadians find welcoming.”
“Ball hockey,” he continues, “is the opposite. Some of the best players in competitive ball hockey in the world are actually Brown kids from Brampton. And it’s absolutely wild because while the folks in ice hockey are kind of scratching their heads on how to get people engaged, ball hockey is home to such crazy diversity that is just not seen anywhere else.”