Temple unbuilt, thousands in bills unpaid: Mystery man vanishes from Manitoba town
By: Bill Redekop | Winnipeg Free Press - Fbe. 23, 2009
A man who planned to build a Sikh temple in MacGregor, hundreds of kilometres away from other Sikhs, has suddenly left town owing an amount estimated at more than $20,000 to local contractors and merchants.
Harvinder Singh and people presumed to be his family--a woman and two youths, possibly in their early teens--arrived last September in MacGregor with grandiose plans.
Singh told the Free Press in an interview in mid-January that God had told him to leave his home in Florida and build a Sikh temple somewhere in the centre of Canada, which turned out to be MacGregor, midway between Winnipeg and Brandon just off the Trans-Canada Highway.
Construction of the temple was supposed to start in March.
The family was last seen in MacGregor on Wednesday, Feb. 4. The Singhs' rented home was suddenly vacated, the family's two children pulled from school, and their phone disconnected.
One individual has hired a lawyer to try to track him down. One recognizable physical trait of the family is that Singh's wife's hand has been amputated and she has just a stub end.
However, there are also doubts the woman was his wife. One contractor said Singh told him the children weren't his. Cheques were written under the woman's name. Those cheques regularly bounced.
The two horses and seven cattle he kept on a farm that he was negotiating to buy are also gone.
A week after he departed, the Free Press managed to reach Singh on his cellphone. "I come back, I come back," he claimed at the time, speaking in heavily accented English.
He said he would be back Friday night, Feb. 13. When asked where he'd taken his livestock, he said he'd sold them. "I'll phone you," he said.
However, he has not come back and his cellphone number is no longer in service.
"He always had good stories to tell," said one individual, who is owed more than $10,000 and had cheques from Singh that bounced three times.
The community is rife with rumours. One is that Singh headed to Nova Scotia. Another is that he was having trouble getting his immigration approved.
Singh owes some contractors, as well as some local farmers for items like hay for his animals. "I think it's a few lessons learned and leave it at that," said Don Buhler, who is owed a very small amount for hay.
Singh also owes for some building materials purchased from local merchants.
In a Free Press interview in January, Singh was asked about some concerns in the community over unpaid bills. He denied it but did pay off at least one individual a few days later.
The interview was in his rented house in a prayer room decked out with velvet rugs embroidered with gold. Incense burned nearby and Indian prayer music played on a little boom box.
There were also two framed footprints made in powdery red dye, and two similar handprints, that Singh claimed were made by God.
He maintained these items facilitated several miracles at a Sikh temple in Florida. Presumably, he was hoping similar miracles would occur at the temple he planned for MacGregor to attract parishioners.
After that story appeared, Singh phoned the Free Press reporter to complain the story was "too personal." He said he still owned his 3,400-square-foot house in Clermont, Fla. and was renting it out.
His departure comes two-and-a-half weeks after the story was published. Efforts to locate Singh through directory searches in Florida, and phone calls to local Sikh organizations in the central Florida area, were unsuccessful.
The family arrived in MacGregor in September driving a gold Hummer. Singh, 47, claimed he owned five restaurants while living in Florida.
Several people from the Sikh community in Winnipeg were critical of Singh when the story appeared in the Free Press. One caller said that Singh's brand of religion, with miracles produced by footprints in red dye, was not representative of the Sikh faith.
bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca