KITCHENER -- Canadian veterans and members of the armed forces gathered at Mount Hope Cemetery on Sunday to honour a Sikh war hero.
Private Buckam Singh was one of only nine Sikh soldiers who served in the Canadian army during the First World War.
Singh suffered multiple wounds while fighting in the Battle of Flanders in 1916.
He returned to Canada in 1918 and died a year later at Kitchener’s Freeport Hospital at the age of 25.
“[Private Singh] was buried here almost a hundred years ago and only 15 years ago did this grave, that was essentially undiscovered by the Sikh community, was rediscovered,” Capt. Hari Singh Bhatti told CTV. “Since then every single year we come back here to this spot here as the war memorial section of the Mount Hope Kitchener Cemetery that we commemorate both his sacrifice as a World War I hero and soldier and the other veterans as well."
Singh’s grave in Mount Hope Cemetery is the only known military grave of a Sikh soldier.
