'India Gate' in Canada soon

Vancouver will soon have an India Gate to celebrate more than 100 years of Indo-Canadians in this country.

British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell is likely to make this announcement on Saturday.

The gate will be built in the city's Punjabi Market at 50th Avenue and Main Street at a cost of $3 million. It is expected to be ready before the Winter Olympics in the city in 2010.

The Punjabi Market is famous for Indian sweets and merchandise shops. The most famous among them are the Indian Sweets and Restaurant and the Himalayan Restaurant.

There might be more signboards in Punjabi here than Chandigarh.

Vancouver is famous for its cultural and ethnic diversity. It already has a Millennium Gate in its fabled Chinatown in honour of Chinese pioneers who built the Canadian railway network, linking the country from east to west.

The first Indo-Canadian immigrants from Punjab landed here about 1890. They worked in lumber mills and at construction sites.

The first Indian settlement also came up here by the name of Paldi after a village near Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

And North America's first gurdwara - now known as the Ross Street Gurdwara - was established 1907 after the Sikhs set up the Khalsa Diwan Society in 1906.