When Surinder Takkar and his parents left their home in Punjab, India, for a new life in Mackenzie, B.C., in 1981, there were about 85 other Sikh families living in the small community between the Rocky and Omineca mountain ranges.

Takkar's is now one of the only Sikh families left there.

"We try to keep up the gurdwara but when COVID happened, we [had] to close it," said Takkar.

He said over the years it became increasingly difficult to maintain the building, constructed in the early 1980s once serving nearly 400 Sikh residents.

"There's only four or five [Sikh] people living in Mackenzie, right? So our community decided we have to do something about it because four people cannot handle that building," he said.

Now as small town demographics change, the once bustling gurdwara is find

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