While Sohi and Jyoti will be the first Indo-Canadian mayors of major Canadian cities, Jyoti is also the first female mayor of Calgary
The Canadian Bazaar
TORONTO: Calgary and Edmonton elected two Punjabis as their mayors on Monday.
While former federal minister Amarjeet Sohi, 57, has been elected as the mayor of Edmonton Jyoti Gondek will take the place of the outgoing mayor Naheed Nenshi in Calgary.
A sitting city councillor, Jyoti will also be Calgary’s first female mayor.
She was born in Britain to Punjabi Sikh parents. Her parents came to Britain from Punjab. Her father Jasdev Singh Grewal trained as a lawyer in India and then the UK. Her family moved to Canada when she was four.
Punjab-born Sohi was earlier Minister of Natural Resources and Minister of Infrastructure and Communities in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet. Before that, he was a Edmonton city councillor.
“I am honoured and humbled that you have chosen me to serve as Edmonton’s first South Asian mayor. I would like to take a moment to thank those who made this historic win possible,” Sohi said after his victory.
Before entering politics, Sohi was a bus driver with Edmonton Transit.
He was elected to Edmonton city council in 2007. In 2015, he entered federal politics, got elected as a Liberal MP from Edmonton Mill Woods and became the federal minister for infrastructure in the Trudeau Cabinet.
Sohi lost in the 2019 federal elections.
Interestingly, Sohi was arrested in Bihar in India in 1988 while doing theatre-related volunteer work there. Punjab terrorism was at its peak, and he was arrested after being accused of being a terrorist.
Sohi, who was born in Punjab in 1964 and came to Edmonton at the age of 17, went back to India in 1988 to work with a Punjabi theatre group run by noted playwright Gursharan Singh.
He was arrested when his theatre group went to Bihar to perform in favour for land reforms. He spent two years behind bars without any charges before he was released.
Remembering his jail time in India, Sohi said in an interview in 2015, “Physical scars heal. It’s the emotional scars that you carry on the inside that you have with you for all time.”
As for Jyoti, she also recalled how her turbaned father Jasdev Singh Grewal faced discrimination when her family arrived in Manitoba.
Jyoti wrote, “Battling prejudice and closed doors as a professional with a turban, he (her dad) made sacrifices to provide for his family while still practising law. With sadness and resolve, he cut his hair and moved from active practise into a leadership role with Manitoba’s Land Titles Office system. This was the start of their family’s journey throughout the province, where she was often the only visible minority in her class.”
After marrying her engineer husband Todd, Jyoti moved to Calgary. In her early period in Calgary, she worked with Credit Union and Greyhound Canada.
Fluent in Punjabi, Jyoti was also instrumental in getting Punjabi as a second language option in the Calgary Board of Education.
