From the Frozen Yukon to Rideau Hall: My Journey to the Governor General's Meritorious Service Medal
On June 25, 2026, I stood at Rideau Hall and received the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal — a moment I still find difficult to put into words. My heart was full, my eyes were moist, and somewhere in my mind, I could see the wide open fields of Punjab, the village of Siahar where I was born, and the frozen lakes of the Yukon where I first started dancing alone in the snow
This is a journey that began long before any camera was pointed at me.
From Punjab to the Yukon
I was born into a farming family in Siahar, Punjab. As a child, I watched the men and women of my village leaping, spinning, celebrating the land and the labour that sustained us.
I came to Canada in 2006, became a citizen in 2011, and in 2012, I made what felt like an unusual decision, I moved to the Yukon. People thought I was perhaps a little crazy. The Yukon is cold, remote, and as far from Punjab as any place on earth could possibly be. But the moment I arrived, something in me recognized this land. The vastness, the silence, the raw beauty of it, it reminded me that nature has a soul, and I wanted to dance within it.
Cross-Cultural Understanding Thought Indigenous Cultures
When I first started learning about Indigenous culture, I knew I needed to go further than just reading about it, I wanted to show appreciation by actually showing up. That is what brought me to the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, in the remote community of Old Crow in northern Yukon, where Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm danced Bhangra with me. Making that video was truly marvellous for me. I kept thinking about how special it is to bring together a culture I belong to with one that is so ancient, one that most people don’t know enough about, and how good it feels to connect with people that way.
While I was up there, I also spent time with Stephen Frost Sr., a respected Vuntut Gwitchin elder, and his family. Moments like that stay with me longer than any view count ever could. I have also danced and spent time on the land with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in southwest Yukon. One memory I still carry close is having someone there speak to me in Southern Tutchone, their own language, and then encourage me to speak back in mine, Punjabi. That exchange, two languages neither of us grew up needing translated for each other, but offered freely between us, told me everything about why I do this work.
Important Video with Canadian Armed Forces in 2019
When I think back to 2019 and that day at the Canadian Forces base in Esquimalt, near Victoria BC, I still smile. I’d been invited to bring high energy physical movement through bhangra onto the base, to teach a group of soldiers the moves. It was the first time the Canadian Armed Forces had taken part in a collaboration built around Punjabi folk dance, and the whole idea behind it was simple: One Force, One Love for Canadians. I wanted Canadians to see BIPOC soldiers dancing together, showing a side of the military people don’t often get to see.
I never expected the response it got. The video ended up being shared more than 180,000 times, and I started hearing from people who said it changed how they thought about who serves in our military. What moved me most was hearing from Art McDonald, who was commanding the Royal Canadian Navy at the time. He wrote that as the Forces and the Navy prepared for Canada Day, the video captured the spirit of inclusion and diversity he calls the Canadian advantage, and he thanked everyone involved as “shipmates.” That word stuck with me.
For me, that day was never really about the dance itself. It’s part of something I keep coming back to in all my work, using bhangra to build inclusivity in sport, in the military, in charities, in communities that don’t always get to share a stage together. The same year, I traveled to Old Crow to dance with the Elders there, and I’ve danced with bagpipers, with Paralympians, with mayors. The soldiers in Esquimalt were just one more reminder that when people let their guard down and move together, the distance between “us” and “them” gets a lot smaller. That’s the whole reason I do this.
Dancing Through the Pandemic
Nobody could have predicted what 2020 would bring to the world. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and fear and isolation gripped Canadians from coast to coast to coast, I felt a deep calling. I went out onto the frozen wilderness of the Yukon, sometimes at −45°C or colder, and I danced Bhangra. I filmed it. I shared it.
I did not do this because I thought it would go viral. I did it because I genuinely believed that joy is a form of medicine. I also brings people together. It mitigates social barriers. That when the world feels heavy, a spinning body against a vast white sky can remind people that they are alive, that beauty still exists, that we still belong to each other.
Millions of people watched. Children in school classrooms across Canada learned Bhangra from me over video calls, nearly 20,000 students. Letters arrived from people who said the videos helped them get through their darkest days. That was the true medal for me, even before any formal recognition came.
The Yukon as My Stage
People often ask me: why Bhangra in the Yukon? Why not somewhere warmer, somewhere more visible?
And I say: because the Yukon is my home.
The frozen lakes, the boreal forests, the Northern Lights overhead, this landscape is not a backdrop to my story. It is my story. When I dance on the ice, I am honouring two homes at once — the Punjab of my roots and the Yukon of my heart. I am saying that a Sikh-Canadian man from a farming village in Asia belongs here, in this land, just as fully as anyone.
This, I believe, is what Canada is. Not a place where you leave your culture at the door, but a place where you bring it in and share it with your neighbours.
My Cross-Canada Joy, Hope and Positivity Tours (2022 & 2023)
The Dream That Began With Letters
Long before I packed my van or mapped any roads, these tours were born out of something deeply personal — handwritten letters.
At the peak of the pandemic, people from all across Canada would send handwritten notes of gratitude to my cabin in the Yukon. Those who didn’t know my address would simply write “Gurdeep Pandher, Bhangra, Yukon” on the envelope — and I received those letters too. Each one carried a story: of loneliness, of grief, of illness, and of hope. Nurses who watched my videos between hospital shifts. Children who danced along in their living rooms. Grandparents who smiled for the first time in weeks.
Those letters moved me profoundly. They gave me an understanding that there is lots and lots of sadness in people’s lives — in communities, in this country, and beyond. And so I thought I should do something.
“Their love inspired me to go to their places,” I told myself. And so I decided, when the pandemic began to ease, that I would go to them. I would visit the very communities from where people wrote me those letters, so that I could uplift their spirits in person. I would do a Cross-Country Joy Tour, to bring joy across Canada’s coast to coast to coast.
The 2022 Tour: From the Atlantic Ocean to Ontario
A Van, Solar Panels, and a Bed
I bought a van. I added solar panels on the roof, put in a bed, and called it a home.
That humble van became my stage, my shelter, and my studio as I drove thousands of kilometres across this beautiful country, posting a new video every single day. I was no longer dancing alone in the wilderness — I was going to the people, meeting them face to face, saying to them directly how important it is to create joy, hope, positivity, and build cross-cultural bridges, and how important it is to keep hope in your heart.
Atlantic Canada: Cape Breton, Halifax, and Peggy’s Cove
I started my tour on the east coast, travelling from Newfoundland and Labrador to Nova Scotia, then Prince Edward Island. The Atlantic leg filled my heart with the kind of spontaneous human warmth that no plan could ever prepare you for.
In Cape Breton, I danced on the shores of Inverness Beach with the Atlantic wind at my back. One evening, while sitting in The Red Shoe Pub in Mabou, a complete stranger paid my bill without saying a word. I was so touched by that anonymous generosity and kindness — the way local people treat their guests — it reminded me that Canada’s goodness runs very deep.
At Peggy’s Cove, near Halifax, I danced Bhangra while a local friend played the Scottish bagpipes along that dramatic, rocky Atlantic shoreline. I called it cross-cultural togetherness. To me, every cultural difference is not a wall — it is an invitation. And what better invitation than Bhangra meeting bagpipes at one of Canada’s most beloved landscapes?
While preparing to film a video in a Halifax park, a woman spotted me from across the way and called out: “You’re the bhangra guy from the Yukon! You’re an inspiration!” It had been that way everywhere I went, and every single time, it touched me deeply. These were not strangers to me. They were people who had written to me, danced with me through their screens, and carried my videos into their most difficult moments.
I feel that sharing and learning together creates understanding, creates knowledge, and also breaks down many, many barriers.
Ontario: Bhangra Meets Vivaldi in Guelph
As I made my way through Quebec and into Ontario, my spirit of cross-cultural collaboration reached new creative heights that even I had not imagined. In Guelph, I stopped at the University of Guelph Arboretum where members of the Guelph Symphony Orchestra joined me for a spontaneous, beautiful performance. Four musicians played the Third Movement of Autumn by Vivaldi while I danced Bhangra, with golden autumn leaves covering the ground all around us.
It was one of those moments that reminds you why you do what you do.
When people see people from all walks of life creating music together, dancing together, living in harmony with each other, then why can’t we live together in peace and harmony in the world? That is the question Bhangra asks. And I believe the answer is: we can.
Pausing and Looking West
The tour took longer than I had expected — Canada is a very big country! By the time I reached Ontario in the autumn of 2022, I knew I needed to return to my cabin in the Yukon before winter set in. But I was not done. Alberta, the prairies, and the west still waited for me. I would return when summer came back.
The 2022 tour had already taken me across the eastern half of my adopted homeland, and every stop had planted seeds of joy from the Atlantic shores to the heart of central Canada.
The 2023 Tour: Westward Into the Prairies
Back on the Road
During the summer of 2023, I was once again in my humble van, traversing the beautiful landscapes of this nation and visiting communities to continue spreading messages of joy, hope, and positivity. The second leg of this grand national journey pushed further west, into the wide-open lands that reminded me so deeply of my farming roots in Punjab.
Manitoba: From Churchill to Winnipeg
One of the most meaningful stops of the 2023 tour was Manitoba. I began in Western Ontario and then went to Churchill, in the far north, where I hosted a dance event before visiting several northern Manitoba communities. These are remote, tight-knit places, and from my upbringing in a humble farming village in Punjab, I have always felt a deep connection with small communities. They remind me of where I came from.
Later in the week, I toured several southern Manitoba towns and then returned to Winnipeg for a Bhangra dance workshop. People came out, rolled up their sleeves, and danced with me. That is the beauty of physical movement, it asks nothing of you except your willingness to move and to smile.
Dance and music are a universal language which we all can understand. Whenever I was down and faced challenges in my life, I danced Bhangra to press my reset button, to find my own joy. And I believe everyone can do the same.
Of all the landscapes I crossed during these tours, the wheat farms of Manitoba moved me in a way I had not anticipated. I would stop by the roadside and watch prairie farmers harvesting the wheat crop for hours, and I would be transported back to my family’s farm in Siahar, Punjab.
Bhangra was born from that very act — Punjabi farmers created this dance to celebrate the wheat harvest, to express their joy and gratitude to the land. And here I was, a man from those same farming roots, watching Canadian farmers harvest wheat on the prairies. The circle felt complete. The land spoke to me in a language older than any words.
An Honorary Doctorate in Newfoundland
The 2023 tour was also marked by a profound honour. In May 2023, the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador in St. John’s awarded me an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, recognizing my contributions to Canadians through dance, cross-cultural communication, and messages of hope. I was deeply grateful and humbled. To receive such recognition from a university at the eastern edge of this country — a country I chose and that chose me back — meant everything.
What These Tours Meant to Me
By the time the 2023 tour reached its later stages, I had been able to see roughly 60 per cent of Canada, from the Yukon in the north, to Newfoundland and Labrador in the east, and to the prairies. From large cities to small villages, from symphony halls to rocky Atlantic coves. I organized meet-ups through social media wherever I went, inviting people to come out to public spaces, even to their homes, to dance with me, to laugh, to breathe fresh air and remember that life, even when difficult, holds beauty worth celebrating.
I danced with bagpipers and symphony orchestras. I danced on beaches, in parks, in arboretums and on prairie roadsides. I danced with people who came out in the cold, who drove hours to meet me, who brought their children and their grandparents and their neighbours.
These tours were never about me. They were my way of giving back to the people whose letters had kept me going. A simple man from a farming village in Punjab, living in a wilderness cabin in the Yukon, driving a solar-panelled van across one of the largest countries on earth — to say, in person, what I had tried to say through every dance video I ever made:
You matter. Joy is possible. We belong to each other.
I find that these messages are very important when there is a lot of sorrow, a lot of suffering, and a lot of sadness in the world. Joy is food for the mind. Include it in your diet.
June 25, 2026 — Rideau Hall, Ottawa
When I received the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal on June 25, 2026, I thought of every person who ever sent me a message saying, “Gurdeep, your video made me smile today.” I thought of the school children who learned their first Bhangra steps. I thought of people who were lonely in lockdown, who found a moment of brightness in a dancing man on a frozen Yukon lake.
This medal belongs to all of them.
It belongs to the Yukon, which gave me the space and the silence to find my voice. It belongs to Punjab, which gave me the dance and the spirit. It belongs to Canada, which opened its arms and said: you are welcome here, and what you carry matters.
I feel deeply honoured and profoundly grateful for this recognition. Thank you, dear fellow Canadians, for your love and support, expressed in so many ways, including forms I may never fully perceive ❤️🙏🏽
Thank you for purchasing my independent, ad-free, and grant-free print magazine at Gurdeep.ca/magazine. Thank you for giving this magazine a place in your life, and for welcoming its words and spirit into your home. Every time you read it, share it, or pass it along, you help this small, independent effort travel further than I could ever do alone.
It is fabulous to read you're whole story in one post! And what a story! We are all so grateful for your generosity of sharing your pathway to joy with us all, whether on your road trip or online. And it is so fitting that you have received this incredible recognition. It gives me faith that others can still recognize the good in us all, and Gurdeep is The Good! Thank you and congratulations!
This was my favorite post of yours to read yet. I hope something will become of all the letters you receive. A giant mural? Used as a paper-mache to make a sculpture Gurdeep dancing the bhangra?