Charlie, the Restless Ghost of the Vancouver Art Gallery

The Vancouver Art Gallery, which became a gallery in 1983, has a permanent resident who was here long before the art: a ghost named Charlie. Employees often find their desks rearranged when they come in, and the janitors have apparently convinced them that a spirit moves through the halls at night, making noises and rummaging in offices. They say this ghost is Charlie, the spirit of William Charles Hopkinson.

Hopkinson was an immigration officer who was shot to death here in the old Court House in 1914. There was a lot of tension between the Vancouver East Indian community and government officials back then, especially after the *Komagata Maru* incident where Sikh migrants were forced to return to India. The Sikh community was split between those who wanted independence for their homeland and those who were loyal to the British.

Hopkinson, originally from Yorkshire, had served in the Calcutta Police Force and was fluent in Hindi and other Indian languages. As an immigration inspector in Vancouver, he also worked as an agent for the Indian police, watching for extremists. He created a secret network of pro-British Sikh informants to report on nationalist activities and even went undercover as Narain Singh to get information.

On October 14, 1914, at 10 a.m., Hopkinson was smoking at the barrister’s entrance to the Court House when Mewa Singh shot him at close range with a pistol. Singh was hanged for the murder and is still considered a hero by many, with a hall in the Ross Street Sikh Temple named after him.

Hopkinson had a large civic funeral, but his spirit seems to have remained here, restless, to this day.