| |
 Print
Brantford: One of the Early Muslim Communities in Canada
10-13-2021
A few years after Alexander Graham Bell’s successful invention of the telephone in Brantford (1876), about 100 Turkish Muslims settled in Brantford approximately during the late 1800 and early1900 as foreign workers along with about 400 Armenians. They helped make Brantford a major industrial city in Canada. At that time Brantford was the third industrial city in Canada, after Toronto and Montreal. Known as the “Birmingham of Canada,” it was a major centre of the new tractor and auto industries including Massey-Harris, (later Massey-Ferguson).In 1911, Brantford had a higher percentage of foreigners per capita than any other city in Canada. Some argue the concept of “foreign workers” in an industrial setting may have been a Brantford idea!
Background: In 1895, a Brantford businessman was in Constantinople, selling his company’s plows across Europe. He met local people and members of a refugee community there and invited them to come to Canada and work in the factories. By 1911, about 100 Turkish Muslims and 400 Armenians worked at Pratt & Letchworth, Cockshutt Plow, Buck Stoves, and other factories in the city. They lived in boarding houses, worked at the plants, and sent their pay cheques home to Turkey. Their families also join them later.
1912-The First Muslim Funeral in Brantford: According to a newspaper clipping the first Muslim funeral took place in 1912 and he was buried in a corner lot (next to the West St. and known as the “Turkish lot”) at Brantford’s Mount Hope Cemetery specially allocated for Muslims because they purchased the lot and it survives to this day. It contains 16 Muslims graves from 1912-1963. While some of these graves are unmarked, some stone has Quranic verses and statement of Muslim faith engraved. TheThe local newspaper, the Brantford Expositor of 30 January 1912 published an amazing story of the “first ever Mohammedan funeral” in the city. On this occasion, the deceased was a young Turk, Ahamed Osman and his funeral was an elaborate public procession along the main street. No less than 20 horses were on hand, leading a casket wagon in lieu of a hearse. Very prominently, the casket was wrapped with Turkish flags and a young man walked at the head of the procession carrying the Ottoman star and crescent.
Tragedy: The outbreak of the First World War cancelled all of the European contracts and the City went into a deep depression. The foundry workers were thrown out of work and some were near starvation. A week or so after the British Empire declared war on Turkey, in November 1914; in the middle of a cold, dark night, the Brantford Police Force rounded up the hundred Turkish Muslims and held them at the City Jail. The next day they were marched to the Armouries at bayonet point by the militia. They spent two days there and then they were marched to the Train Station and sent to Fort Henry in Kingston. From there they were put on the train to Kapuskasing, in the bush, halfway between Sault Ste. Marie and James Bay. They were expected to build the camp they were to be held at. As the war contracts started reviving the factories, some of them were paroled and allowed to come back to work. That is why we see a few more graves in the lot until 1963. Over a hundred years have gone by, and Brantford has no memory of these Muslims except a few graves and only a handful of newspaper clippings testify to this extraordinary event in Canadian history. We have no idea what kind of evidence of this story still exists. The Canadian government of the 1950’s destroyed all the Federal records of the Internments of both the First and Second World War.
Justice is still due: The early Muslims of Brantford and their families deserve justice and the Canadians deserve a clear answer about what happened to them. As we are observing Islamic History and Heritage month in October, let us remember them in our dua and together demand justice for them.
The city of Brantford originated in 1852 as Brant’s Ford, named for Joseph Brant, the famous Mohawk chief who was granted the site in 1784 for the settlement of the Six Nations after the American Revolution.It is located about 20 miles southwest of Hamilton, ON. It is the site of Ontario’s oldest Protestant church, Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, built in 1785. The city is also the homestead of Alexander Graham Bell, now a Canadian national historic site. In August 1876 Bell was on the receiving end of the first one-way long-distance call, transmitted from Brantford to nearby Paris, Ontario, over a telegraph wire.
Footnotes:
|