Like Nerval’s Food Truck, langar has Sikhs and non-Sikhs joining together over langar and community conversations. Langar is front-and-centre during Vaisakhi, the Punjab Harvest Festival, in April where fragrant, spicy colourful food lines the streets of Millwoods Road. Image courtesy of the City of Edmonton Archives EA-596-197. Mill Woods Gurdwara 2606 Mill Woods Road East, circa 1997. Thirty nine years later, a total of four Gurdwaras in all areas of the city serve langar available throughout the day to all Edmontonians. Later they also rented a basement room in the Students Union Building at the University of Alberta on Sundays. Before 1977, when Gurdwara Singh Sabha, the first Gurdwara in Edmonton was located in a west end church and then relocated in 1986 to Millwoods, the sikh community would bring food from home and gather at each other’s houses to enjoy langar on Sundays. As immigration laws relaxed in the 1960-70’s, the largest growth of Sikh immigrants was experienced in all parts of Canada including Edmonton, where most Sikhs arrived as Teachers, International Students, and for work in Alberta’s agricultural and oil industries. Nerval is a member of the 19,555 Sikhs residing in Edmonton, with the first Sikhs having arrived in 1904 in British Columbia. It is encouraged that Sikhs either do seva in the Gurdwara and/or wider community, with the focus on serving without the thought of reward or personal benefit. Even today, a person can enjoy a meal at the Gurdwara and now at the Seva Food Truck, regardless of religion, race, creed, gender, age, ability, or social status. The vision was simple and still holds today: building of community, inclusiveness and oneness between people through the sharing of meals. The origins of langar started with Guru Nanak Dev, the founder and first Guru of Sikhism in 1481. Langar (free kitchen) didn’t begin as a mobile four-wheeler food truck.
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Seva Food Truck – a community based charity initiative started by Nerval and spearheaded by the Sikh Community of Edmonton was running at full speed by 2014. Feeling dispassionate about his current route, he dropped out of school, using evenings after work to build Seva Food Truck – the name, Seva Food Truck comes from the word seva means selfless service. Nerval was working for his family’s business and continues to do so, had been attending MacEwan University, majoring in Business Management. Nerval’s Father encouraged his son to turn this dream into reality. Nerval proposed the idea of bring langar (free kitchen) from the Gurdwaras’ (Sikh Temple) basements to the homeless and impoverished. At the time, food trucks were gaining popularity. Jessy Nerval, 19 at the time, sat in the family room with his Father after dinner.