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A museum in Mississauga that tells the story of the Sikh community in Canada has suffered severe water damage from a fire, and staff are now trying to salvage artifacts from its collection.<\/p>\n
The small fire broke out in an unit above the gallery of the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada on Feb. 26. While firefighters contained the fire, the museum, located on Drew Road near Airport Road and Derry Road E., was flooded when the sprinkler system above went off.<\/p>\n
Pardeep Singh Nagra, executive director of the museum, said books, artifacts, furniture and other resources were damaged. Some items were soaked beyond repair, including some from the 1800s.<\/p>\n
“The museum itself has to be gutted. The total structure of it has to be rebuilt. And so, very sad, very devastating. But we say, we’re hurt but not we’re not broken,” Nagra said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
While the museum space will have to undergo extensive repairs, many of the salvaged artifacts have been moved to a nearby location to keep them away from smoke and dampness. <\/p>\n
![\"Sikh](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773224709_608_default.jpg\")
A table full of historic Sikh-Canadian artifacts with minor water damage is shown here. (Tyler Cheese\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Nagra said the next step is to evaluate the damage. The museum and its board of directors are insured but the insurance is limited, he added.<\/p>\n
“You’ll never be able to replace something that’s not replaceable,” Nagra said. <\/p>\n
Nagra said the museum has played an important role in the national identity and social fabric of Canada and is internationally known, having staged exhibits in the U.S. and U.K. As it works to get back up and running, he says its work as a community resource will continue.<\/p>\n
The Royal Ontario Museum and the City of Mississauga museums have reached out to offer help, he said.<\/p>\n
Loss of artifacts seen as a blow to community<\/p>\n
Jaspreet Kaur, a member of the Ontario chapter of World Sikh Organization, said the loss of artifacts is a huge blow to the Sikh-Canadian community. <\/p>\n
Kaur said the museum is a hub for women’s empowerment, human rights, children’s books and mental health.<\/p>\n
“It was such a critical space. To know that we’ve lost not only the stuff that was in the space, but that the space itself has been damaged was quite sad,” Kaur said.<\/p>\n
“The art of Sikh storytelling and preserving our heritage and our identity is crucial to who we are.” <\/p>\n
Main problem from water damage is mould: expert<\/p>\n
Stephanie Meeuwse, supervisor of museums preservation and collections for the City of Mississauga, said she has given some advice to the museum on saving the artifacts, including some “phenomenonal” photographs.<\/p>\n
She said the main problem is mould and it’s recommended that everything be dried within 48 hours if not frozen.<\/p>\n
Meeuwse said the loss of artifacts can have a big impact on communities because artifacts are vehicles for stories.<\/p>\n
“It’s just devastating. The cultural artifacts and the museums are vital to communities. They preserve not only just the item, but the collective memory, the stories themselves,” she said.<\/p>\n
Meeuwse said the museums of Mississauga are a collection of historic heritage buildings and problems have occurred before.<\/p>\n
“We have had a frozen pipe the one time in a washroom above a collection storage, which was a terrible situation … The entire basement flooded right up our collection storage,” she said. <\/p>\n
“We were lucky. We had a lot of resources within the city, like other buildings that we could use and other sites, but we basically had stuff spread everywhere and fans going and dehumidifiers. And then we actually made use of a restoration company.”<\/p>\n
The Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada says it’s planning to host a gala on April 4 as part of Sikh Heritage Month despite the water damage. <\/p>\n
The museum said it will take all the help it can get \u2014 including emotional, physical and financial support \u2014 during its restorations and donations can be made on its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194297],"tags":[49,48,55405],"class_list":{"0":"post-528870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mississauga","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mississauga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}