Mandirs in Canadaਕੈਨੇਡਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਮੰਦਰ

Canada's Hindu temples grew with the communities that built them, most of them in and around Toronto, with one long standing temple anchoring the west coast. The Greater Toronto Area holds a traditional stone mandir built from 24,000 carved pieces, a suburban temple whose tower announced a new community in Brampton, and a Hare Krishna temple inside a nineteenth century church. In British Columbia, ISKCON Vancouver serves the west from Burnaby. This hub gathers the four Canadian mandirs published on Jugti. Together they tell a Canadian version of a story also told in the United States and Britain: arrival in rented rooms and farmhouses, then building in stone, wood and brick for the generations that follow.

All Mandirs in Canada

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Toronto (Etobicoke): a traditional stone mandir at 61 Claireville Drive in Etobicoke, built in 18 months from 24,000 pieces of hand carved Italian Carrara marble, Turkish limestone and Indian pink stone, and described as the largest of its kind in Canada. Opened on 22 July 2007, its 18 acre grounds also hold a carved wooden haveli and the Heritage Museum.

Hindu Sabha Mandir, Brampton: one of Canada's oldest Hindu institutions, born in the late 1970s in a renovated farmhouse and rebuilt on The Gore Road in Brampton. Reporting in 2004 described its 37 metre tower visible from kilometres away, a 32,000 square foot temple with a main prayer hall for close to 2,500 people, a Hindu school and a community hall.

ISKCON Toronto (Hare Krishna Temple): the Hare Krishna temple at 243 Avenue Road in Toronto, one of Canada's largest Hare Krishna places of worship. Its building was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Gordon and Helliwell, built in 1899 as the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, and bought by ISKCON around 1976.

ISKCON Vancouver, Burnaby: the Hare Krishna temple in Burnaby, British Columbia, a branch of the worldwide ISKCON movement founded in New York City in 1966. Its own site calls it a spiritual oasis in tranquil South Burnaby, and its week builds toward the Sunday Feast, an evening of kirtan, a philosophy talk and a free vegetarian dinner open to everyone.

What is the largest Hindu temple in Canada?

The BAPS mandir in Etobicoke is described as the largest traditional Hindu temple of its kind in Canada. Size here is measured in craft as much as in area: every one of its 24,000 pieces was carved by hand, numbered and assembled on site in only 18 months, following the guidelines of ancient Hindu scriptures on sacred architecture, with load bearing stone walls and no steel skeleton. The temple's opening in July 2007 brought together devotees from across Canada, in the presence of the then prime minister, the premier of Ontario and the mayor of Toronto, a sign of how central the mandir had already become to Hindu life in this country.

How did Hindu temples begin in Canada?

The Brampton story, reported by the Toronto Star and kept by Harvard's Pluralism Project, is the classic first chapter. Cheap agricultural land drew the Hindu Sabha community to Brampton in the late 1970s, where the temple began in a renovated farmhouse. The temple then drew a new immigrant community around it, looking for homes near the shrine. When highway building demolished the farmhouse temple, the community rebuilt at a far larger scale on The Gore Road, and new housing grew up around the new temple. Worship came first, and a neighbourhood followed.

Toronto's other two temples show two more Canadian paths. ISKCON Toronto did not build at all: it bought a handsome 1899 church on Avenue Road around 1976 and made a Krishna temple inside a Gothic Revival landmark, keeping the building's place in the city's streetscape. BAPS Toronto built from nothing, but at record speed, carving in India and assembling in Canada with hundreds of volunteers. On the west coast, ISKCON Vancouver grew in Burnaby as the western home of the same Hare Krishna movement that holds Avenue Road, linking the country's two coasts through one tradition.

Planning a temple journey in Canada

Three of the four temples on this hub stand in the Greater Toronto Area and can be visited in a single trip: Etobicoke in the west, Avenue Road in the city centre, and Brampton in the north west. ISKCON Vancouver stands alone in the west, in Burnaby in Metro Vancouver. Each entry gives its temple's deities, festivals and visiting notes. Check each temple's official site for current darshan and aarti times before you travel, and see Jugti's companion guides to Mandirs in the United States and Mandirs in the United Kingdom for the wider diaspora story.