Item consists of a recording of an oral history interview with "The Bollywood Boyz", Harvinder Sihra and Gurvinder Sihra conducted by Burnaby Village Museum Registrar, Rajdeep.
00:00:00 – 00:05:26
Gurvinder “Gurv” Sihra and brother Harvinder “Harv’ Sihra introduce themselves, providing details on …
Interviewer: Rajdeep
Interviewees: "The Bollywood Boyz", Harvinder Sihra and Gurvinder Sihra
Location of Interview: Burnaby Village Museum
Interview Date: July 8, 2023
Total Number of tracks: 2
Total Length of all Tracks: 01:02:03 min
Digital master recordings (wav) were recorded onto two separate audio tracks, edited and merged together and converted to mp3 for access on Heritage Burnaby
Photograph credit: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
Scope and Content
Item consists of a recording of an oral history interview with "The Bollywood Boyz", Harvinder Sihra and Gurvinder Sihra conducted by Burnaby Village Museum Registrar, Rajdeep.
00:00:00 – 00:05:26
Gurvinder “Gurv” Sihra and brother Harvinder “Harv’ Sihra introduce themselves, providing details on where they were born and grew up (in Burnaby), names of their parents and provide details on their family history. They describe how their grandparents and other relatives continued to live in Punjab after their father and mother immigrated to Canada in the 1970’s, recall the reasons their parents decided to immigrate and details of their lives before and after arriving in Canada.
00:05:27 – 00:06:46
Gurvinder and Harvinder describe some of their experiences travelling through Vancouver airport and compare their experiences with their mother’s own experiences. Gurvinder and Harvinder describe the layout of the airport and how customs and immigration has changed over time.
00:06:47 – 00:09:21
Gurvinder and Harvinder provide details about their mother, Parveen Sihra. They share information regarding her education in India and how she was unable to get work related to her degree in biology after immigrating to Canada. They convey how she worked in the Burnaby City Hall cafeteria in the 1990’s and how she worked part time in order to take care of her children. They share how their parents were proud Canadians participating in events inside and outside the South Asian community and were both fluent in English but often spoke Punjabi at home.
00:09:22 – 00:16:06
Gurvinder and Harvinder recall their childhood experiences growing up in Burnaby. They talk about the sports that they were involved with including hockey and Taekwondo, family vacations spent travelling to India and their experiences attending Marlborough Elementary School and Moscrop Secondary School.They describe how they first became interested in watching wrestling and trying it out on their own in their family home. Gurvinder and Harvinder recall their own experiences of discrimination while growing up and playing sports.
00:16:07 – 00:27:37
Gurvinder and Harvinder reflect and recall events that lead them to their dream of becoming professional wrestlers. They talk about pivotal events including attending their first live wresting event at GM Place with their father in 1996, beginning their training in Calgary in 2004, travelling across the country to participate in minor wrestling events, wrestling in Rogers Arena in 2017 and 2020 and getting their first call to join WWE. They talk about the support that they’ve had along the way to getting them where they are today and comment on why they want to be wrestlers in the WWE.
00:27:38 – 00:29:25
Gurvinder and Harvinder provide background information on their various wrestling personas and names in the world of professional wrestling including the Singh Brothers and the Bollywood Boyz.
00:29:26 – 00:38:43
Gurvinder and Harvinder talk about their experiences wrestling in India and the support and expectations of family members in becoming successful. Gurvinder and Harvinder recall and reflect on the experience of being fired from the WWE when cutbacks were made during the COVID pandemic.
00:38:44 – 00:42:53
Gurvinder and Harvinder describe what a day in their lives looks like now. They talk about how they’re still very passionate and focused on their wrestling careers and describe their experiences of having support and enthusiasm from fans and their parents. They talk about travelling across the country to particpate in different wrestling events.
00:42:54 – 00:47:18
Gurvinder and Harvinder talk about their training regimen including exercise and diet and describe areas in Burnaby where they like to train in gyms and the outdoors.
00:47:19 – 00:49:49
Gurvinder and Harvinder talk about neighbourhoods in Burnaby including Metrotown and Deer Lake and how they’ve seen them change over the years.
00:49:50 – 00:54:27
Gurvinder and Harvinder talk about their highest and lowest points in their wrestling careers, highlighting specific events. They talk about the physical stamina it takes for wrestling and compare their sport with the sport of Kabaddi (a contact team sport between two teams originating in India).
00:54:28 – 00:59:01
Gurvinder and Harvinder reflect on what toughness means to them, and what keeps them motivated to do what they do.
00:59:02 – 01:01:31
Gurvinder and Harvinder impart their words of wisdom to younger kids in chasing their passions and dreams and talk about their favourite Bollywood films and actors.
History
Interviewees' biographies:
The Bollywood Boyz are a Canadian professional wrestling tag team composed of brothers Gurvinder "Gurv" Sihra (born in 1984) and Harvinder "Harv" Sihra (born in 1987). The pair are best known for their time in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) where Gurvinder and Harvinder performed under the ring names Sunil Singh and Samir Singh. They were both born and raised in Burnaby by their parents Harjeet and Parveen Sihra and attended Moscrop Secondary School. Gurvinder graduated from Douglas College where he studied criminology and has worked in loss prevention and has a third degree black belt in Taekwondo. Harvinder attended Douglas College with studies in history and has worked as a model and an actor. Both Gurvinder and Harvinder Sihra are Sikhs.
Interviewer biography:
Rajdeep was born and raised in the Lower Mainland and is of Punjabi (South Asian) descent. She has an Associate of Arts degree in Asian Studies from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia. She is a student in the Restoration of Natural Systems program at the University of Victoria. Rajdeep works at Simon Fraser University as a Program Assistant and as a researcher with the City of Burnaby. At Burnaby Village Museum, Rajdeep contributed to the exhibit “Truths Not Often Told: Being South Asian in Burnaby”.
This portion of the interview is about Toki Miyashita’s growing interest in Japanese culture and arts, studying the Japanese language after she was 22 in Montreal. She talks about how she learned paper-folding (origami), to make silk dolls, flower-arranging (Ikebana), and how to wear a kimono, and …
This portion of the interview is about Toki Miyashita’s growing interest in Japanese culture and arts, studying the Japanese language after she was 22 in Montreal. She talks about how she learned paper-folding (origami), to make silk dolls, flower-arranging (Ikebana), and how to wear a kimono, and then began to teach others these skills in Montreal .
Recording is of an interview with Toki Miyashita, conducted by Rod Fowler. Toki Miyashita was one of eleven participants interviewed as part of the SFU/Burnaby Centennial Committee's oral history series titled, "Voices of Burnaby". The interview is about Toki Miyashita’s family’s internment during WWII, her awakening interest in Japanese culture after the war, her subsequent interest in teaching others about Japanese crafts and arts, and becoming a helpful intermediary between Burnaby and visitors from Japan. The interview explores her interest in the Ainu of Japan and their possible link to the aboriginals of BC, her impressions of the Ainu carver Nuburi Toko, and her involvement in the events surrounding the creation of the sculpture “Playground of the Gods” for Burnaby Mountain. The interview also contains interesting details about the art of Japanese flower-arranging. To view “Narrow By” terms for each track expand this description and see “Notes”.
Biographical Notes
Toki Miyashita was born in Richmond B.C., ca. 1935, at the Nelson Brothers “fishery”, a second generation Canadian descended from the Oikawa family who settled on Don and Lion Islands (Oikawa-shima). In 1942 the Japanese Canadians in BC were forcibly moved from the coast and their belongings confiscated. Toki Miyashita, her parents, two brothers, and grandparents were first taken to Hastings Park where her father was separated from the family to work in road camps, and the rest of the family were interned in New Denver. Her resourceful grandmother moved the family to land outside the internment camp, growing a large garden from seeds brought with her. In 1946 the family moved to Kamloops and in 1958, after finishing high school, Toki Miyashita moved to Montreal to be with relatives and a small Japanese community. At this time she became interested in Japanese culture and took a Japanese language course at age 22. She learned about Japanese flower-arranging (Ikebana), paper folding (Origami), silk doll making (from a Russian Jew), and how to wear a kimono. She began demonstrating these arts in schools and to other groups, which she continued doing when she, her husband and two young children moved to Burnaby in 1969. Toki Miyashita has been called an unpaid “ambassador” of Japanese culture to the Lower Mainland. She has acted as liaison between Burnaby and her sister city Kushiro in Japan, which involved her in the creation of the Ainu sculpture “Playground of the Gods” on Burnaby Mountain for Burnaby’s Centennial. Toki Miyashita is a recognized Master in Ikebana Sogetsu, a school of flower-arranging, and has served on the board of the Vancouver Ikebana Association. She also served on Burnaby’s Family Court in the 1980s.
Rod Fowler returned to university as a mature student in the 1980s after working about twenty years in the field of economics and computerization in business in England, Europe and Western Canada. He graduated with a BA from SFU in both History and Sociology in 1987, his MA degree in Geography in 1989, and his PhD in Cultural Geography at SFU. He taught courses in Geography, Sociology, History and Canadian Studies at several Lower Mainland colleges, before becoming a full time member of the Geography Department at Kwantlen University College.
Interviews were digitized in 2015 allowing them to be accessible on Heritage Burnaby. The digitization project was initiated by the Community Heritage Commission with support from City of Burnaby Council.
Photograph of an unidentified person holding and viewing two paintings, in a room filled with paintings propped up against the windows and on the floor.
Photograph of an unidentified person holding and viewing two paintings, in a room filled with paintings propped up against the windows and on the floor.
Photograph of women doing arts and crafts at Edmonds House. Marion Olson and Verda Joynt are at a table glazing pottery, while May Clark sits behind them, throwing something on the wheel as Doris Albright stands, painting at an easel. This most likely the site of what is now Edmonds Centre.
Photograph of women doing arts and crafts at Edmonds House. Marion Olson and Verda Joynt are at a table glazing pottery, while May Clark sits behind them, throwing something on the wheel as Doris Albright stands, painting at an easel. This most likely the site of what is now Edmonds Centre.
Photograph of Sarah Dobbs, the curator/coordinator of the "Wild Thing" art exhibition by Burnaby school students, displaying a work by Maggie Siccama called "Rubber Ducky."
Photograph of Sarah Dobbs, the curator/coordinator of the "Wild Thing" art exhibition by Burnaby school students, displaying a work by Maggie Siccama called "Rubber Ducky."
Collected by editorial for use in a May 2001 issue of the Burnaby NewsLeader
Caption from metadata: "Sarah Dobbs, the curator/coordinator of the "Wild Thing" art exhibit by Burnaby school students, gets an inside look at "Rubber Ducky," by Maggie Siccama, a Grade 9 student at the Canada Way Education Centre."
Photograph of Chanel Lapierre in the Eastburn Community Centre, displaying a painted wooden fish that she painted for the "Stream of Dreams" fence mural. A table with paints and other painted fish are visible behind her.
Photograph of Chanel Lapierre in the Eastburn Community Centre, displaying a painted wooden fish that she painted for the "Stream of Dreams" fence mural. A table with paints and other painted fish are visible behind her.
Collected by editorial for use in a September 2000 issue of the Burnaby NewsLeader
Caption from metadata: "Chanel Lapierre, 10, shows off the colorful wooden fish she created at Eastburn Community Centre. Her fish will join 4,999 others on a "Stream of Dreams" fence mural around the empty lot at Kingsway and Edmonds. The mural is being built to celebrate BC Rivers Day and the painted fish represent the 5,000 fish reportedly killed two years ago when a toxic substance entered Byrne Creek through a storm drain."
Photograph of an unidentified child using a rolling pin on some modelling clay, with another child, who is also working with clay, seated at the same table in the background.
Photograph of an unidentified child using a rolling pin on some modelling clay, with another child, who is also working with clay, seated at the same table in the background.
Photograph of an unidentified child showing a painted fish for the "Stream of Dreams" mural. Other children are seated on the floor of a classroom and painting their own fish in the background.
Photograph of an unidentified child showing a painted fish for the "Stream of Dreams" mural. Other children are seated on the floor of a classroom and painting their own fish in the background.
Snowball Girl - Decoration. Possibly a Christmas decoration of a girl holding a snow ball. The girl has a blue coat, pink tissue paper skirt, red boots, gloves and tam hat. There is a string at the top of the hat for hanging.
Angel - Decoration. Cardboard decoration, possibly for Christmas, of an angel playing the lyre. The bottom part of the angel's skirt is made of tissue paper.
Angel - Decoration. Cardboard decoration, possibly for Christmas, of an angel holding a horn of plenty. The bottom part of the angel's skirt is made of tissue paper and has traces of glitter.
Crying Girl - Decoration. Possibly a Christmas decoration of a girl crying. The girl is in a yellow dress with white smock apron. The bottom of the skirt is made of tissue paper. She is also holding an apple.
"Eskimo" Girl - Decoration. Christmas decoration of a blonde girl in what looks like an "Eskimo" outfit. The bottom of the skrit is made of tissue paper. The girl holds a round yellow sign with "A Merry Xmas" written on it.
Small decorative light bulb of a cylindrical Asian lantern. It is decorated with painted red flowers and green leaves. The light has a peach and cream background with black around the top and bottom. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.
Small decorative light bulb of a cylindrical Asian lantern. It is decorated with painted flowers that look like irises. The light has a peach and cream background with black around the top and bottom. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.
Small spherical decorative light bulb of a Asian lantern. It is decorated with painted red flowers and green leaf pattern with an orange and cream background. There is black around the top and bottom. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.
Small decorative light bulb shaped like a bird. The bird has a pink coloured back with a translucent white front. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.
Small decorative light bulb shaped like a fruit possibly a nectarine with dark red colouring at the top fading to yellow at the bottom. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.
Small decorative light bulb shaped like a bunch of purple grapes with leaves at the top. Some of the paint has worn off showing white underneath. It has threads at the top to connect to a light socket.