March 15, 1990 - Baltej Singh Dhillon

RCMP Sikhs allowed to wear turbans. Baltej Singh Dhillon was born in Malaysia in 1966 and immigrated to Canada at the age of 16. He trained to be an officer with the RCMP, but as a baptized Sikh, was required to wear a turban as a tenet of his religion. This precluded him from wearing the hat that formed part of the RCMP’s ceremonial uniform. In this he shared a dilemma with many Canadian Sikhs who felt under pressure to comply with regulations against their beards and turbans. Dhillon chose to challenge the regulation – an act that generated severe criticism, petitions, court challenges and even a death threat. But his perseverance paid off and on March 15, 1990, Canada’s Solicitor General Pierre Cadieux announced that Sikhs in the RCMP were welcome to wear their turbans and other religious symbols as part of their uniform. Dhillon became an RCMP officer with the city of Surrey, British Columbia, where he worked on the case of Air India flight 182 in which a bomb exploded mid-flight, killing 329 people, 280 of which were Canadian citizens.

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