Healing the Hurt Caused by Protest

January 10, 2008

Author: ANTHONY REINHART

Source: Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080110.BRAMPTON10/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/

It was an unusual place for a 48-hour ceremonial reading of Sikh scripture, but the spanking new Brampton Civic Hospital has been nothing if not unusual.

Built and operated in a controversial partnership with private interests, Ontario's most modern public hospital sits smack in the midst of a 50,000-and-growing South Asian immigrant community, mostly Sikhs, who have contributed millions toward its construction.

And so on a weekend last July, a few months before it opened, more than 15,000 filed into the hospital's sun-washed atrium during an Akhand Paath, or continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the Sikh holy book.