The first gurdwara in North America was at Golden in British Columbia in 1905 and it was destroyed in 1926. Vancouver's followed in 1908, on Second Avenue, built by Punjabi mill workers within a few years of their arrival, and it was demolished in 1970. The oldest that still stands is at Abbotsford, opened in 1911. The Khalsa Diwan Society that built the Vancouver gurdwara is one of the oldest continuous Sikh institutions outside the subcontinent.
That building was the organising centre for the community's legal and political battles: the Komagata Maru in 1914, the fight against disenfranchisement, the campaign for the right to bring wives and children.
Sikhs in British Columbia lost the vote in 1907 and did not get it back until 1947.
The pattern since has been consistent. A cluster of families from a few villages settles, raises money, buys a building, and the gurdwara becomes the community's school, welfare office, employment exchange and political forum.
Canada now has the largest Sikh population outside India. Sikhs have served as federal ministers and party leaders there, and the politics of Punjab is argued out in Canadian gurdwara elections in ways that reach back into Punjab itself.
The pattern is consistent. A few families from the same district arrive, meet in a house, buy a building when the numbers justify it, and build when the community can raise the capital.
The committee that raises the money then holds it, which is why gurdwara elections abroad are fought as hard as they are and why they end in court as often as they do.
The buildings get larger with each generation and the congregation gets more mixed. A gurdwara founded by one district's families ends up serving people from all of Punjab and beyond it.