The discovery of copper ore at Phoenix and Deadwood, arrival of the railroad and founding of smelting works brought a huge influx of miners, prospectors, farmers, labourers and entrepreneurs to the Boundary between 1895 and 1899. Businesses sprung up to serve the burgeoning industries and population, including hotels, saloons, restaurants and various shops. One such establishment was the Pacific Hotel, which served commercial, mining and railway men and other travellers for 19 years until its fortunes waned with changing times. This article takes a look at the once-iconic hotel, its proprietors and operation, and its untimely demise.
“The Most Comfortable House in the Boundary…”
The Pacific Hotel was a business venture of John J. McIntosh (1866-?). McIntosh’s origins are obscure; he may have hailed from Ontario or the Maritimes. What is known is that he settled in the Town of Upper Grand Forks in 1896 and prospected, staked and developed a series of claims on Hardy Mountain.[1] Prompted by the imminent arrival of the CPR and the flood of travellers it would bring, McIntosh constructed a new hotel on the corner of Railway Street and Minto Avenue (today Donaldson Drive and 76th Avenue) in May 1898.[2] In June he received a hotel license[3] and in July opened its doors for business.[4]
Original Pacific Hotel structure, Grand Forks Sun, August 15, 1905.
Christened the ‘Pacific’ after the railway, the new hotel was an impressive three-story 33’ x 60’ frame structure with wood foundation, full heating and electric system, clapboard siding and dormered mansard roof.[5] The main floor featured a large, first-class dining room with adjoining bar and rear kitchen. It had accommodations for 25 guests, with 10 spacious suites with hot and cold baths on the second floor, 12 smaller rooms on the third floor and sample rooms for commercial travellers.[6] Newly furnished and decorated throughout, it was billed the “Most Comfortable House in the Boundary.”[7]
Along with opening the hotel, McIntosh petitioned for the incorporation of Upper Grand Forks as the City of Columbia in April 1899[8] and was twice elected alderman in January 1900 and January 1902.[9] He was also active on the Columbia Liberal Association executive.[10] His involvement in local politics served him well, enabling him to secure the Pacific as a stop for all stage lines running into the Boundary in April 1899.[11] Then, in January 1900, McIntosh and councilmen successfully lobbied the CPR to build its station at Columbia instead of Grand Forks,[12] with all passenger traffic routed to the depot built opposite the Pacific. This assured the hotel a steady business, with weary train passengers arriving just steps away.
Insurance map showing Pacific Hotel across from C.P.R. Passenger Station in Columbia. Library & Archives Canada.
McIntosh leased the Pacific to a succession of proprietors who ran its day-to-day operations including: Columbia liquor merchant John C. Douglas from July to December 1898;[13] ex-Province Hotel managers Alexander W. Fraser of Grand Forks and Joseph E. Stark of Pullman, WA from February to April 1899;[14] ex-Arlington Hotel owner John Haverty of Trail from November 1901 to May 1902;[15] electrician Peter D. and Annie McDonald of Trail from June to September 1902, then (dining room) September 1902 to February 1903;[16] ex-Pacific chef William W. Shaw (dining room) from March to October 1903;[17] Mrs. W.E. Nichols and Miss Liddy L. Bailey of Summit City (suites) from September 1902 to September 1903;[18] Thomas and Harriet Walker of Midway from October 1903 to July 1904;[19] ex-VV&E conductor Charles V. Sloggy and ex-Victoria Hotel employee Thomas Donald, both of Grand Forks, from July to September 1904;[20] Sloggy again from September 1904 to May 1905;[21] and McDonald again from May to November 1905.[22]
Throughout this period, the hotel did a splendid business in the west end of Grand Forks (as Columbia was known after its civic amalgamation with Grand Forks in 1903[23]), catering to thousands of commercial, mining and railway men and other CPR travellers to the Boundary. First-class suites were offered at $1.50 to $2 per day, while room and board was offered to long-term guests, often local workmen, at special rates of $7 to $10 per week.[24] In the sample rooms, travelling salesmen set out their merchandise for local merchants to view and inspect. The dining room and grill offered full-course cuisine and short orders at all hours, with special six o’clock chicken dinners held each Sunday, all prepared by the kitchen chef using the best to be found in the markets.[25] The main and assistant bartenders at the bar served up the choicest brands of wines, liquors and cigars to thirsty patrons.[26] Special events were also hosted, including business meetings, teas, dances and banquets.
Pacific Hotel advertisement, Grand Forks Sun, July 24, 1903.
Three main competitors emerged in the west end at this time: the Queen’s Hotel (est. 1897), Columbia Hotel (est. 1899) and C.P.R. Hotel (est. 1902).[27] Others came and went, such as the Hotel Canada (est. 1898-1902), St. Johns Hotel (est. 1899-1901), Hotel Escalet (est. 1900-1901) and Golden Bar Hotel (est. 1900-1901).[28] However, none matched the Pacific in terms of quality, size nor proximity to railway stations. Indeed, proprietor C.V. Sloggy reported in 1904 that “every room in the house is filled nightly.”[29]
Meanwhile, John J. McIntosh continued to prospect, locating 56 square miles of coal claims near Morrissey in East Kootenay on behalf of a Grand Forks consortium in April 1903.[30] He spent most of the next year in Victoria, lobbying provincial authorities for licenses, and in Spokane, buying up adjacent claims from claimholders.[31] By May 1904, he helped form the Southeast Kootenay Coal & Coke Company[32] and moved to the Coast to promote the mine, returning to Grand Forks only occasionally.[33] Finally, in November 1905, he sold the Pacific to exclusively pursue coal development.[34]
Front-page headline of Pacific Hotel sale. Grand Forks Sun, November 21, 1905.
“A Good Business to be Done…”
The buyer of the Hotel was Charles B. Peterson (1869-1943). Born in Sweden, Peterson immigrated to Canada in 1893, initially settling in West Kootenay before establishing a ranch at Princeton in 1898.[35] That year, he also built the Square Hotel on Bridge Street (now Market Avenue) in Grand Forks.[36] Then in 1903, he acquired the Owl Saloon and Clarendon Restaurant down the street with John Lind.[37] And in 1905, he built the Great Northern Hotel in Hedley with his brother John.[38] The Grand Forks interests were run by Lind and the Hedley business by his brother while Charles operated his ranch in the Similkameen.[39]
On purchasing the Pacific, Peterson hired Columbia Hotel owner Gus Eastman to manage it, whereupon Eastman closed down the Columbia and Peterson sold the Square to John Lind.[40] By April 1907, Eastman had departed and Peterson relocated from Princeton with his family to manage the hotel personally,[41] selling his Hedley interest to his brother.[42] (Incidentally and confusingly, Eastman bought the Queen’s Hotel with Charles ‘E.’ Peterson in 1910).
When the June 1911 census was taken, the family and staff at the Pacific Hotel were listed as follows: hotelkeeper Charles B. Peterson (41), wife Martha (29), sons Carl J. (11), Peter (7) and Valdemar (2), daughters Helen (9) and Lottie (8), waitress Annie Berquist (34), bartender William Doer (33) and cook Jim Sing (40).[43]
From 1905 to 1913, the Pacific continued to do a solid business, much as it had before, serving the needs of weary, hungry and thirsty railway travellers and locals. Most patrons were fine, upstanding members of society, but as with many hotels and saloons, there were a few notorious exceptions.
In August 1908, an elderly man arrived at the hotel and had two boxes carted to his room; that night he emptied their contents, 175 lbs. of opium, into gunnysacks, wheelbarrowed them half a mile west to the GNR Weston station and placed them aboard railcars bound for Washington; he then quietly departed the hotel, leaving only the empty boxes in his room to tell the tale.[44] Also, in November 1908, a young man forged the signature of the Granby Consolidated treasurer to a $58 bank cheque and cashed it with the Pacific night clerk; minutes later the clerk discovered the forgery and ran after him, netting the man in a dramatic capture.[45] Then, in September 1910, a boarder named Connors or O’Conner ransacked the rooms at the hotel, making off with a watch, safety razor and other small items before he was apprehended trying to dispose of them.[46] This was not the first such incident, the Pacific having been ransacked in September 1902 by a young boarder named Delary, who made off with $130 while leaving a $60 board bill.[47]
Pacific Hotel in 1912 with building addition and other improvements. Boundary Museum Society, 1987-024-001.
During this period, Peterson made a number of significant improvements to the hotel. In June 1907, he had the building raised to a higher grade and a stone foundation constructed under it.[48] Also, a handsome two-storey verandah was added to the front façade.[49] In March 1912, he began clearing ground for a new addition, with Lutley & Galipeau pouring a concrete foundation in April and day labour erecting a three-storey 30’ x 20’ adjoining structure in May.[50] This added ten more rooms, increasing hotel capacity to 35 guests. Finally, from May to October 1913, he hired J.F. Kraus to install a new hot water heating plant, the most modern in the city with radiators in every room, at a cost of $2700.[51]
By now, the Pacific was one of only two hotels remaining in the west end, the C.P.R. Hotel having closed its doors in December 1912, while the Queen’s Hotel was closed in November 1912 when its owner, ex-Pacific Hotel proprietor P.D. MacDonald, built the new Hotel Colin a block west on Government Avenue opposite the GNR Weston station.[52] No doubt, these developments factored into Peterson’s decision to complete some of his later upgrades.
However, even as these upgrades were underway, events were in play that would have devastating consequences for the Pacific. In June 1912, an agreement was reached between the city, CPR and KVR making Grand Forks a joint terminal and divisional point for each railway, with a joint passenger depot to be established at the KVR station on Third Street.[53] The joint station was not immediately opened, as the Board of Railway Commissioners took almost a year to consider it.[54] However, once approved in April 1913, the CPR routed all passenger traffic to its downtown station first, and only then back out to its west end depot.
With the launch of the new CPR station, the Pacific emptied of guests almost overnight, as most railway travellers now opted to disembark downtown. This left Peterson with dramatically reduced revenue to pay off his expensive upgrades. Over the next three years, he struggled to keep the hotel afloat. To help subsidize it, he opened an autobus service, shuttling passengers between city trains and hotels.[55] However, by late 1916, the Pacific was insolvent: Peterson discontinued business and did not renew its license; in January 1917 the hotel office equipment and furnishings were seized by creditors and sold by public auction.[56]
Figure 6: Pacific Hotel, circa 1912-1913, Boundary Museum Society.
Sold (And Resold) For Taxes
Charles B. Peterson and family continued to reside in the Pacific building for another nine months. In May 1917, he had an opportunity to sell the hotel building to the Doukhobor communal organization, the ‘Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood’, but evidently the deal fell through.[57]
In June 1917, Peterson tried leasing it to Sam Mathews and Frank Peterson of Hedley, whose Great Northern Hotel (renamed from the Hotel Colin in February 1913) was destroyed by fire;[58] however, their application to transfer their license to the Pacific failed when west end residents signed a mass petition against it.[59] It seems that a hotel and bar were no longer seen as welcome in the now largely residential neighbourhood. By September, the property was sold by the City of Grand Forks for delinquent taxes.[60] Thereafter, the Petersons returned to their ranch in Princeton.
The tax purchaser of the Pacific building in September 1917 was Dr. William O. Rose (1870-1936). Born in Prince Edward Island and a graduate of McGill in medicine, Rose settled in Nelson in 1899 as the city’s medical doctor and was active in civic affairs, serving as alderman and mayor before being elected to the British Columbia Legislature in 1916 and 1920.[61]
There is no indication that Dr. Rose actually occupied or used the Pacific building. Nonetheless, after two years of ownership, there were $1200 of taxes, water and light arrears owing against it, and it was once again sold for taxes, this time to the city, in September 1919.[62] In January 1920, Dr. Rose sought to redeem the property prior its registration with the city; however, he failed to pay the arrears within the time allotted by council.[63]
Over the next four years, the Pacific building largely stood vacant and unused.[64] In December 1921, an enquiry was made to lease it by Robert Grant of Vancouver, which council offered to rent for $50 a month, but no deal materialized.[65] Later that month, council moved to board up its windows.[66] In July 1922, the city took out a $1000 insurance policy on the building and heating plant.[67] Then, in October 1922, council received an offer to purchase it for $1000 or rent it for five years at $100 a year, however, nothing more came of it.[68]
Tender for Sale and Removal
In April 1923, the city received an offer from local plumber J.H. Mathews to buy the Pacific’s heating plant for $325.[69] On considering the offer, council decided instead to sell the hotel, either intact or its heating system in place, by tender in May.[70] At least one offer was received, but was rejected by the city.[71]
Figure 7: Pacific Hotel Tender Notice, Grand Forks Sun, 1923.05.18.
In September 1923, council accepted the offer of Noble Binns, mayor of Trail, to purchase the heating plant for $500 for use in that city’s Knights of Pythias lodge.[72] A month later, in October, the offer of Wasyl W. Lazareff to purchase the building for $225 was accepted on condition that upon payment in full, it be removed within 60 days.[73] Outbuildings in connection with the hotel were sold separately.[74]
Lazareff was Secretary-Treasurer of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Ltd. branch office in Trail, and managed a fuel supply and construction business on its behalf in that city since 1914.[75] This was not the first time that Lazareff and the Community purchased and tore down a Boundary hotel for its salvage lumber, having done so twice in 1920 with the Granby Hotel and Deane Hotel of Phoenix.[76]
For the Community, the salvage of the Pacific Hotel was particularly lucrative. The building contained some 50,000 board feet of lumber, which the Community purchased for $4.50 per thousand board feet at a time when new lumber in the BC Interior was selling for $23 per thousand board feet.[77]
To this end, in March 1924, Lazareff paid the balance owing on the building to the city, assembled a crew of local Doukhobor workmen, and tore it down, salvaging the wood for profit.[78] By May the city board of works reported that the old Pacific hotel was removed and its site cleaned by the purchaser. In the months that followed, the wood was repurposed for a number of Doukhobor building projects in the Boundary.
Conclusion
From 1898 to 1917, the Pacific Hotel was a prominent fixture in West Grand Forks. Had the CPR kept the west end as its main passenger depot, it might have remained so for many decades to come. Instead, it met an ignominious end by 1923 with changing times and economic downturns. Yet despite its loss from a heritage and architectural perspective, the salvage and reuse of its building material provides an early example of local conservation and recycling. Indeed, there may be structures still standing today in Grand Forks built from the lumber of this once-proud hotel.
After Word
An earlier version of this article was published in the Grand Forks Gazette, June 2, 9 and 16, 2021. The article has also been accepted for publication in the Spring 2024 issue of the Boundary Historical Society Report.
End Notes
[1] These included the Jubilee, Lizzie, Louisa, Sultana, Maple Leaf and Pass Creek claims: The Advance, 1896.06.01 and 1897.03.29; Boundary Creek Times, 1897.03.27, 1899.06.10 and 1899.06.24; Grand Forks Miner, 1897.03.27, 1897.03.17, 1898.05.21 and 1898.12.24; Cascade Record, 1899.04.22.
[2]Grand Forks Miner, 1898.05.21; The Advance, 1898.06.06; The Review, 1899.04.01; Fire Insurance Plan – Grand Forks, including Columbia, British Columbia, June 1912 (Chas E. Goad Co).
[3]The Advance, 1898.06.20; The Grand Forks Miner, 1898.06.19.
[6] Photo, Grand Forks Sun, 05.08.15; Hotels and Boarding Houses on the Line of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Canadian Pacific Railway Co., 1912) at 2.
[8]British Columbia Gazette, Vol. 39, No. 12, 1899.03.23 at 439; Columbia Review, 1899.04.08; British Columbia Order-in-Council No. 0273 dated 1899.05.01.
[9]British Columbia Gazette, Vol. 40, No.42, 1900.01.25 at 196 and Vol. 42, No. 5, 1902.01.30 at 162; Grand Forks Sun, 1902.01.13; Vancouver Daily World, 1902.01.14; The Grand Forks Miner, 1900.05.19.
[23]Grand Forks And Columbia Amalgamation Act, 1902 (British Columbia).
[24]Grand Forks Sun, 1902.09.01 to 1903.09.29; Hotels and Boarding Houses on the Line of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Canadian Pacific Railway Co., 1912) at 2.
[26]Columbia Review, 1899.03.11, 1899.03.18 and 1899.04.01; Grand Forks Sun, 1902.01.21 to 1905.11.21.
[27]Boundary Creek Times, 1897.11.20 and 1897.12.18; The Williams’ Official British Columbia Directory (R.T. Williams, 1899); Henderson’s British Columbia Gazetteer and Directory (L.G. Henderson), 1899-1900, 1900-1901, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904.
[31]Grand Forks Sun, 1903.07.14, 1903.12.22 and 1904.01.05; Spokane Press, 1904.07.16.
[32]Grand Forks Sun, 1904.03.02, 1904.05.17 and 1904.08.09.
[33]Grand Forks Sun, 1904.10.19, 1905.03.28, 1905.05.02, 1905.06.16 and 1905.06.20.
[34] The $5,000.00 realty deal was put through by Grand Forks real estate dealer, Neil McCallum with Charles B. Peterson taking possession on December 1, 1905. Upon receiving full payment, McIntosh transferred the liquor license to Peterson on June 15, 1906: Grand Forks Sun, 1905.11.21, 1905.12.05 and 1906.06.15; Grand Forks Gazette, 1906.06.16.
[50]Grand Forks Sun, 1912.03.08, 1912.04.12 and 1912.05.24; Grand Forks Gazette, 1952.05.08 and 1962.04.19; Grand Forks Fire Insurance Plan, June 1912, supra, note 2; Grand Forks Gazette, 1912.04.20, 1912.05.25, 1912.06.29.
[51]Grand Forks Sun, 1913.04.04, 1913.10.10 and 1913.10.17.
[52]Grand Forks Sun, 1907.04.12, 1907.11.15 and 1908.06.12. The C.P.R. Hotel does not appear in local newspaper advertisements and civic directories after December 1912.
[56]Grand Forks Sun, 1917.01.19 and 1917.01.26; Grand Forks Gazette, 1917.01.20.
[57]Greenwood Ledge, 1917.05.10. It is unclear whether the Doukhobors were interested in the hotel for its salvage value or perhaps as a warehouse building; the Christian Community already had a warehouse down the street from the Pacific and a second one near the GNR Weston station, two blocks away.
[58]Grand Forks Sun, 1912.11.29, 1913.02.14 and 1917.05.18.
[59]Grand Forks Sun, 1917.06.15; Grand Forks Gazette, 1917.06.06, 1917.06.08, 1917.06.22, 1917.06.29 and 1917.07.13.
[60]Grand Forks Sun, 1917.06.15, 1917.08.03, 1917.09.28 and 1918.02.22.
[61]Victoria Times Colonist, 1936.03.05; Nelson Daily News, 1936.03.05.
[62]Grand Forks Sun, 1919.10.03; Boundary Community Archives, City of Grand Forks Council Minutes, 1920.01.19; Grand Forks Gazette, 1920.01.16, 1920.01.24.
[64] The only recorded use of the building from 1919 to 1923 was to feed Cascade Electric Power Company work crews in November 1919: Grand Forks Sun, 1919.11.28.
[65]Grand Forks Sun, 1921.12.02; Grand Forks Gazette, 1921.12.02, 1921.12.16.
[66] Boundary Community Archives, City of Grand Forks Council Minutes, 1921.12.29; Grand Forks Gazette, 1921.12.30.
[70]Grand Forks Sun, 1923.05.18 and 1923.05.25; Boundary Community Archives, City of Grand Forks Council Minutes, 1923.05.14; Grand Forks Gazette, 1923.05.18 and 1923.05.23.
[75]The Mail Herald, November 25, 1914; Simon Fraser University, Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor, Minutes of the Meeting of the Directors of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Limited, 1917.09.08, 1920.04.10 and 1921.03.01.
[77] Assuming the industry average of 6.3 board feet of structural framing materials in every square foot, then with 7,740 square feet, the Pacific Hotel held 48,762 board feet of lumber. In 1923, the average price of lumber per thousand board feet in the BC Interior was $23: G.H. Hak, On the Fringes: Capital and Labour in the Forest Economies of the Port Alberni and Prince George Districts, British Columbia, 1910-1939 (Ph.D. Thesis) (Simon Fraser University, 1986) at 30.
In May 1912, Nelson Daily News reporter James Lightbody visited the community of Brillant (then centred in Dolina Utesheniya) at the junction of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. There, he found 1,300 Russian-speaking Doukhobors living in a ‘Socialist Utopia’ who, after four short years, had transformed 2,900 acres of forest into a veritable garden paradise with 600 acres planted into trees. Lightbody wrote an article about his experience and observations, including the Doukhobors’ history in Russia, their settlement at Brilliant, their learning of English, communal system and management, their land-clearing, industrial development and financial system. It was first published in The Nelson Daily News on June 1, 1912. It was subsequently republished in The Daily Province on June 8, 1912 and the Victoria Daily Times on June 25, 1912. Editorial comments [in square brackets] and After Word by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.
An hour’s ride from Nelson, British Columbia, there exists a foreign country, 2,900 acres in extent, where nearly 1,300 people live without a knowledge of English, without money in circulation and without an elective government, and yet contented and prosperous. It is the Doukhobor community at Brilliant, at the junction of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers, where fruit farming upon a strip of land encircled by steep mountains is conducted on a scale not attempted in any other part of British Columbia. These exiles from their unhappy land in Russia are part of a band of 7,500 in Canada and beyond a few hundred in British Columbia and their kindred living in far away Canora in the prairie provinces of Saskatchewan, these people live out of touch with all races and creeds in Canada.
Russian Tyranny
Twelve years ago they began to come to Canada to escape the tyranny to which they were subject under the bureaucratic government of the Czar’s dominions, and under the liberty allowed them under British rule, they have proved themselves to be so industrious that they have carried out agricultural operations on a scale almost impossible to the English speaking citizen of the country. They have cleared hundreds of acres of their land of the dense timber that covered it four years ago and have planted it with fruit trees and bushes. They have received not a cent in return for their fruit but are still living upon what their countrymen in Canora [district, Saskatchewan] can send them and from what they have raised from selling timber and potatoes and other minor products of their land.
Nor are they concerned mainly about getting an immediate recompense for their labor. Rather they are building up for the future with a foresight which will surely be repaid. There is mapped out and in part operation an irrigation system covering the whole of their territory, and already a domestic water system fed by springs in the mountains connects every one of the thirty or more dwellings upon the plateau.
That is only one part of the story of industry and thrift that a visitor to Brilliant sees. Their quant customs; their odd form of government with its freedom from complications, yet efficient in its simplicity, their adaptability to new conditions and new surroundings; all these things tell a story seldom met with in the rush of the present-day life.
Settlement at Brilliant
To the person who alights from the train at the new station at Brilliant just being built by the Canadian Pacific railway, there opens a panorama which is puzzling to one who has no hint of what the settlement is. After journeying through a gully hemmed in by steep mountains, a wide level stretch of land takes their place and here and there upon it are dotted houses, peculiarly set in pairs of with acres and acres of trim gardens round them. In places a rugged stump-dotted patch, not yet cleared, shows what the neat, trim gardens were in their rough state. Close at hand there is a busy scene along the water’s edge, as if some gigantic industry was being established there. And so there is. As one descends the bank one encounters a gang of men loading heavy masses of machinery upon a ferry strung across the swirling Kootenay.
Ferry landing, sawmill and pumphouse at the north end of Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia), 1912 which Lightbody first saw upon arriving. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).
You journey across with the gang, few of them can speak a word of English, and on closer view find a water pump being placed in position, and boilers being set together with noisy activity. You ask what it all means and are informed that it is the pumping plant for irrigating the fruit fields that you are yet to see. Pressing on, guided by one of the obliging settlers, you pass sawmill, stables, several houses, and rise to the top of a bank to come upon an immense tableland whose houses you have seen from the station upon the railway track. For some distance you walk along until you come upon a wide expanse of cultivated land both under crop and ready for planting. On each side of the road there are large houses; always in pairs, always of the same plan, bare of exterior but eminently practical.
In your walk, if school be not in session, you will be passed by picturesque children, the girls in bright colors and the boys – well, as growing mischief-loving boys always dress. But all have an inquiring, inquisitive look, for strangers are not seen every day. Yet disrespect is totally absent and they call to you “Hello,” their first word of English probably, and the boys raise their hats and the girls nod their heads.
Learning English
There is a schoolhouse there, just put in commission by the provincial government, with an English-speaking school ma-am in it, and the children, so they say, flock to the school with such eagerness that playing truant is an unheard of offence. In fact, they come round from school and clamor to be taught before their teacher rises in the morning, and she is an early riser.
A peep into the houses discloses the tidiness that characterizes everything. Paint has not been found absolutely necessary everywhere but cleanliness cannot be sacrificed at any cost. Around the house are gardens both for flowers and for vegetables, with walks neatly bordered with stones among them. Not a fence can be seen, for the land belongs to no one and to everyone.
Then you visit the post office [at Waterloo], where John Sherbinin, the purchasing agent and financial manager, holds forth, and you find to your astonishment everything for a well-appointed office already there. There are typewriters, one in English and the other to master the vagaries of the Russian alphabet; letter files and account books and also a certificate that this is one of his majesty’s post offices.
The former ‘Waterloo’ camp at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia), 1912. The one-storey log building, second from left, served as the original post office and business office. When Lightbody visited the settlement, a new two-storey frame building, far left, was built for this purpose. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).
How They Came
To see the state of improvement the settlement has reached it is hard to believe it has all been done in four years. Yet that is the time which has elapsed since the first band migrated from Canora, near Saskatoon. In the early winter of that year, Peter Verigin, acknowledged head of the whole Doukhobor sect, came to British Columbia and found what he thought would be an advantageous site for a colony. He bought the land, piece by piece, and a month or so later, in April, 1908, ninety men came down from the Saskatchewan community, and began the work of making the stubborn bush yield to the coming of the fruit rancher.
The hardships the Doukhobor sect have passed through since it was founded in the middle of the eighteenth century are no doubt responsible for the sterling qualities of the men and women at the present time.
Primarily the ill-treatment followed their severance from the Orthodox Russian church and the methods of conscription employed by the Russian government in the nineteenth century forced them to flee the country. At the age of 21, every young man becomes liable to be called upon to bring the standing army up to a certain mark. Each year army officers come round to the Doukhobors and took away their sons to fight, and they would, it is said, take the same man year after year, seemingly to do their worst towards the nonconformists.
Many resisted this and were put in prison and Peter Verigin, who rose as a champion of his race, was seized and sent to Siberia for 16 years. At other times as a reminder of the czar’s rule, Cossacks would be sent down to their villages with horse whips to beat the communists into subjection.
Resolved to stand the tyranny no longer, the Doukhobors decided to emigrate, and in 1898 many moved to the Island of Cyprus, which is under British protection, in the Mediterranean Sea, being assisted by Count Tolstoi. Not satisfied with this and hearing of the opportunities that Canada offered, they moved to Canada in 1899 and 1900 in large numbers, settling at once near Saskatoon. In all 7,500 persons of the Doukhobor sect have come to this country. Each man of 18 years of age or more took out 160 acres of land for farming purposes. Put together, the thousand odd quarter sections made an immense tract, and true to their customs they established a community such as may be seen at Brilliant.
But they made a fatal mistake, which they blame upon the Canadian government as not having brought to their notice. The regulations say that the settlers must cultivate at least 15 acres of his quarter section by the end of three years when a patent will be granted. Instead of doing this the Doukhobors cultivated one large piece in the centre, equal to 15 acres for every homestead in the settlement, thinking it was in compliance with the requirements. When they came to ask for title they did so for the whole piece and not individually, it appears, which the government would not grant. They now say the government would not grant them a patent because they had not cultivated a piece as required by the regulations.
The Belyi Dom (‘White House’) at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia) in 1912. The building served as a schoolhouse when Lightbody visited the Brilliant colony and also functioned as a community meeting house. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).
The area they retained after their homesteads had been forfeited was hardly sufficient to support the whole of their 7,500 people. The winters, too, were hard on them, used as they were to the comparative warmth of Southern Russia. Finally Peter Verigin set out to find a new country to which his people without a home might go. How his wanderings brought him to British Columbia has already been shown.
When the 90 men, like [Biblical] spies into Canaan, came to Brilliant, they found an unpromising piece of land on which to start their settlement. Before their arrival it had barely been scratched as a fruit raising district, but some of the timber had been cut and floated down the river [to Trail], leaving the stumps standing. Hundreds of acres on the other hand were in their virgin state, while still more had been burned off ready to be grubbed of their dense underbrush and second growth trees.
They set to work, however, and cleared a piece of land more than a hundred acres in extent ready for planting the following spring. In April, 1909, another party of 180 men were brought out to the new settlement from Saskatchewan and joined the pioneers in putting the land in crop. That year they planted many acres with fruit trees brought from nurseries in Canada and the United States. But to obviate purchasing from an outside source, which is against their policy, they have started a nursery of their own, where thousands of young bushes may be seen approaching the stage when they may be transplanted.
While gangs of men were treating the soil others were erecting houses, and in June of the same year the wives and families and aged men were brought out from Saskatchewan and joined the able bodies in working towards getting a crop. In 1910 another batch of 200 men came out, some going to neighbouring settlements, of which there are Pass Creek, Crescent Valley, Glade and Grand Forks. In the spring of the present year a party of 346 passed through on their way to Glade and Slocan Valley. At Brilliant there are now 1,285 people, while at Grand Forks there are an additional 500 living in like communistic manner.
Since their first coming to Kootenay, the Doukhobors have not received a cent from their fruit plantations. Their expenses are small, for where possible food is grown and articles of wear are made. There is a strong aversion to being dependent upon outsiders, hence the Brilliant community subsists upon flour made at the Doukhobor mill at Canora, Saskatchewan.
Ivan Vasil’evich Sherbinin, business manager and purchasing agent for the Brilliant Doukhobor colony from 1908 to 1919. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).
Harmony and Contentment
The harmony and contentment which pervade Brilliant impress the visitor at first sight, and a glance into the economic system in vogue there reveals the reason for this. It is a Socialist Utopia, the realization of equality which is being advocated for the rest of the world to-day.
At Brilliant, unlike the modern city, there are no cares as to where the next day’s meals will come from. There is no stinting to provide sustenance when one’s strength has ebbed in declining years. There is no division between “mine” and thine”; no man richer than his fellow; no jealousies or envies as to the possessions of another.
Cares as to money are totally absent, for there is no money in circulation. Neither is there any need for money, for food and clothing are doled out as needed from the department in charge of these matters. All men are equal and have a voice in the government, and more than this, women are recognized as being competent to judge upon the affairs of their community.
Their houses are large, and for economy are made to accommodate from 30 to 36 people. At the rear of each pair, there is a long low building which puzzles the stranger. It contains the baths, made of wood and looking like punts. A boiler in the centre of the room heats the water for the numerous baths round about.
The food for all the months is handed out at the general store, to which the head of the household repairs on certain days. To the storekeeper he intimates the number he must feed, and gets doled out to him food in proportion. The bread is baked in each house, and vegetables are raised in gardens surrounding them, it being part of the women’s work to look after them.
How Community is Run
The executive of the community is in the hands of several heads of departments. There are two men who manage the fruit-growing and the general affairs of the colony. One man does the purchasing for them, another oversees the building of the houses and the carpenter work, another superintends the sawmills, another the waterworks, and so on. These men are responsible for the part of the work they look after.
They form the executive, but the government is in the hands of the people, effectively and simply, although with no machinery of government whatever. Once a week all persons both men and women who have reached years of mature understanding, crowd into the school house [to hold a sobranya or ‘meeting’] and discuss the affairs of the community. At these meetings, according to the popular sentiment, the managers of each department are given their instructions.
Should one of the managers ever be guilty of doing something wrongly he is required to make an explanation and allowed to clear himself if he is able. But if not, one of the electors, if you can call them such, may propose another man, and the case is disposed of on its merits. No definite time is specified at the appointment of an officer, but he holds office as long as he does his work well. This is the initiative, referendum and recall system without the cumbersome machinery in use at the present day.
There is no police force at Brilliant, and none is needed. Every man is so loyal to this community that misdemeanors are practically unknown. As no one possesses anything to the exclusion of others, there is no stealing. If anyone should do wrong, however, he is dealt with by the society.
Land Worked in One Piece
In tilling the land it is all done in one piece. There are no divisions of the whole 2,900 acres as far as that is concerned. Men are put to work on whatever task they are best suited for and may be changed to another more congenial to them if it means greater efficiency. Thus some are at work in the fields, others in the sawmills and others at carpenter work. Should any man display a lazy disposition he is put to work tidying up the garden round the house, and if he does not keep it spic and span he will suffer derision at the hands of his comrades. But such a penalty is seldom necessary because of the intense interest taken by everyone in the welfare of the colony.
Land clearing at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia) in 1912 when Lightbody visited the colony. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).
Two Big Sawmills
Two big sawmills are kept busy all the time at Brilliant, and have seen busier day in the early life of the settlement. There, the logs that were taken from the land in preparation for the fruit trees coming, were sawn up into hundreds of thousands of railway ties and shipped all over the country. In connection with the sawmills, where, also, all lumber needed for the buildings is turned out, there is a planing mill. Finished lumber is made there, and mouldings, indistinguishable from the product of a big factory, are manufactured. There is also a joiner’s shop, and all tables, chairs and furniture used in the houses are made by Doukhobor labor there. More than this, window frames have been turned out, but for economy’s sake they are not bought.
In the high parts of the territory the guide will point to two immense reservoirs, big concrete tanks containing water. These, he will explain, are the nucleus of the irrigation system they are planning for the whole of their land. By and by when they have their pumping plant on the Kootenay in working order, the fields will be covered by a network of pipes giving water to the thirsty soil.
At the present time all is activity with the fruit trees, but when winter comes and work on the land ceases, electric light and power wires will be installed everywhere. In connection with the new pumping plant a generating station will be built to supply energy to the whole colony. You may ask the Doukhobor, on perceiving the high tension power wires of an electric company passing over the land, why he does not buy his power from the company. He will tell you that he prefers to be independent and generate it himself.
Overlooking nothing, a school-house of generous proportions has been built in the centre of the territory and was just opened during the present year. The settlement does not attempt to give education to all the children at once, but that will come in time. At present about one hundred young hopefuls are being taught in English and Russian, and show an avidity to learn often absent in English-speaking children. They look upon schooling as a privilege they must not abuse.
The Financial End
The material assets of the Doukhobors at Brilliant would do justice to many communities of larger size. The land was bought by Peter Verigin four years ago for $150,000 under an agreement for sale covering a number of years. There is yet a small balance left to be paid. The timber they sold gave them many thousands of dollars, part of which was used to pay for their land and part to bring others of their band from Canada and Russia. There are now 50 buildings of all kinds valued for the purpose of obtaining a loan at a conservative sum of $50,000. The two reservoirs and equipment are estimated for the same purpose to be worth $30,000. The largest sawmill is assessed at $15,000, and the new pumping and electric light plant is reckoned to need an outlay of $25,000. These figures were made by a bank valuator and are authentic.
To provide transportation across the Kootenay river a bridge is in the course of construction high up on the bank to allow vessels to pass under it. It will be of the suspension type. At present a ferry driven by a horses and windlass gives communication from bank to bank. There is also a ferry between the settlement and Kinnard on the Columbia river.
There are now 600 acres planted with fruit and the acreage is constantly increasing. The settlement has spread upon the banks of the Kootenay and down the Columbia river. In the course of time the whole of the Doukhobor sect in Canada and many more from Russia will have migrated to British Columbia, for it is the intention of those already there to assist their brethren to come out. With the warmer climate and the freedom they enjoy they are sure to prosper and help to develop the natural wealth of the province.
After Word
Born 1891 in Edinburgh, Scotland, James Lightbody emigrated to Canada in 1904. He started his newspaperman’s career in Winnipeg with the Tribune and Telegram. In 1911, he was briefly employed as a reporter with the Nelson Daily News. It was during this time that Lightbody visited Brilliant and wrote his article about the Doukhobor colony. It was perhaps as a result of the article’s successful syndication in several Vancouver and Victoria newspapers that he moved to Vancouver in 1913 to work as a reporter for the News Advertiser and Daily Province. In 1916, Lightbody began a 33-year career as publicity manager for the B.C. Electric Railway Company (later B.C. Electric), also serving on the executives of numerous civic and service organizations prior to his retirement in 1949. He died at age 96 in 1986.
James Lightbody.
It should be noted that at the time Lightbody visited ‘Brilliant’, the place name applied exclusively to the Doukhobor settlement in the Valley of Consolation (Dolina Utesheniya) on the southeast side of the Kootenay-Columbia confluence. The lands known as ‘Brilliant’ today on the northeast side of the confluence were only purchased by the Doukhobor Society in July 1912 – a month after Lightbody’s visit.
It is possible to trace the route of Lightbody’s visit to Brilliant in May 1912. After disembarking at the C.P.R. Brilliant Station, then the only building on the northeast side of the confluence, he walked a quarter mile southeast along the Doukhobor-built Pass Creek Road. After crossing the Kootenay River on the Doukhobor cable reaction ferry, he arrived at that part of the Valley of Consolation known as Kamennoye, where a sawmill and several large communal houses had been built and where a large irrigation pumping plant was under construction. He then traversed the length of the Valley of Consolation on the Doukhobor-built road which today forms parts of Ootischenia and Waterloo Roads. He passed by the Community meeting house known as the Belyi Dom (‘White House’) which at the time in 1912, briefly served as a public school. He then continued on to the former Waterloo mining camp which, at the time, served as the business and administrative centre of the Brilliant colony.
Lightbody’s article provides a fascinating snapshot of the state of agricultural and industrial development of Brilliant at the time. As of May 1912, there were 1,300 Doukhobors living on 2,900-acres in the Valley of Consolation. About half the acreage had been cleared, with 600 acres planted in fruit trees. The Doukhobors had not yet received any returns from the plantation, as the orchards would take another 7-10 years to reach full bearing. The Doukhobors had constructed two large concrete irrigation reservoirs on the second bench and a pumping station on the edge of the Kootenay River; this orchard irrigation system would be finally completed in 1926. However, in the meantime, a water pipeline for domestic purpose, sourced from mountain creeks, was already serving the Doukhobor communal homes throughout the colony. Two sawmills (the Bol’shaya Pil’nya or ‘Large Sawmill’ at the edge of the second and third benches and the Malaya Pil’nya or ‘Small Sawmill’ in Kamennoye) were in operation, with a planer mill located at the former.
Lightbody explains the Doukhobors’ early history in Russia and initial settlement on the Prairies, and provides a fairly detailed account of their initial settlement at Brilliant, only four years after it occurred. He also describes the colony in glowing terms as a ‘Socialist Utopia’ where cash and divisions of property were absent, and where the communal ownership system enabled all persons to have their basic needs met, to be equal and to have a voice in the government and management of the colony. Lightbody clearly attributes the Doukhobors’ social structure as the basis upon which they were able to transform Brilliant from a forest to a garden oasis in only four short years.
In terms of financial arrangements, Lightbody notes that the Doukhobor Society purchased the 2,900 acres at the Valley of Consolation for $150,000.00 under an agreement for sale, whereby payments were made under installments over five years. Now in its fourth year, there was only “a small balance left to be paid.” He does not provide an updated value for the improved land; however, its value must have increased manifold. Lightbody does note that the chattel improvements to the colony equaled $95,000.00; almost two-thirds of the original purchase price of the land in 1912.
Lightbody’s article was highly-complimentary of the Doukhobors, precisely at a time when anti-Doukhobor sentiment was reaching a fevered pitch in the Kootenay and Boundary regions. This was primarily on account of the Doukhobors’ reluctance to send their children to public school, their refusal to register vital statistics, as well as perceptions about their large, unpaid labour force undercutting local wages and commodity prices. These various public grievances – real and perceived – culminated in the formation of the Royal Commission on Doukhobor Affairs in late August 1912, only three months after Lightbody’s visit. As such, his article stands out for its objectivity and insightful, fact-based analysis, in contrast to most highly-critical, opinion-based accounts of the Doukhobors that appeared in local newspapers at the time.
The Doukhobor ‘Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood’ at Grand Forks is probably best historically known for its religious pacifism, large brick communal homes, and once-vast fruit orchards. Less recognized, but also important are the many local agricultural and industrial enterprises it established. The following article examines the Doukhobor agro-industrial complex created west of the city from 1909 to 1939, and its contribution to the growth and development of the Kettle Valley.
Land Acquisition
Between 1909 and 1912, Peter V. Verigin on behalf of the Community purchased 4,182 acres of land west of Grand Forks.[i] These acquisitions included the historic Coryell Ranch in February 1909; Newby Ranch in March 1909; Vaughan Ranch in November 1909; Spencer/Macey Ranch in May 1910; Collins Orchard in July 1910; Hoffman Ranch in April 1911; Capsey Ranch in April 1912; and Pettijohn/Bell Ranch in December 1912; among others.
Community lands and orchards along Spencer Hill, c. 1918. BC Archives No. C-01718.
By 1931, the Community’s holdings expanded to 5,104 acres to include the historic Ashfield/Dinsmore Ranch acquired in June 1913; Hardy Bros Ranch in July 1919; Ward/Perkins Ranch in March 1921; Averill Estate between March 1924 and June 1928; and Hammer/Dewdney Ranch in May 1930.[ii]
These landholdings were grouped by the Community into three somewhat distinct geo-administrative areas and given rich, evocative Russian names as follows:
Descriptively named Dolina Fruktovaya (the ‘Valley of Fruit’) or simply Fruktovoye by Doukhobor leader Peter V. Verigin,[iii] this tract was bounded by Spencer Hill to the north and west, Saddle Mountain to the north and east, the Kettle River to the south and east and the Covert Ranch to the south. In 1932, it was renamed Sion (‘Zion’) by Verigin’s son and successor, Peter P. ‘Chistyakov’ Verigin;
Christened Dolina Khristovaya (the ‘Valley of Christ’) or simply Khristovoye by Peter V. Verigin,[iv] the tract was bounded by Eagle Mountain and Saddle Mountain to the south, Hardy Mountain to the west, Observation Mountain to the east and Smelter Lake to the north; and
Ubezhishche, a name given by Peter P. ‘Chistyakov’ Verigin meaning (place of) ‘refuge’ or ‘hideway’,[v] was bounded by Spencer Hill and Hardy Mountain to the east, the U.S. border to the south, July Creek and its tributaries to the west and Skeff Creek to the north.
Communal Settlement
Between 1909 and 1912, 713 Doukhobor men, women and children from Saskatchewan were resettled at the new Grand Forks colony.[vi] By 1921, their number had increased to 928 persons;[vii] and by 1931, to 1,000 persons.[viii]
They were primarily housed in large, two-storey brick communal homes, each with a capacity of 30-40 persons. Some 25 such communal homes were built, each with a large barn, several single-family frame dwellings and numerous outbuildings. Each communal home was situated on approximately 100 acres of arable land which it was allotted to manage and maintain.
Large group at Doukhobor prayer meeting at Grand Forks. Boundary Museum and Archives, Item No. 1991_055_094.
Two to four communal homes were each administered as a village unit.[ix] Numbering 11 in total, these villages originally received numbers rather than names (e.g. Village No. 6). However, by the 1940s, many of them came to be descriptively known by the predominant family grouping that resided in them (e.g. Popoff Village, Novokshonoff Village, etc.) while others acquired quaint nicknames (e.g. London, Sleepy Hollow, Paris, etc.) and even more colourful Russian epithets.
Agricultural Development
The Grand Forks colony was acquired by the Doukhobors, first and foremost, for large-scale fruit-growing. While a small acreage was already under mature orchard when they purchased it,[x] most was virgin ranchland, open or lightly wooded. There were also some hundred acres of rough, forested land. Working together under the motto ‘Toil and Peaceful Life’, the Doukhobors rapidly cleared and cultivated it.
By 1912, the Doukhobors set out 50,000 apple, plum, pear, prune and cherry trees on 593 acres, making them (by far) the largest fruit grower in the Boundary.[xi] By 1921, the colony had some 85,000 fruit trees on 1,000 acres coming into full bearing; 2,000 acres cultivated in small fruit (strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries) as well as vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers), grain (wheat, oats), and forage (alfalfa, clover, timothy), with the remainder in pasture and timber.[xii]
Doukhobors cherry picking west of Grand Forks, c. 1915. BC Archives No. C-01716.
To support their orchard development, beginning in 1911, the Doukhobors established an extensive gravity-flow irrigation system, using over 30,000 feet of flume, ditch and self-manufactured wood stave pipeline to convey water from July Creek and tributaries, Ward Lake, Hardy Creek, and the Kettle River to their fruit trees.[xiii] In May 1911, they had 100 acres under irrigation; the following year, 230 acres; and by 1923, over 758 acres irrigated.[xiv] They also completed a large concrete and earthen irrigation reservoir (later known as Saddle Lake) in the draw near Hardy Mountain by 1919.[xv]
Undoubtedly, what contributed to the early and rapid success of the Doukhobors as fruit growers was their large pool of communal labour. All of the men, women and children of the colony were engaged in the growing effort on an unpaid basis. In return for their labour, the Community supplied its members with food, clothing, shelter and other necessities. This arrangement gave them a competitive advantage vis-à-vis other orchardists as their cost of fruit production at all stages was significantly less.
Agro-Industrial Enterprises
From the outset, the Doukhobor Community saw opportunities to expand their operations beyond merely growing fruit and other agricultural produce, and began to engage in the secondary manufacture of agricultural byproducts as well as other industrial commodities.
Between 1909 and 1939, an agro-industrial complex was established for the mass production of agricultural and industrial goods, both for the Doukhobors’ own domestic use and for commercial sale. Most of these enterprise coalesced at the rough geographic centre of the colony, in Fruktovoye, between what is today Spencer and Canning Roads and also along Mill Road.
Each of these agro-industrial enterprises is discussed below.
Brick Factory
Upon acquiring the Coryell Ranch in February 1909, the Community inherited Frank Coryell’s small-scale brickworks, which comprised a horse-powered clay mixer, a small hand-operated brick molding machine and large, promising clay pit.[xvi] By March, they substantially updated the brickworks by adding a steam power plant, a ‘Martin’ industrial brick-making machine and other modern equipment and turned out a million first-class bricks by the end of the summer.[xvii] The refurbished plant had a capacity of 24,000 bricks daily.
Community brick factory with Spencer Hill and Hardy Mountain in background, c. 1922. Simon Fraser University No. MSC130-3580.
The Doukhobor brick-making process can be described as follows: clay was manually excavated from the adjacent pits and loaded into carts, which were drawn by horse up to a hopper chute, then dumped into the side mixer and combined with specific quantities of dried sand and water. The mixture was then filled into brick molds and compressed by the brick-making machine into raw ‘wet’ bricks. The raw bricks were placed on a 300-foot conveyor leading to a series of drying sheds, where they were stored for 1-2 weeks. Once air-dried, the bricks were stacked to form up to 10 kilns, which were fired for up to a week, using cordwood and sawmill slabs and ends, to produce the final bricks.
The manufactured bricks were used by the Doukhobors themselves to face the two-storey communal homes in the Grand Forks colony as well as in many in their colonies at Brilliant, Ootischenia, Pass Creek, Shoreacres and elsewhere. They were also used in various Community undertakings, such as the Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works jam factory at Brilliant, warehouses, retail stores, Community schools and other endeavors.
Many of the bricks manufactured at the Community brick factory were also sold commercially to builders throughout the Boundary. Some of the best-known structures built with the brick include the Davis Block,[xviii] Bower & Pribilsky Block,[xix] Royal Bank Building[xx] and Kerman Block[xxi] on Market Avenue, the Perley School Annex[xxii] and old Court House[xxiii] on Central Avenue, the old Post office[xxiv] on 4th Avenue, as well as the Beran Residence[xxv] on Hardy Mountain Road and the Glaspell Residence on Highway 3.[xxvi] Hundreds of thousands of bricks were also shipped to the Trail Smelter, with 325,000 shipped in April 1917 alone.[xxvii]
In 1927-1928, the Community brickworks were substantially enlarged under Doukhobor leader Peter P. ‘Chistyakov’ Verigin, with increased mechanization and manufacturing capacity expanded from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 bricks annually.[xxviii]
The brickyard ceased operation in 1932; however, many of the buildings and equipment remained until the 1940s through the 1970s. Today, the depressions of the clay pits can still be seen today near the corner of Spencer and Reservoir Roads.
Sawmill
In 1909, the Community erected a sawmill in Fruktovoye with which to manufacture rough lumber for building their homes and village structures.[xxix] Operated for the Doukhobors’ own use, it was a small portable sawmill with a capacity of 10,000 board-feet per day, powered by a self-propelled steam engine. There was no planer.
It was originally located below Village No. 5 (Hremakin village) near Saddle Mountain along present-day York Road.[xxx] Logs cut along the north bank of the Kettle River and south foot of Saddle Mountain were brought to the mill on horse-drawn dollies or sleighs (in winter).
Community sawmill near brick factory, c. 1924. Touchstones Museum of Art and History.
When the supply of logs was exhausted in one place, the sawmill was moved to another location. By about 1918, it was relocated north adjacent the Community brickworks.[xxxi] There, it milled logs cut from the west and north foot of Saddle Mountain, east foot of Eagle and Hardy Mountains, and south foot of Spencer Hill.
During this time, the Grand Forks Community also maintained commercial logging, pole-cutting and sawmill camps on leased Crown timber limits at Cedar Creek on the North Fork (1923-1925),[xxxii] Myers Creek near Midway (1924-1927),[xxxiii] and elsewhere.
In 1927, the Community sawmill operation was relocated to Ubezhishche along July Creek at Village No. 10 (Horkoff village) near present-day Gibbs Creek Road and greatly expanded.[xxxiv] It operated as a 35,000 board-per-day facility and manufactured lumber for commercial sale from the Community’s extensive timber lots there. Much of the output was shipped south to the United States. It produced upwards of 2 million board-feet of lumber and 3,000 poles annually and had an adjacent planing mill, pole-making operation and box factory.[xxxv]
After 12 years of operation at this location, having survived an arson attempt in August 1931[xxxvi] and the July Creek Forest Fire of August 1934,[xxxvii] it was destroyed by incendiarism in October 1939 at a loss of $30,000.00.[xxxviii]
Flour Mill
In 1910, the Community established a stone grist mill to grind their wheat into flour in Fruktovoye.[xxxix] Operated for their own use, it had a capacity of 100 bushels of flour per day. Beside it stood a 10,000-bushel granary for storing wheat prior to milling. It was located beside Village No. 5 (Kootnikoff village).
The Doukhobor flour-milling process can be described as follows: a pair of large millstones was used as the grinding mechanism. The bottom or ‘bed’ stone was fixed into position, while the upper or ‘runner’ stone rotated above it. Motive power from a stationary steam engine was directed to the runner stone by a shaft which went through its middle and turned it. Wheat was fed from a chute above between the stones, where it was ground into flour collected in a hopper below. The distance between millstones could be adjusted to vary flour courseness.
The bread made of the mill’s wholegrain flour was dark but very healthy. Nothing from the manufacturing process was wasted: weed seeds, cracked and broken grains, bran and other mill screenings were sold commercially as chicken feed.[xl]
Community flour mill, c. 1920. BC Archives No. C-01722-14.
In 1917, the production of linseed oil was started at the flour mill.[xli] Flax or linseed was mechanically pressed to produce cooking oil. A seed-cleaning plant was also added during this period.
In 1930, the Community flour mill was shut down.[xlii] Six years later, in 1936, an arson attempt wiped out surrounding buildings, but the flour mill building itself survived because of its laminated wood.[xliii] Another arson attempt in May 1946 destroyed a barn and implement shed but the mill remained undamaged.[xliv]
Beginning in 1962, the flour mill was retrofitted as an electric hammer mill by the Doukhobor Milling Heritage Society and reopened in May 1964.[xlv] The new, modern process created a cleaner, more refined product and could handle a higher volume of wheat processing – up to 200 pounds an hour. It was sold throughout the Kootenay-Boundary as the famous ‘Pride of the Valley’ flour.
Today the flour mill still stands on Mill Road, named after it. It is jointly managed by the Doukhobor Milling Heritage Society and Boundary Museum Society and continues to mill grain on demand.
Fruit Packing Houses
In order to process fruit from their orchards as they came into bearing, the Community built a large packing house in 1912.[xlvi] Located in Khristovoye at Village No. 3 (Vanjoff village) along present-day Hardy Mountain Road, it was a two-storey, 100 by 30 foot wood-frame structure with concrete basement and gable roof. It had a fruit box-making plant on the second floor.
Large and small fruit grown in the colony arrived by wagonload to the packing house. There, it was received, unloaded, and weighed. It was then turned out on tables, graded and sorted, culling the bruised, spoilt or small fruit aside, and packed into boxes. The packed fruit was stored in the basement until shipment. It was shipped from the adjacent Great Northern VV&E Phoenix Branch at Copper Junction.
Community fruit packing house (left) at Village No. 3 (Vanjoff village), c. 1921. Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ.
The packing houses also processed Community-grown vegetables for outside markets, which were grown in massive quantities. In 1912 alone, the Community sold 8,000 100-lb. sacks of potatoes from Grand Forks.[xlvii]
By 1919, the Community’s orchards were coming into full bearing and a second fruit packing house was built.[xlviii] Located in Fruktovoye south of the Community brickworks at the corner of present-day Reservoir and Canning Roads, it was a two-storey, 100 by 60 foot wood-frame structure with elevator lifts, concrete basement and monitor-style roof. As there was no adjacent railway, fruit packs were hauled to the Community warehouses in Columbia Flats for shipping.[xlix]
By 1920, the Community packing houses were shipping 120-130 railcar-loads of fruit annually – apples, pears, plums and prunes as well as strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries – to outside markets.[l] This included 50 carloads of Italian prunes alone.[li]
Community fruit packing house, workers’ rooming house and granary near brickyard, c. 1928. BC Archives No. C-01376-14.
Tomato Cannery
In August 1912, the Doukhobors installed a small fruit and vegetable cannery at Grand Forks for their own use.[lii] Then in 1924, the Community erected a large, commercial-scale tomato canning plant beside their Community flour mill.[liii] It was the first cannery established at Grand Forks.
Operated as the Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works, large volumes of tomatoes harvested from the Community fields were brought to the plant, where they were cleaned and blanched in large copper kettles filled with boiling water, then plunged into smaller copper pots filled with cold water, then finally poured into sterilized 28-oz. cans, topped with water and sealed. Sold under the ‘K.C. Brand’ label, they were marketed across Western Canada. It operated until 1936, when it was destroyed by arson.[liv]
Label for K.C. Brand tomatoes canned at Grand Forks, c. 1924. UBC Rare Books and Special Collections.
Fruit Evaporator
In 1924, the Community erected a commercial-scale fruit evaporating plant beside their flour mill – the first permanent facility of its kind at Grand Forks.[lv] Small fruit and berries picked from the Community fields were brought to the plant. Once dehydrated, fruit was preserved at one-tenth of its original weight. In its first year of operation, some 12,000 lbs. of small fruit and berries was dehydrated into 1,200 lbs. of dried fruit.[lvi] The dried fruit could be stored for extended lengths of time without spoilage.
Most of the dehydrated fruit was sent to the Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works jam factory in Brilliant. Once it arrived, it was soaked in water for several hours, after which it returned to practically its original state with all its colour and nutrients retained. It was then processed into jam. The plant operated until 1936, when it was destroyed by incendiarism.[lvii]
Jam Factory
As early as 1912 and again in 1923-1924 and 1927-1928, the Community proposed building a jam factory at Grand Forks to serve its orchards there.[lviii] However, each time, the Community elected instead to focus on developing and expanding its Brilliant jam factory. It was not until 1935 that the Doukhobors established a local jammery – the first ever in Grand Forks.
In spring 1935, the existing fruit packing house near the brick factory was retrofitted as a jam plant. A brick veneer was added to the building exterior.[lix] Twelve steam-activated jam-making kettles, ordered from England, were installed on the upper floor.[lx] Fruit and vegetable canning equipment was also ordered.[lxi] It had a production capacity of 12 tons of jam per day.
Community jam factory (former fruit packing house) at Grand Forks, 1935. BC Archives No. C-01592.
Adjacent to the north, a two-storey, brick 40 by 36 foot boiler house with concrete foundation and monitor-style roof was built to supply steam power to the jam plant.[lxii] A 30-foot high water tower was erected nearby to supply water to the boilers.[lxiii] An adjacent wood lot was stocked with cordwood, slabs and board ends from the Community sawmill to fire the boilers.
Over the first two weeks of August 1935, considerable quantities of strawberries, raspberries, cherries and other small fruit arrived at the new plant from the Community fields and from other Grand Forks fruit growers under contract.[lxiv] It was sorted and stored in the basement of the jam plant.
When production began, the fruit was brought to the main floor, where it was cleaned, peeled, de-cored/de-stoned, then cut into pieces and/or crushed. It was then taken to the second floor, where equal portions of fruit pulp and sugar were placed in each large copper kettle and cooked for 15 minutes while continually stirred. Once cooked, the kettles were emptied into smaller copper pots and wheeled over to long cooling trays filled with cold water, in which they were placed. As the jam cooled, it received a final skimming, and was then ladled by hand into sterilized cans and sealed.
The jammery operated roughly ten days, producing 194,250 lbs. of jam.[lxv] However, on August 17, 1935, the jam plant building burned to the ground in an incendiary blaze.[lxvi] It was a devastating blow to the Community with $100,000.00 in losses, including $40,000.00 of jam that was not shipped to market because of a delay in receiving jam tin labels from the printer.[lxvii] The arsonists were never brought to justice.
The jam factory boiler house still stands, having been converted, along with adjacent former Community buildings, into a family home in 1979.[lxviii] It is located on Canning Road, named after the jam factory.
Warehouses
Railway facilities played an important role in Community operations, both for receiving incoming goods and supplies purchased from Eastern Canadian manufacturers, and for shipping outgoing agricultural and industrial commodities (bricks, lumber products, fruit and preserves) to market. This required the establishment of Community warehouses for storing goods before their internal distribution or outside export, as the case was.
Plan of GNR Weston station yards showing Peter Verigin (Community) warehouse, c. 1918. Boundary Museum and Archives.
In circa 1912, the Community built a two-storey, 45 x 60 foot warehouse near the Great Northern Weston station in Columbia Flats, near present-day Northfork Franklin Road.[lxix] It was used for the shipping of produce to points on the Great Northern VV&E line. In about 1923, it was sold following the dismantling of the Weston station yards.
In 1912, the Community built a two-storey brick 75 x 50 foot warehouse with concrete basement and elevator lift near the Canadian Pacific west end station in Columbia Flats on present-day Donaldson Avenue.[lxx] The basement was used for fruit cold storage, the main floor for storing dry goods, while the upper floor was divided into living quarters and offices for the Community branch manager.
The Community store warehouse operated for 27 years. In 1940, it was purchased by Peter S. Polonicoff and run as Polonicoff’s Store until its closure in 1984.[lxxi] Today the building stands in good structural condition and has been converted into two heritage-style apartments.
Community warehouse and store near CPR west end station, c. 1935. Pam Faminoff.
Workers’ Cafeteria & Apartments
Another facility that supported the Community agro-industrial complex was a large, two-storey brick 40 x 30 foot rooming house. Built in 1918 in Fruktovoye adjacent to the fruit packing house, it housed a communal kitchen on the main floor for the Doukhobor workmen labouring at the various adjacent enterprises.[lxxii] Originally, the upper floor housed a Community shoemaker’s shop; after 1928, the shoemaker’s shop was relocated to the Community warehouse in Columbia Flats.[lxxiii] Thereafter, the upper floor was converted to workers’ sleeping quarters. In 1979, the structure was refurbished and is now a private residence.[lxxiv]
Former Community granary (left) and workers’ rooming house (right) near brickyard site, 1949. Simon Fraser University No. MCS130-5618-01-2.
Conclusion
In July 1936, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Ltd. declared bankruptcy during the height of the Great Depression.[lxxv]
Its collapse resulted from a combination of complex factors, including low prices assigned to agricultural and industrial products during the Great Depression; burdensome interest rates on its mortgaged properties; a declining membership base, increasing the debt load on fewer members; members who defaulted on annual allotments; the enormous losses to its capital assets suffered from incendiarism; as well as financial mismanagement.[lxxvi]
In June 1937 and May 1938 it was placed under receivership by creditors who foreclosed upon the company and its property valuated at $4,000,000.00 for a total debt of $360,580.64.[lxxvii] Thus ended the largest agro-industrial enterprise ever undertaken in the Boundary and the largest experiment in communal living ever attempted in North America.
Enduring to this day is the Doukhobor example of bringing forth the bounty of the land, with the help of fertile valley soil and a moderate climate, fueled by the desire to work together in community towards a common purpose. The Doukhobors’ contribution to the early agricultural and industrial growth and development of Grand Forks deserves to be recognized and acknowledged.
After Word
An earlier version of this article was originally published in:
ISKRA No. 2185, April 2023;
Grand Forks Gazette, May 24 and 31, 2023; and
Trail Times, May 30 and June 17, 2023.
End Notes
[i] W. Blakemore, Report of Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria BC: King’s Printer, 1913) at 31. See also Certificate of Title Nos. 1155D, 14260F, 52D & 49126F, 14274F, 14262F, 14141F, 42009F, 14269F, 15D & 42183F & 48428F & 42008F & Map 523, 14262F, Similkameen Land District.
[ii] Snesarev, Vladimir N. (Harry W. Trevor), The Doukhobors in British Columbia (University of British Columbia Publication, Department of Agriculture, 1931). See also Certificate of Title Nos. 14257F, 47277F, 49665F, 50579F, 49666F, 42104F, 55398F, Similkameen Land District.
[iii] The first known recorded use of the names Dolina Fruktovaya is found in a letter from Peter V. Verigin to his followers dated August 5, 1909: Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. 016-004-001-001. The first known recorded use of Fruktovoye is found in a December 7, 1910 letter from Peter V. Verigin to followers: Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DC-079-003. The name was still in use on January 1, 1931: Snesarev, ibid. The first known recorded use of the name Sion for the same area is found in a letter by Peter P. Verigin to his followers dated October 18, 1932: Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DB-036-002. This tract comprised District Lot Nos. 453, 2651, E ½ 518, E ½ 1025, E ½ 1027, 365, 364, Blocks 10, 13-16 of Lot 497, Blocks 21-22 of Lot 517, and 1699.
[iv] The first known recorded use of the names Dolina Khristovaya is found in a Record of Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Income and Expenditure dated August 7, 1909: Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DB-049-001. The first recorded use of Khristovoye is found in a December 7, 1910 letter from Peter V. Verigin to followers: Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DC-079-003. This tract comprised District Lot Nos. 538, 334, 333, 332, 1494.
[v] The first known recorded use of the name Ubezhishche is found on January 1, 1931 in Snesarev, supra note 2. This tract comprised District Lot Nos. W ½ 1027, Sub-Lot 8 of Lot 2701, W ½ 1025, Sub-Lot 5 of Lot 2701, W ½ 518, 1737, 2681, 2657, Sub-Lot 4 of Lot 2701.
[ix] These village units were not compact; rather the comprised 2-4 large communal homes in proximity to one another over 200-400 acres of land.
[x] The acreage acquired by the Doukhobors that was already in orchard was relatively small. It included 10 acres on the Vaughan Ranch (Grand Forks Gazette, May 24, 1902 and December 23, 1905); 30 acres on the Collins Ranch (Grand Forks Sun, 1910.07.09); 65 acres on the Newby Ranch (Nelson Daily News, March 20, 1908; Grand Forks Sun, June 2, 1911; Greenwood Ledge 1912.04.25; Grand Forks Gazette 1912.04.20); and 8 acres on the Hoffman Ranch (Grand Forks Sun, June 2, 1911). These 113 acres of orchard ranged from fifteen to twenty years old and in full bearing, to five years old and just beginning to bear by 1912.
[xi] Blakemore, supra, note 1 at 32. Indeed, by 1911 the CCUB was the largest fruit grower in the Boundary Region, and second only to the Coldstream Ranch at Vernon (with 650 acres planted) in the combined Okanagan-Boundary Region. The next-largest fruit grower in the Boundary was the Kettle Valley Irrigated Land Co. with 340 acres planted, while in Grand Forks in particular, the next largest fruit grower was W.H. Covert with 140 acres planted.
[xiii] Province of British Columbia, Department of Lands, Water Rights Branch, Water License Nos. 5393 dated January 20, 1888, renewed July 22, 1926; 5394 dated October 24, 1888, renewed July 22, 1926; 8502 dated November 9, 1926, renewed July 10, 1933; 710 dated February 2, 1914; 289 dated November 9, 1889, renewed July 22, 1926; 290 dated June 13, 1916; 5397 dated August 3, 1914, renewed July 22, 1926; 9557 dated May 8, 1914, renewed January 20, 1936; 2689 dated May 9, 1917, renewed May 10, 1926; 5391 dated August 8, 1911; 699 dated June 12, 1913; 8499 dated April 8, 1911, renewed July 10, 1933.
[xiv] In May 1911, the CCUB had the fourth-largest irrigation system in the Kettle Valley covering 100 acres: Grand Forks Sun, May 19, 1911. At the time, the three largest irrigation enterprises in the valley were that of the Covert Estate (280 acres), L.A. Campbell (220 acres), and Kerman and Kerby & Atwood (180 acres). By 1912, the Society increased its irrigated acreage to 230 acres; and by 1923, to over 758 acres.
[xv]Nelson Daily News, August 22, 1919; Vancouver Daily Sun, August 27, 1919. See also: Province of British Columbia, Grand Forks Water District, May 3039 dated February 1, 1983 re: Water License No. 58084.
[xvi] Vera Novokshonoff, Lucy Reibin & Marion Obedkoff, “Doukhobors in the Boundary” in Boundary History: Third Report of the Boundary Historical Society, 1964 and Boundary History: Fourth Report of the Boundary Historical Society, 1964; William Rozinkin, “Grand Forks Brick Plant Launched in 1909” in Nelson Daily News, May 26, 1967. See also: Grand Forks Sun, May 27, 1902, May 16, 1905, June 21, 1907.
[xvii]Grand Forks Sun, March 13, 1909, June 5, 12, 19 & 26, July 3, 1909; Grand Forks Gazette, March 18, 1909; Greenwood Ledge, June 10, 1909; Boundary Creek Times, November 5, 1909; Report about incomes and expenditures for relocation to Columbia and payment in part for lands for 1911 year and for the period from the beginning of 1912 up to August 10, 1912, Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DB-052-006.
[xviii]Grand Forks Sun, March 13 & 20, June 5 & 19, 1909.
[xix] According to the Boundary Creek Times, November 5, 1909: “all the bricks for the several new brick blocks (i.e. David Block, Bower & Pribilsky Block, Royal Bank Building, etc.) in Grand Forks are made by the colony of Doukhobors who bought the Coryell ranch and are buying the Vaughan ranch.” This is corroborated by a review of the bricks used in these buildings, carried out by Jan DeHaan, MFA – Ceramics, owner/operator of Kettle River Pottery on September 11, 2020 for the writer, which found that the colouring and quality (weathering degradation and lime popping) of the bricks in question were consistent with Doukhobor-manufactured brick from Grand Forks. Chemical isotope testing of the brick is required for absolute verification.
[xxii] Robert Hobson, M.C.I.P. Survey Coordinator, Grand Forks District Heritage Survey, A Report to the Grand Forks District Heritage Advisory Committee (July 1986) at 94.
[xxiii]Ibid; William Blakemore, Report of the Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria: Government Printer, 1913) at 33.
[xxv] Joe Beran, “A Bohemian Immigrant in Canada” in Boundary History: Fifteenth Report of the Boundary Historical Society, 2006 at 47-48; Boundary History: Sixteenth Report of the Boundary Historical Society, 2014) at 101.
[xxvi] Melvin Glaspell, “The Glaspells of Grand Forks” in Boundary History: Twelfth Report of the Boundary Historical Society, 1992 at 136; Grand Forks District Heritage Survey, supra, note 22.
[xxvii]Greenwood Ledge, April 12, 1917; Vancouver Sun, April 16, 1917; The Standard, April 21, 1917; Creston Review, April 24, 1917; Rozinkin, supra, note 16.
[xxviii]Grand Forks Gazette, November 25, 1927; Nelson Daily News, November 21, 1927; Grand Forks Gazette, March 30, 1928; Rozinkin, supra, note 16.
[xxix] By June 1909, the Doukhobor sawmill was producing lumber for the first two-storey brick communal home in Grand Forks, being Village No. 5 (Kootnekoff/Nevokshonoff Village) located on present-day Mill Road: Grand Forks Gazette, June 17, 1909. See also: Edmonton Journal, May 2, 1910; The Canada Gazette, May 12, 1910 at 179; Grand Forks Sun, July 2, 1910; Nelson Daily News, December 2, 1911; Blakemore, supra note 23 at 33.
[xxx] Doukhobors in the Boundary, supra, note 16; Florence Kalmakoff, Interview by Anne Verigin for the writer, March 25, 2021.
[xxxi] The Community sawmill was still in its original location in December 1914: The Daily Province, December 21, 1914; but had already relocated to the brickyard by May 1923: Grand Forks Gazette, May 18, 1923. Photographic evidence indicates it was relocated between 1918 and 1922: Simon Fraser University, Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC130-3580.
[xxxii] In 1923-1924, the Community was awarded the tender for one or more Crown timber sales (X5285 and possibly X4773, X5440 and/or X6755) at Cedar Creek on the North Fork (Granby) River to cut several tens of thousands of lineal feet of railroad ties, poles, saw logs and cordwood over 2 years: Grand Forks Sun, February 9, July 13, August 31, 1923 and November 28, 1924. The Community established a camp near Stanwell Siding on the CPR Kettle Valley Railroad, which was used for shipping purposes. In May 1925, some 1900 ties, 21,000 lineal feet of poles, 5500 board-feet of saw logs, 2300 fence posts and other chattels belonging to the Community were seized by provincial police and sold by public auction at Stanwell Siding to satisfy fines levied against the colony for the failure to send its children to public school: Grand Forks Sun: May 1 & 8, 1925.
[xxxiii] In April 1924, the Community was awarded the tender for timber sale X5222 to cut 5,100,000 feet of saw logs and 96,000 ties over 3 years at Cedar and Marsh Creeks, west of Midway: Greenwood Ledge, February 14 to April 23, June 5 & 19, 1924; Journals, Legislative Assembly of BC 1924, Volume LIV, and December 9, 1924. The Community established a logging camp and sawmill at McArthur Siding on the GNR VV&E Railway, which was used for shipping purposes: Greenwood Ledge, May 15, October 10, December 4, 1924, February 19, 1925, April 8, 1926, November 17, 1927; Grand Forks Sun, May 16, 1924, April 16, 1926; Nelson Daily News, February 22, 1927.
[xxxiv] The expanded sawmill was relocated from Myers Creek to Fourth of July Creek near Grand Forks in November 1927: Nelson Daily News, February 22, 1927; Greenwood Ledge, November 17, 1927; Grand Forks Gazette, March 30, 1928; Snesarev, supra, note 2.
[xxxv]Nelson Daily News, November 21, 1927; Snesarev, supra, note 2; Nick D. Arishenkoff and Cecil W. Koochin, “Life in the Doukhobor Commune” in MIR Vol. 2, No. 3-6, September 1974.
[xxxix]Edmonton Journal, May 2, 1910; Nelson Daily News, December 2, 1911; Doukhobors in the Boundary, supra, note 16.
[xl]Cranbrook Herald, November 12, 1925 to January 28, 1926; Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, “The Doukhobor Fruit Store in Cranbrook, BC, 1925-1926” in the Cranbrook Townsmen, February 17, 2022.
[xli] Doukhobors in the Boundary, supra, note 16; Snesarev, supra, note 2; Sheila Gardezi, “The Essential Mill” in Route 3, Fall 2010 at 23.
[xliii] Steve Lapshinoff, Depredations in Western Canada Attributed to the Sons of Freedom, 1923 to 1993 (Krestova: self-published, 1994) at 6; Gardezi, supra, note 41 at 23.
[xlv]Grand Forks Gazette, May 14, 1964; Gardezi, supra, note 41 at 23.
[xlvi] W. Blakemore, Photographs, Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912, British Columbia Archives, Item No. GR-0793.5, Accession No. 197904-015; Mike Sookochoff, Grand Forks, interview by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, April 25, 2020.
[xlvii] T.R. Powers, Grand Forks: Royal Commission on Doukhobors (1912), Proceedings, Volume 1; BC Archives GR-0793.2.1.
[xlviii]Nelson Daily News, August 20, 1935; Vancouver Daily World, September 1, 1921; Doukhobors in the Boundary, supra, note 16.
[liii] The cannery erected in 1924 was a large-scale commercial plant intended primarily for tomatoes but which could also be used for other vegetables as well as fruit: Nelson Daily News, March 13, 1924; Snesarev, supra, note 2; Gardezi, supra, note 41 at 23. Interestingly, in April 1925, 1110 lbs. of canned fruit (10 lb. tins) and 10 cases of tomatoes (24 oz. tins) were confiscated from the new cannery by provincial police to satisfy fines levied against the colony for the failure to send its children to public school: Grand Forks Gazette, April 17, 1925.
[liv] The tomato cannery is believed to have been destroyed by arson in March 1936: Lapshinoff, supra, note 43; however, it is possible the building (by then inoperative) was destroyed by incendiarism in May 1946: Grand Forks Gazette, May 30, 1946.
[lv] As early as 1915, the Community installed an evaporator at its Brilliant jam factory: Nelson Daily News, February 21, 1913, December 2, 1914 and March 6, 1919. Once dehydrated, fruit was preserved without spoilage at 1/10 its original weight; when required, dried fruit was soaked in water and returned to practically its original state with all colour and nutrients retained. The evaporator erected at Grand Forks in 1924 served the same end: Snesarev, supra, note 2; Gardezi, supra, note 41 at 23.
[lvi] In April 1925, 1180 lbs. of dried fruit (equivalent to 11,800 lbs. of fresh fruit) were confiscated from the new evaporator by police to satisfy fines levied against the colony for failing to send its children to public school: Grand Forks Gazette, April 17, 1925
[lvii] The fruit evaporator is believed to have been destroyed by arson in March 1936: Lapshinoff, supra, note 43; however, it is possible the building (by then inoperative) was destroyed by incendiarism in May 1946: Grand Forks Gazette, May 30, 1946.
[lviii]Nelson Daily News, January 8, 1912; “Report of Consular Agent, W.S. Riblet, Nelson, BC.” in Daily Consular and Trade Reports, No. 76, March 30, 1912 at 1289; Blakemore, supra, note 1; Grand Forks Gazette, April 13, 1923, February 8 & 15, 1924, March 21, 1924; Vancouver Daily World, February 21, 1924; Nanaimo Daily News, March 19, 1924; Grand Forks Gazette, November 25, 1927, March 30, 1928.
[lix]Grand Forks Gazette, August 22, 1935. The bricks forming the factory building veneer were self-manufactured at the adjacent Community brickworks.
[lxviii] Sheila Gardezi, “From Toil to Peaceful Life” in Route 3 (Spring 2010) at 15-17.
[lxix]Plan of Great Northern Railway, Grand Forks, B.C., Weston Yard, c. 1918 (Boundary Museum & Archives Society); Letter dated April 24, 1919 from Nicholas J. Chernenkoff, CCUB to B.E. Paterson, Chairman, Committee of Enquiry & Research, Soldier Settlement Board in James Mavor Doukhobor Collection, Simon Fraser University.
[lxx]Grand Forks Gazette, August 17, 1912, February 15, 1913; Grand Forks Sun, September 6, 1912.
[lxxi]Grand Forks Gazette, July 18, 1940; Elizabeth Faminoff, “Polonicoff’s Store – A Personalized Reflection of the Past” in ISKRA, April 26, 2000 and in Boundary History, 17th Report of the Boundary Historical Society at 115.
[lxxvi] K.J. Tarasoff, Plakun Trava (Mir Publication Society: Grand Forks, 1982) at 153-154; S. Jamieson, “Economic and Social Life” in H.B. Hawthorn (Ed.), The Doukhobors of British Columbia (University of British Columbia, 1955) at 52-56.
[lxxvii]Ibid; Winnipeg Tribune, June 30, 1937 at 39; Medicine Hat News, June 29, 1939; National Trust Company v. The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Ltd. (SCC) [1941] SCR 601, [1941] 3 DLR 529; 23 CBR 1; Medicine Hat News, June 29, 1939.
Following their arrival on the Canadian Prairies in 1899, the Doukhobors regularly grew crops of flax. The fibers of the plant were retted, spun and woven to produce linen, while the seeds were fried, ground and pressed to extract cooking oil. The following is a history of the mill erected by the Doukhobors of Petrovka (aka Petrofka) village on the North Saskatchewan River to manufacture flax seed oil.
Background
In August 1899, 155 Doukhobor immigrant settlers arrived at the North Saskatchewan River, 12 miles south of present-day Blaine Lake, SK. There, on its west bank, they chose a site with a strong spring of clear water, rolling grassy hills and warm sandy soil that reminded them of their former home in the Kars region of Russia.[i] They named their village Petrovka (Петровка) after their spiritual leader, Peter Vasil’evich Verigin, and his name day, Petrov Den, a Doukhobor religious holiday.[ii]
Petrovka village, c. 1903. The millhouse (circled) appears at the upper northwest end of the village. BC Archives Item No. C-01623.
The village initially consisted of 24 crude half-dugouts built into the side of a ravine running down into the river.[iii] However, by the following year, the Doukhobors moved to a more level upland site, where they built 28 log houses facing into a single central street.[iv] Labouring under the motto, “Toil and Peaceful Life”, the Petrovka Doukhobors strove to improve their material circumstances.
Within a few short years, the industrious villagers increased their horse herd from 11 to 41, cows from 5 to 93, sheep from none to 38, plows from 6 to 15, and cultivated acreage from 30 to 1,257 acres.[v] In 1901, they established a water-powered grist mill for grinding wheat into flour on a creek 3 miles north of the village jointly with the villages of Troitskoye and Terpeniye.[vi] That same year, they began operation of a river ferry crossing[vii] and established a Quaker-run school in the village.[viii]
It was during this period of rapid progress and development that the Doukhobors of Petrovka decided to build a mill (Russian: mel’nitsa) for the production of flax oil in their village.
Building the Mill
The task of designing, building and operating the flax mill was given to Ivan Fedorovich Strelioff.[ix] Strelioff had established a reputation in the village for being a “very inventive and capable” individual with a knack for improvisation and innovation.[x]
For instance, Strelioff built a boat with a foot-crank-operated paddle wheel for crossing the North Saskatchewan River in half the time it took a boat with oars.[xi] Before there was a ferry crossing, and villagers had to walk 20 miles east to Rosthern for supplies, then carry them home on their backs, he assembled a wheelbarrow-like cart with a large, 4-foot diameter wheel, enabling him to easily push large loads of supplies over rough terrain to Rosthern and back.[xii] Strelioff also made a bicycle, using wheels from spinning wheels, homemade sprockets made from a spade and a chain with links shaped from wire.[xiii]
Harnessing his creativity, Strelioff designed a rolling stone crusher mill of the type used by the Doukhobors in the 19th century Russian Caucasus. Using a slab of limestone drawn from the riverbank, he dressed it by hand to fashion a large, circular 3-foot-diameter, 8-inch-thick millstone.[xiv] He dressed another limestone slab to form a 5-foot-diameter, 8-inch-thick circular concave base.[xv]
19th century Ottoman stone crusher mill, similar to that built in Petrovka village. Image: Wikipedia.
Standing the millstone upright on the base (which lay flat), he fixed a long horizontal shaft through the hole in the middle of the millstone. The horizontal shaft was fixed to a vertical shaft that freely rotated in the hole in the middle of the base. The millstone was thus held upright by the axis and the handle of the horizontal shaft could be pushed, causing the millstone to roll along the circumference of the base.
Strelioff also designed and built various ancillary equipment for the mill, including a frying plate and oil press, both of which are described in detail below.
A two-storey log structure with clay-plaster and a sod roof was erected in the village to house the grinding mill, frying plate and oil press. The millhouse was located at the northwest end of the village.[xvi]
Processing Flax
With the flax mill operational, the processing and milling of flax (Russian: len) at Petrovka followed a fairly well-established routine.
In late summer, the women of the village harvested the flax fields. The flax was pulled up from the roots (rather than cut with a scythe or sickle) and tied into a bundle or sheaf.[xvii] The sheaves were then hauled to a hardened, well-trodden area of the harvested field, known as the ‘threshing floor’ (Russian: tok) where the women beat the heads of the sheaves with a hand-held wooden mallet (Russian: chekmar’), loosening the seeds from the seed heads.
Doukhobor women threshing flax using wooden mallets in Saskatchewan, c. 1904. BC Archives, Item No. I-67671.
Once the seeds were threshed, the sheaves were taken down to the river for soaking or ‘retting’. They were placed in 6 to 18 inches of water, anchored down by smooth river rocks so that the current would not carry them away.[xviii] After a week to ten days, the flax was cleared of its outer, wood-like straw, leaving the inner, cotton-like fibers. The fibers were given a final washing, then carried up the steep bank to the village, where they was placed on clotheslines to dry.[xix] Once dry, it was spun on spinning wheels into yarn, then woven on a loom into linen for sewing garments.
Meanwhile, the women and children rubbed the skins off the threshed flax seeds by hand at the threshing floor, then hauled the seed in bags to the village flax mill for processing.[xx] When there was a sufficient volume of flax seed for milling, Ivan Fedorovich Strelioff operated the mill as follows:
Milling Process
As raw flax oil has a flat, unpalatable taste, the flax seeds were first fried on a frying plate (Russian: skovoroda) set upon a stone base; the stone was plastered around to keep the smoke, fire and heat concentrated under the plate.[xxi] The flax seeds were roasted over a low fire and stirred frequently, until a certain taste was obtained.
The next step was grinding. A horse was hitched to the horizontal shaft of the grinding mill (Russian: mel’nitsa). Roasted flax seeds were spread along the track of the rolling millstone. The horse was then walked around the mill, causing the millstone to roll along the circumference of the base, crushing the seed.[xxii] Several rounds were made, with the seeds continually mixed to ensure thorough grinding. Once ground, the crushed seeds were removed and the process was repeated with more seed.
Petrovka village plan. The millhouse (circled) stood at the upper northwest corner of the village. Saskatchewan Archives Board, Item No. S-10947.
The final step was extraction. This was done by a homemade oil press (Russian: stupa) made of a hollowed-out log with grated metal filters at the bottom.[xxiii] The ground flax seed was placed inside the hollowed-out log. A second, upper log (that fit smoothly into the hollowed-out log, via a spiral screw drive) was then attached. The miller then walked around, turning this wooden spiral to create proper pressure; thus the oil was extracted and oozed through the grated metal filters at the bottom of the press into pails. To release the pressure and to take out the oil cakes left at the bottom of the press, the spiral lever was spun in reverse. Once the extracting process began, it continued day and night until completed.
The oil cakes, a nutritious byproduct of the extracting process, were fed to the village cattle.[xxiv] The raw extracted oil was run through a fine filter, then poured into bottles or cans for domestic use.
The flax oil (Russian: olifa or oleya) was used by the Doukhobors for frying potatoes and other foodstuffs, and for pouring over sauerkraut, a particularly favorite dish of their people.
Operation and Dismantling
The flax mill at Petrovka was the only one of its kind in the district; the only other plant in the Doukhobor ‘Saskatchewan Colony’ was operated by Mikhail Mikhailovich Chernoff, 16 miles north in the village of Spasovka.[xxv] The Petrovka mill was community owned and maintained, serving not only the village, but also the neighbouring villages of Troitskoye and Terpeniye. It operated for a decade, from 1901 to 1911, at which time most villagers moved out onto their individual homesteads.
Thereafter, the millhouse ceased operation and was dismantled for building material, with the millstone and base laid out on the ground beside. Peter P. Makaroff (1906-1997), whose family homesteaded the village quarter, recalled playing near the abandoned millstone as a young boy.[xxvi] Jeanette (nee Postnikoff) Lodoen (1936-2023), whose family later purchased the village quarter, similarly recalled playing near the stone in her girlhood.[xxvii] Indeed, the millstone lay at the former village site, half-buried and largely forgotten, for over seventy years.
Jeanette (nee Postnikoff) Lodoen (right) and cousin Lanny standing on the abandoned millstone, 1942. Photo Courtesy Jeannete Lodoen.
Commemorative Monument
In 1985, Gregory and Zonia Postnikoff, then-owners of the village quarter, donated the millstone and its base to the Town of Blaine Lake to serve as a commemorative historic marker.[xxviii] Peter Esakin excavated and hauled the stones to their new location. The stones were installed in a memorial garden on a concrete pad and enclosure beside the Blaine Lake Wapiti Public Library.
Millstone marker at Blaine Lake Wapiti Public Library park. Photo: Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.
In 2012, as part of the Town of Blaine Lake Centenary, a bronze plaque was installed at the millstone marker, inscribed as follows:[xxix]
Bronze plaque inscription at millstone commemorative monument, Blaine Lake, SK. Photo: Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.
Today the millstone marker at Blaine Lake commemorates the industry, ingenuity and pioneer spirit of the Doukhobors of Petrovka and their expert miller, Ivan Fedorovich Strelioff. It also stands as a testament to what can be locally achieved, using the material resources at hand, when neighbours work together for a common purpose.
Millstone marker at Blaine Lake Wapiti Public Library park. Photo: Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.
After Word
A detailed analysis by the writer of Doukhobor village grain-growing during the 1899-1912 period reveals that flax typically constituted 2-3 percent of total grain production.
For example, in the year 1900, Petrovka and other villages of the Saskatchewan Colony produced a total of 12,913.5 bushels of grain, of which flax comprised 2.6 percent of total bushels:
Similarly, in the year 1904, the South Colony, Devil’s Lake Annex and North Colony produced a total of 191,480 bushels of grain, of which flax constituted 2.8 percent of the total bushels:
The small volumes of flax relative to total volumes of grain grown by Doukhobor villages highlights the fact that Doukhobors only grew as much flax as they required for domestic purposes (i.e. linen and oil production). That is, the Doukhobors did not grow a surplus volumes of flax for commercial sale.
The flax mill at Petrovka village was built according to the model used by the Doukhobors in 19th century Russia. Numerous other mills were established in Doukhobor villages during the same 1901-1903 period which followed this same model. Other villages confirmed to have built flax mills include the following villages:
Clearly, not every Doukhobor village erected a flax mill. Typically, a flax mill established in one village also served the neighbouring 2-3 villages in the immediate vicinity.
Essentially the same flax milling technology was exported by the Doukhobor Community from Saskatchewan to British Columbia in the 1908-1913 period, where flax mills were established at Grand Forks (Fruktovoye), Ootischenia (Kamennoye), Pass Creek, Glade and Krestova.
After Word
This article was originally published in:
The Shellbrook Chronicle, June 22, 2023.
ISKRA (Grand Forks: Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ) No. 2189, August 2023.
End Notes
[i] Peter J. Serhienko, “Settlement of the Petrofka Village,” in Bridging the Years, Era of Blaine Lake and District, 1790-1980 (Blaine Lake, SK: Town of Blaine Lake and Rural Municipality of Blaine Lake #434, 1984) at 23.
[iii] William B. Harvey, “Schedule of Doukhobor Villages and Statistics, November 1899”, Library & Archives Canada, Immigration Branch Records (RG 76, Volume 184, File 65101, Part 6), Microfilm Reel No. C-7338; Carl J. Tracie, “Toil and Peaceful Life” Doukhobor Village Settlements in Saskatchewan 1899-1918 (Regina: University of Regina, Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1996) at 86.
[v]Petrofka Village File, Library & Archives Canada, RG15V1164 F5391335; Tracie, supra, note 3 at 148.
[vi] John Ashworth, “Flour Mills Built by the Doukhobors” in ManitobaFree Press Home Journal, May 9, 1901; Jonathan E. Rhoads, “A Day with the Doukhobors” in Manitoba Morning Free Press, March 1, 1902; Peter J. Serhienko, “Radouga Creek” in Bridging the Years, supra, note 1 at 33.
[vii] Joseph Elkinton, “Work Among the Doukhobors” in Friends’ Intelligencer (Philadelphia, Seventh Month 26, 1902) at 474; Joseph Elkinton, The Doukhobors, Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903) at 36-38; J. J. McKenna, Dominion Land Surveyor, “Report” in Department of the Interior, Report of the Surveyor General of Dominion Lands for the Year ending June 30, 1904 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1904) at 112.
[viii] Michael Sherbinin, “From the Doukhobors” in Friends’ Intelligencer (Philadelphia, Seventh Month 13, 1901) at 441; The Friend, A Religious and Literary Journal, No. 19, Vol. LXXVI (Seventh Day, Eleventh Month 22, 1902) at 1; J.E., “The Doukhobor Situation” in Friends’ Intelligencer (Philadelphia, Eighth Month 16, 1902) at 521; “Petrofka S.D. #23” in Bridging the Years, supra, note 1 at 261.
[ix] Peter P. Makaroff, “Paul Makaroff” in Bridging the Years, supra, note 1 at 569.
[xvi] Jeanette Lodoen, Interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, October 20, 2020.
[xvii] Victoria Hayward, Romantic Canada (Illustrated with Photographs by Edith S. Watson), (Toronto: Macmillan Company Canada Ltd., 1922) at 234.
[xviii]Ibid; Victoria Hayward and Edith S. Watson, “Doukhobors Beat H.C.L. – Farms Supply All Needs” in Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 22, 1919; Alexei I. Popoff, “Childhood Memories” in Autobiography of a Siberian Exile (Eli A. Popoff, trans.), (Kelowna: self-published, 2006).
[xxx] Saskatchewan Colony Statistics, December 31, 1900 Department of Interior. Library & Archives Canada, Microfilm Reel No. C-7338.
[xxxi] Letter, Peter Verigin to Alex Moffat, Acting Commissioner of Immigration, January 17, 1905, Library and Archives Canada, RG 76, Vol. 184, file 65101, part 7.
[xxxii]Doukhobor Village Files, Library & Archives Canada, Record Group 15, Volumes 754-758, File 494483; Volumes 1163-1168, Files 5391335, 5404640-5404692, 5412425-5412501, 5412973.
Kut’ya (Cyrillic: Кутья) (pronounced: KOOT-yah) is a cold wheat porridge/pudding, sweetened with honey, traditionally made by Doukhobors in Russia and the Caucasus at Christmas for centuries. It is customarily served on Christmas Eve, following the evening prayer meeting, to family and friends.
The following Doukhobor recipe for Kut’ya was shared with the writer by Vasily Stroyev and family, formerly of Troitskoye village, Bogdanovsky region, Georgia, now living in Markevichevo village, Shiryaevsky district, Odessa region, Ukraine.
Ingredients
3 cups wheat
4 tablespoons brown sugar
½ to 1 cup poppy seeds
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup honey
¼ teaspoon salt
Ground nuts, raisins or diced fruit if desired
Instructions
Clean the wheat by spreading it on a plate and removing any green kernels, foreign seeds, chaff, etc. Rinse it well in a colander. Soak the wheat in 6-8 cups of fresh water overnight for approximately 8 hours.
Cook the wheat. a. Stovetop: add 6 cups of water and wheat to pot and bring to a boil. Skim the residue off the top. Turn to low heat, cover and simmer for 4-5 hours, stirring frequently and adding more water as needed. b. Slow Cooker: add 6 cups of water and wheat to slow cooker. Cook on high heat for half an hour, then reduce to low heat and cook for 6-8 hours. The wheat will expand as it cooks to approximately twice its volume. It is done when the kernels burst open and the white germ appears. Drain off excess water in a colander.
Place poppy seeds in a small bowl and pour 1 cup of boiling water of it. Let it sit for 15 minutes then drain. The poppy seed may then either be ground or added whole to the wheat.
In a large measuring cup, combine honey (can be melted in the microwave), brown sugar, vanilla and vanilla with 1 cup of boiling water. Stir until honey is completely dissolved. Add to wheat mixture and stir thoroughly.
Add ground nuts and/or diced fruit if desired to wheat mixture.
The wheat mixture should be porridge- or pudding-like in texture. Cool in refrigerator. Serve either hot or cold. Makes 10-12 cups/servings.
Notes
The making of Kut’ya at Christmas is a millennia-old Orthodox tradition practiced throughout the former Russian Empire. When the Doukhobors openly rejected the Orthodox church in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they discarded many Orthodox customs and traditions. However, they continued to make Kut’ya at Christmas, modifying and imbuing the practice with their own religious meaning and significance. Learn more about the historical, religious and cultural aspects of Christmas Among Doukhobors.
When the Doukhobors first arrived in Canada in 1899, they initially continued to make Kut’ya at Christmas. However, at an All-Doukhobor Congress at Nadezhda village, Saskatchewan in December 1908, Peter V. Verigin, in an effort to simplify and modernize Doukhobor ceremony and ritual, and to focus on its wholly spiritual aspects, set aside many of the folk traditions and festivities formerly associated with Christmas, including Kut’ya making. Thereafter, the recipe eventually fell into disuse and was forgotten by many – but by no means all – Canadian Doukhobors. The Doukhobors who remained in Russia and the Caucasus continue to make Kut’ya to this day.
Let us revive this centuries-old, traditional Doukhobor recipe!
On Highway 5 east of Wadena lies the tiny hamlet of Kylemore, SK. Few today would guess it was once home to a thriving agricultural colony of Doukhobor pacifists. Fewer still would guess that they once built and operated the largest grain elevator in the province there. The following is a brief account of its unique history.
Background
In 1918, the Doukhobor organization, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Ltd. (CCUB), under the stimulus of rising grain prices, sought out suitable farmland for a new colony in a district where land values were cheaper than at Veregin, SK.[1]
To this end, it purchased an 11,362-acre block of wooded, undeveloped land along the Canadian Northern Railway at Kylemore, SK.[2] Some 250 Doukhobor men, women and children from the Veregin district and BC Kootenays were settled on the tract, which they named Bozhiye Blagosloveniye in Russian, meaning ‘God’s Blessing’.[3]
Working communally, the Doukhobors began clearing the dense trees and scrub, constructing villages, and cultivating the land into crop. The logs were sawn into cordwood and shipped by railcar back to Veregin, where they were used to fire the boilers of the large CCUB brick factory and roller flour mill plant there.
As it was cleared, the virgin soil at Kylemore proved remarkably rich and fertile – so much so, that in 1919, the Doukhobors harvested 13,610 bushels of wheat, 9,150 bushels of barley and 33,600 bushels of oats from little more than 1,000 acres of breaking – an average yield of almost 60 bushels per acre.[4]
The large 1919 harvest was sold through the sole elevator at Kylemore operated by the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Co. However, as the Doukhobors desired self-sufficiency and wished to avoid the grain handling and marketing costs charged by private grain companies, they initiated plans to build an elevator of their own.[5]
The Doukhobors were no strangers to elevator-building, having already built and operated 9 grain elevators of their own at Veregin, Arran, Canora and Ebenezer, SK, Cowley and Lundbreck, AB and Brilliant, BC, with a cumulative storage capacity of 440,000 bushels, over the previous decade.[6] They also built for hire numerous elevators for private grain companies.
Doukhobor communal work crew constructing the CCUB elevator at Kylemore, 1919. Photo courtesy Peter and Agnes Malekoff.
The Elevator
In late 1919, a crew of some 25 Doukhobor workmen, under the supervision of CCUB elevator builder Wasyl A. Shishkin of Canora, began erecting the new elevator on the south side of the Canadian Northern Railway right-of-way. Construction continued until freeze-up, then recommenced the following spring of 1920, with the elevator completed and operational in time for the harvest.
Besides using unpaid communal labour, the Doukhobors manufactured most of their own building materials. In this regard, some 750,000 board-feet of 2 by 8 inch fir lumber milled at the CCUB sawmills in the Kootenays was shipped to Kylemore on 10-15 railcars and used in the construction. The total cost of the elevator was approximately $13,500.00.[7] Their main external cost was the mechanical leg, scales, heads and other specialty manufactured equipment.
The resulting elevator was a ‘standard plan’ tall elevator of wood-crib construction (boards laid horizontally and nailed together) with a tin-clad exterior. It stood approximately 70 by 35 feet wide and 70 feet high on a concrete foundation with a pyramidal roof and dormered gable cupola. Its unloading spouts were attached to the sidewall on the north side facing the rail line. A driveway and receiving shed, along with a semi-detached office and engine shed with a stationary gasoline engine was constructed on the south side. Emblazoned on its east and west sides were the words, “The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Ltd.”
It had a licensed storage capacity of 100,000 bushels with 20,000 bushels of auxiliary capacity, making it the largest free-standing wood-crib elevator in Saskatchewan at the time.[8] This was impressive, given the average storage capacity of the 2,184 elevators operating in the province in 1920 was only 30,000 bushels.[9] It was also built with a double leg, which meant that it had two weigh scales so that two grain wagons could unload at the same time. It also meant it could load two rail cars at the same time.
The CCUB elevator at Kylemore, c. 1930. Photo courtesy The Wadena News.
Operations
Under the rules of the colony, all grain grown by members was required to be delivered to the CCUB elevator, and members were not permitted to deliver grain to anyone but CCUB grain agents.[10]
Initially, no member had an individual right to the grain they grew, nor was paid for its delivery, for no member was allowed individual holdings.[11] Rather, the grain belonged to the central organization, which marketed and shipped the grain and retained all proceeds. In return for their labour, the CCUB supplied its members with food, shelter, clothing and supplies, along with land, farm implements and machinery and livestock for their use.[12] Members held an equitable undivided interest in the corporation.
This moneyless system continued until 1928, when the CCUB was reorganized on a cash basis.[13] Thereafter, the CCUB elevator continued to maintain a buying monopoly over all grain grown in the colony, but now purchased the grain delivered by its members, which they grew on land rented from the CCUB using their own implements and machinery.
The CCUB elevator also purchased grain from outside farmers, which at Kylemore were primarily English, Scandinavian and Ukrainian settlers. The CCUB charged them substantially less elevating and marketing fees than its competing grain buyer, the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Co., thereby increasing their farm profits.[14] The storage capacity available for outside farmers, however, was dependent upon the volume of grain grown by the Doukhobors themselves, which over time, increased with additional land clearing.
Cross-section of a grain elevator. UGG News, August 1974, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Courtesy Glenn Dickson).
When grain was received at the elevator from colony members or outside farmers, the intake process was the same. Each loaded wagon was driven into the receiving shed where it was unhitched from its team, weighed on the scale, then lifted using hand-operated crank hoists to dump the grain into the receiving pit below. Once empty, the wagon was lowered and reweighed. The difference between weights determined the volume of grain received. The grain was then carried from the pit up to the ‘head’ of the elevator (housed in the cupola at the top) by the ‘leg’, a continuous belt with carrying cups. From the head, the grain was distributed, via the ‘gerber’ distribution spout and gravity chutes, into one of several bins designated according to grain type and grade. This process could be carried out in tandem with the double leg and head.
From 1920 through 1933, the CCUB elevator was annually licensed and inspected as a ‘country elevator’ through the Winnipeg Grain Commission.[15] This was required under The Canada Grain Act in order to receive, purchase, store, ship or sell grain for commerce. After 1933, it was licensed as a ‘private elevator’ and had ceased buying grain from outside farmers, as the Doukhobors were using its full capacity for themselves.[16]
Grain was stored in the elevator bins until it was ready to be shipped, which might be weeks or months. At such time, it was dumped from a bin into the hopper scale, where it was weighed. It was then dumped into the pit, from which it was carried up by the ‘leg’ to the ‘head’ in the cupola. From the head, the grain was then dumped, via the ‘gerber’, into the gravity-fed loading spout, through which it exited the elevator and unloaded into a boxcar ‘spotted’ (parked) on the rail siding north adjacent the elevator. Again, this process could be carried out in tandem, via the double leg and head.
All grain shipments and sales from the Kylemore elevator were centrally managed through the CCUB head office in Veregin, which instructed the local elevator manager via telephone and telegraph dispatch.
When instructed, the CCUB elevator manager shipped a requisite number of railcars of wheat (for flour milling) and oats (for livestock feed) to the CCUB colony at Brilliant, whose mountain valley land was almost exclusively dedicated to fruit-growing and not grain-growing. In exchange, the Kylemore colony received fresh fruit, the famous ‘KC Brand’ Doukhobor jam and lumber produced in the Kootenays. The balance of grain was shipped and sold to domestic and foreign markets through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and the Fort William and Port Arthur Grain Exchange.
CCUB structures adjacent to CNR at Kylemore, SK, c. 1922. (L-R) grain elevator, community warehouse, and two large communal homes. Photo courtesy Koozma J. Tarasoff.
The elevator was managed by the CCUB Kylemore Branch Manager, which was Peter S. Chernoff in 1920, John J. Planidin in 1924, Dmitry I. Malakoff in 1925, and Nikolai I. Cazakoff from 1926-1928. They were assisted by various colony members who handled the grain at the elevator.
Interestingly, in 1927, incoming CCUB President Peter P. Verigin announced plans to install an electrical generating plant to power the Kylemore elevator and replace the existing stationary gasoline engine.[17] At the same time, he expressed the possibility of the elevator joining the wheat pool elevator and marketing co-operative movement.[18] However, neither would come to pass.
Sale of Elevator
By 1931, the colony numbered 400 members and had an aggregate assessed value of $454,834.00 in land, buildings, livestock and implements. [19] The CCUB elevator was valued at $25,000.00. [20]
Yet despite the colony’s wealth, the central organization itself was ailing financially. When the Great Depression struck in the Thirties, the financial situation of the CCUB deteriorated rapidly because all of the communal property was pledged under a blanket mortgage (taken for debts acrued off-colony) and no further loans could be negotiated due to lack of collateral.[21] With no credit, and with membership and cash income falling rapidly, company officials looked to selling off corporate assets to raise the capital necessary to service its massive debt.
To this end, the CCUB elevator at Kylemore was sold in April 1936 to the Winnipeg, MB-based Pioneer Grain Company Ltd.[22] The sale proved to be too little, too late. By July of that year, the CCUB could not service its debts and declared bankruptcy. In 1937-1938 the company was placed under receivership by its creditors who, the following year in 1939, foreclosed upon the CCUB lands at Kylemore, leading to the break-up of the colony. Thereafter the CCUB ceased to exist as a corporate entity.[23]
Another view of the CCUB elevator at Kylemore, c. 1930. Photo: British Columbia Archives, Item No. C-01709.
Pioneer Grain Co. Ltd.
The Pioneer Grain Company Limited took over the Doukhobor-built elevator and continued to serve Kylemore district farmers, including former colony members, for the next fifty-four years.
No major structural modifications were made to the elevator during Pioneer’s tenure. However, in the 1950s, much of the original equipment was upgraded: the original gasoline engine was replaced with electrical equipment; the truck-dumping mechanism was improved; larger scales and larger and longer movable loading spouts to facilitate the loading of freight cars were installed; wooden legs were replaced with metal ones; and driveways extended to accommodate larger trucks.
In terms of storage capacity, Pioneer licensed the elevator at 100,000 bushels’ capacity from 1936 to 1949; 110,000 bushels from 1949 to 1960; 96,000 bushels from 1960 to 1978; and 2,690 tons from 1978 to 1990.[24] The company never constructed annexes to increase the storage capacity.
By 1990, the 70-year-old elevator was wearing out and in need of costly repairs. At the same time, farming practices had changed and many small farms were replaced by a few large ones, which incented the grain company to have fewer, more centralized grain storage facilities. This was supported by the railway company, which no longer wished to stop every 7-10 miles to spot rail cars.
Consequently, Pioneer closed its Kylemore elevator in the spring of 1990 while adding additional storage capacity to its elevator in Wadena, a larger commercial centre 6.5 miles to the west. After its closure, the elevator stood empty for several years and was then demolished.
Conclusion
Today, all that remains of the elevator are its concrete foundations, one of the few reminders of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood at Kylemore, and of the pioneering efforts of the Doukhobors in the field of grain growing and storage. More enduring still is their example of what can be accomplished when people work together for community.
Loading grain cars at the Doukhobor-built Pioneer Grain Company Ltd. elevator in Kylemore, c. 1985. Photo courtesy Wayne CF.The Pioneer Grain Company Ltd. elevator at Kylemore, shortly before its demolition, c. 1991. Photo courtesy Wayne CF.
Afterword
This article originally appeared in the following journals and periodicals:
ISKRA (Grand Forks, Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ) No. 2186 (May 2023);
Foam Lake Review, November 6, 2023.
End Notes
[1] C.A. Dawson, Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (Toronto: MacMillan, 1936) at 40. The undeveloped Kylemore land was purchased at $25.00 an acre: Regina Leader Post, June 3, 1918; whereas developed land in Veregin was valued at $100.00 an acre: see for example Certificate of Title No. QR20 dated July 24, 1917 issued to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Limited re: Section 1-30-1-W2.
[2] For a comprehensive history of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood at Kylemore, see: J. Kalmakoff, “The Kylemore Doukhobor Colony” in Saskatchewan History, Spring/Summer 2011, Vol. 63, No. 1.
[3] Record of harvest at Kylemore, 1919, Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. M-.
[5] The desire for self-sufficiency and avoidance of elevating and marketing fees charged by private grain companies was a main motivator in the Doukhobors erecting their own grain elevators: W. Blakemore, Report of Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria BC: King’s Printer, 1913) at 57-58.
[6] See for example: J. Kalmakoff, “History of Doukhobor Elevators in the Veregin District” in Canora Courier, August 31, 2022, September 7, 2022, September 22, 2022; J. Kalmakoff, “The Doukhobor Grain Elevator at Brilliant, BC” in West Kootenay Advertiser, November 4, 2020; J. Kalmakoff, “The Doukhobor Trading Company in Canora” in Canora Courier, February 25, 2018, March 7, 2018, March 14, 2018, March 21, 2018, March 28, 2018; J. Kalmakoff, “Doukhobor Elevator Building: The Alberta Farmers’ Cooperative Grain Elevator at Sedgewick AB” in Flagstaff Community Press, March 19, 2022.
[7] Based on the 1920 BC Interior lumber price of $25.00/1000 board feet: G.H. Hak, On the Fringes: Capital and Labour in the Forest Economies of the Port Alberni and Prince George Districts, British Columbia, 1910-1939 (Ph.D. Thesis) (Simon Fraser University, 1986) at 27-30.
[8] Canada Department of Trade and Commerce, List of Licensed Elevators and Warehouses in the Western Grain Inspection Division, License Year 1920-1921. (Ottawa: Department of Trade and Commerce, 1921) at 72. Note: in 1920, Quaker Oats Company in Saskatoon and Robin Hood Mills Ltd. were licensed at 380,000 and 385,000 bushels respectively; however, these structures were concrete inland terminals and not wood-crib elevators. Also, the Alberta Pacific Grain Co. Ltd. in Gravelbourg, R.B. McClean Grain Co. Ltd. in Harris and Conger & Co. Ltd. in Roleau were licensed at 120,000, 110,000 and 100,00 bushels respectively; however these were not single free-standing structures; the licensed bushels included both wood-crib elevators and adjacent annex structures.
[10]Saskatoon Star Phoenix, December 5, 1923; Regina Leader Post, December 7, 1923; Winnipeg Free Press Prairie Farmer, June 2, 1926.
[11] CCUB grain ownership was put to legal test in 1923, when brothers Alex, Wasyl and Simeon A. Horkoff, CCUB members at Veregin, SK, sold the grain grown on the farm upon which they resided and kept the money themselves in place of turning it into the central treasury. The CCUB charged them with theft of property. At preliminary hearing, the magistrate dismissed the charges, holding it was a civil not criminal matter. The Horkoffs filed a civil suit in the Court of King’s Bench, claiming the land on which the grain was grown was rightfully theirs, the CCUB having secured title to it by means of fraud. The matter was settled out of court. See: Saskatoon Star Phoenix, December 5 and 7, 1923, January 5, May 12, 1924; Saskatoon Daily Star, December 17, 1923, January 5 and 22, May 12 & 16, 1924; Regina Leader Post, December 6 and 7, 2023, May 14, 15 & 16, 1924.
[12] Dawson, supra, note 1; Snesarev, Vladimir N. (Harry W. Trevor), The Doukhobors in British Columbia (University of British Columbia Publication, Department of Agriculture, 1931).
[19] Snesarev, supra, note 11, List of Property Owned by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Limited as at January 1, 1931 – District of Kylemore, Saskatchewan.
[22] “More Rumours of Doukhobor Migrations from Saskatchewan Heard at Yorkton” in Saskatoon Star Phoenix, April 24, 1936.
[23] K.J. Tarasoff, Plakun Trava (Mir Publication Society: Grand Forks, 1982) at 153-154; S. Jamieson, “Economic and Social Life” in H.B. Hawthorn (Ed.), The Doukhobors of British Columbia (University of British Columbia, 1955) at 52-56.
[24] List of Licensed Elevators, supra, note 8, License Years, 1936-1953; Grain Elevators in Canada. Winnipeg: Board of Grain Commissioners for Canada, 1954-1990.
Paska (Cyrillic: Паска) (pronounced: PAH-skah) is a round, egg-enriched sweet bread, traditionally made by Doukhobors in Russia and the Caucasus at Easter for centuries. It is customarily served on Easter Sunday, following the morning prayer meeting, to family and friends.
The following Doukhobor recipe for Paska was shared with the writerby Vasily Stroyev and family, formerly of Troitskoye village, Bogdanovsky region, Georgia, now living in Markevichevo village, Shiryaevsky district, Odessa region, Ukraine.
Ingredients
flour (2 kg initially; more as needed)
sugar (600 grams)
warm milk (1 litre)
salt (1 teaspoon)
eggs (10)
yeast (30 grams dry/100 grams fresh)
melted butter (600 grams)
raisins (200 grams)
icing sugar (10 table spoons)
vanillin (4 grams)
Instructions
Sift flour so that it is well saturated with air.
In a bowl, add 8 tablespoons of flour. Add in the yeast and 4 teaspoons of sugar, along with a little warm milk. Mix yeast mixture well, cover bowl with a tea towel and put in a warm place for 15 minutes.
In another bowl, pour in the egg. (If making icing under Step 11, pour in egg yolks only, and separate egg whites into a different bowl and put in fridge to chill.). To the eggs, add the salt and start beating, gradually adding the sugar to get a lush, creamy texture that leaves a light pattern behind.
In another bowl, combine the rest of the milk and flour. Slowly beat in the egg yolk/sugar mix. Add in the yeast mixture (once it has sat for 15 minutes), then the melted butter.
Begin kneading the dough mixture, adding in the vanillin. While kneading, add up to 100-200 grams of additional flour, if necessary, to ensure a soft, smooth elastic texture (however, do not add too much!). Continue to knead the dough thoroughly for up to 40 minutes.
Once kneaded, cover the bowl of dough with a tea towel and put in a warm place to rise for 1 ½ hours. The dough will be yellowish in colour because of the volume of eggs used.
In the meantime, while the dough is rising:
Rinse the raisins with water, drain, then place on a tea towel to dry. Once dry, dust the raisins with two tablespoons of flour; and
Grease 10 large coffee tins (or other cylindrical baking tins) with butter.
Once the dough has risen, stretch it out on a countertop (dusted with flour), add in the raisins and knead/roll until the raisins are evenly distributed.
Raw paska dough in tin forms. Image: Vasily Stroyev.
Divide the dough into roughly 10 equal parts. Roll each part into a ball and place into a coffee tin; each ball should fill approximately half of the tin. Cover the cans loosely with a towel and leave for 20 minutes until the dough slightly rises out of the tins.
Put tins in oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 35 minutes. Then take out tins and place on countertop on their sides, turning them from time to time, as they cool over 15 minutes. They should then be easily removed from tins.
Baked paska, removed from tins, cooling on tray. Image: Vasily Stroyev.
This next step is optional, as Doukhobor paska did not traditionally have icing. Beat the chilled egg whites together, then add icing sugar and whip well until it is a thick, frothy consistency. Optional: add a dash of lemon or orange juice to taste. Then, using a spatula, add icing mixture generously to the top of each of the completely cooled loafs. Optional: add sprinkles to the top of the icing mixture before it hardens. Allow the icing to dry well before serving.
Doukhobor paska with decorative icing added. Image: Vasily Stroyev.
Notes
History
The making of Paska at Easter is a millennium-old Orthodox tradition practiced throughout the former Russian Empire. When the Doukhobors openly rejected the Orthodox church in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they discarded many Orthodox customs and traditions. However, they continued to bake Paska at Easter, modifying and imbuing the practice with their own religious meaning and significance. Learn more about the historical, religious and cultural aspects of Easter Among Doukhobors.
In the Doukhobor South Russian dialect, the bread is called Paska (Паска), which is also its name in Ukrainian. In modern Russian it is called Paskha (Пасха).
Unlike Orthodox Russians and Ukrainians, who braid the loaves or imprint them with crosses and other religious symbols, Doukhobor loaves are left plain and unadorned. This is a very important religious and cultural distinction that reflects Doukhobor iconoclast beliefs.
When the Doukhobors first arrived in Canada in 1899, they initially continued to bake Paska at Easter. However, at an All-Doukhobor Congress at Nadezhda village, Saskatchewan in December 1908, Peter V. Verigin, in an effort to simplify and modernize Doukhobor ceremony and ritual, and to focus on its wholly spiritual aspects, set aside many of the folk traditions and festivities formerly associated with Easter, including Paska baking. Thereafter, the recipe eventually fell into disuse and was forgotten by many – but by no means all – Canadian Doukhobors. The Doukhobors who remained in Russia and the Caucasus continue to bake Paska to this day.
Additional Baking Tips
Some Canadian Doukhobor users of this traditional recipe have suggested the following tips and tricks:
Combining Ingredients: It may be less cumbersome to follow a common bread recipe method of ‘proofing’ the yeast mixture separately, but combining and mixing the rest of the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, vanillin, raisins) together at once.
Tins: Coffee tins or cylindrical baking tins must be very well greased or else lined with parchment paper to avoid sticking. Cylindrical spring-form pans with detachable bottoms and openable sides may work best.
Fill the tins between 1/3 and no more than 1/2 with dough balls to avoid significant overflow.
Recipe Size: This is a large recipe that makes the equivalent of about 5 dozen buns. Consider halving the recipe ingredients for a smaller amount.
Cooking Time and Temp: Although the loaves may be browned on top, they may not be thoroughly baked inside. Consider baking instead at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 40-50 minutes.
Let us revive this centuries-old, traditional Doukhobor recipe!
The construction of transcontinental railways across Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries required an enormous labour force, most of whom were immigrants. Between 1899 and 1912, thousands of Doukhobor labourers were hired by railway companies to build many hundreds of miles of track through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta. While much scholarly attention has been paid to the significant contribution made by other immigrant groups, particularly Chinese workers in the late 19th century, little is known about the Doukhobors’ contribution to railway construction in Western Canada.[1] This article is an opportunity to examine Doukhobor railway building, its importance as an early source of communal income, and its overall contribution to the settlement and development of the Prairie region.
Background
The Doukhobors were a religious movement founded in 18th century Russia. They rejected the rites and dogma of the Orthodox Church and denied the authority of the Tsarist State, refusing to acknowledge any law but God’s.[2] Their pacifist, egalitarian and anti-authoritarian teachings were based on the belief that the spirit of God resides in the soul of every person.[3] They were frequently persecuted for their faith and exiled to the frontiers of the Empire.[4] Following widespread arrests and exiles in 1895 for their refusal to serve in the Russian Imperial Army,[5] many sought refuge by immigrating en masse to Canada.
In 1899, some 7,500 Doukhobors[6] arrived in the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine districts of the North-West Territories (after 1905, Saskatchewan), settling on 702,720 acres of homestead land reserved for them along the Whitesand, Assiniboine and Swan River watersheds and elsewhere where they established over seventy Old World villages.[7] At the time, the area was sparsely settled and mostly prairie parkland wilderness, save for a handful of isolated ranches and homesteads.[8] It was unsurveyed and there were no roads except for deeply-rutted wagon trails. The closest railways were 30 to 80 miles away.
Upon arriving at their new home, the Doukhobors established a communal way of life, organized as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (the ‘Community’).[9] All livestock, equipment and tools were held in common, all land was cleared and cultivated together, and all grain and agricultural products distributed equally amongst the settlers. Working collectively, they were able to achieve substantially more, over a much shorter time, than they could have as solitary homesteaders.
Doukhobors Building Railway Grade, circa 1904. Simon Fraser University, Doukhobor Collection, MSC121-DP-050-01.
Railroad Labourers
In the early years of settlement, most of the men left their families and villages each spring, walking up to several hundred miles into Manitoba to find work ‘na doroge’ (‘on the railroad’) to earn much-needed income for their villages.[10] Being agriculturalists, it was not their preferred form of labour;[11] however, it was vitally necessary as they were destitute. With villages bereft of men during the growing season (particularly during the 1899-1902 period), it fell upon the women and elderly to clear and plow the fields and erect village structures; tasks traditionally done by the men.[12] The men were hired as navvies (railroad labourers) by contractors building the railways extending across the Prairies.
The Doukhobors were no strangers to this type of work. In Russia, hundreds laboured on the construction of the Transcaucasus Railway, including the Borjomi–Bakuriani line where they loaded gravel for track ballast and built grade through heavy timber in 1897,[13] and the Kars-Aleksandropol line where they built grade through hilly terrain in 1897-1898.[14] The work was characterized by extremely long working days, very low wages and many casualties due to lack of safety measures.[15] They would now bring that experience to bear in the opening of the Canadian West.
The main job of navvies[16] on the Prairies was to clear and remove trees, foliage and rocks and drain swamps along the surveyed right-of-way, and to make cuttings through hills and slopes and fills over hollows and lowlands, using tons of excavated earth to build a raised embankment. They also hauled tons of ballast, ties and steel rails to lay down tracks over the grade for the trains. This was done manually, using picks, shovels, sledgehammers, wheelbarrows, scrapers, wagons and horses. Labouring from sunrise to sunset through the summer heat and humidity, amid swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes, away from their homes in isolated, lice-ridden camps with few amenities, it was lonely, extremely difficult work requiring both physical and emotional stamina. It was also very dangerous work.[17]
During the summer of 1899, 350 Doukhobor men were hired to build the Winnipeg Great Northern Railway Cowan-Swan River line while 150 worked on the Manitoba and Northwestern Railway Hamiota-Miniota line and another 116 on the Manitoba and Southeastern Railway Marchand-Sprague line.[18] Some villages even sent women to the grade that year.[19] They were supplied tools and equipment and received board in the construction camps, although special arrangements had to be made to feed them as they were vegetarians. They worked wherever ordered by the railway engineers, which were often the heaviest, most difficult sections, while English Canadian workers were often assigned the easiest stretches.[20] At the same time, they were paid a dollar a day while English Canadians received up to four dollars a day for the same work.[21] These discrepancies, exacerbated by prejudice against foreigners,[22] language barriers and misunderstandings, initially led to labour disputes and work stoppages; however, once the Doukhobors were treated fairly, the railways found them to be “excellent workers”.[23] Upon returning to their villages that fall, they pooled their earnings to buy much-needed provisions – draft horses, wagons, plows, harness, clothing and especially flour.[24]
The Doukhobor men on the railway grade from 1899 on challenged prevailing white Anglo assumptions concerning masculinity in several respects: that men should not consider their wives as equals; that they should not depend on their wives to carry out field work at home while they pursued lucrative employment elsewhere;[25] that men should not bring women into construction camps, an exclusively male domain, as domestics much less labourers; that they could not be vegetarians and expect to carry out the physically demanding work of navvies; that men should labour independently rather than cooperatively; and that they should not hand over their hard-earned wages to others to run their affairs.
Over the next several years, hundreds of Doukhobors were hired to clear right-of-ways, build grade and lay track on the Canadian Northern Railway Swan River-Erwood line in 1900,[26] Carmen-Gladstone line in 1901,[27] Gladstone-Grandview line in 1902,[28] Regina-Stoughton line in 1903,[29] Erwood-Melfort line in 1904[30] and Saskatoon-Langham line in 1905; the Manitoba and Southeastern Railway Sprague-Rainy River line in 1900;[31] the Ontario and Rainy River Railway Baudette-Rainy River bridge in 1901;[32] and the Canadian Pacific Railway Pipestone-Antler line in 1900-1901[33] and Yorkton-Sheho line in 1903-1904[34]. Several hundred even worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad Coast Line in California in 1900.[35] Over a thousand laboured each year on the Canadian Northern Railway line from Gladstone to Kamsack in 1903,[36] from Kamsack to Canora in 1904,[37] and from Canora to Humboldt in 1905[38] as it passed their settlements.
As steel was laid along these lines, railway engineers surveyed townsites and built stations and sidings every 6-10 miles, around which scores of new communities formed. One of the many was Canora, named after the CAnadian NOrthern RAilway, in August 1904.[39] Situated between Doukhobor homestead reserves to the east and west, the hamlet expanded to become a shipping point and trading centre for the flood of settlers of various nationalities who arrived homesteaded within the area served by the line, being a 10 to 12 mile radius. Four years later, in October 1908, it was declared a village.[40] Canora would also figure prominently in later Doukhobor railway building.
Doukhobors making a cut on the Canadian Northern Railway grade, Koozma J. Tarasoff Doukhobor History Photo Collection.
While many Doukhobors initially faced discrimination and mistreatment at the construction camps, they persisted and soon earned a solid reputation as railroad labourers. As early as 1902, Neil Keith, a well-known contractor in charge of Canadian Northern Railway construction, proclaimed them “excellent” workers – “reliable and industrious”, “well adapted to meet the exigencies of the work”, whose “economy and thrift were noteworthy”.[41] Their kindness towards their work horses was also noted. Four years later, J.J. Kenny, Director of the Winnipeg-based McDonald–McMillan Company, declared them “the most desirable laborers” for railway construction.[42] Such recognition challenged the dominant white Anglo view of foreign workers, particularly Slavs, as lazy, slow, irresponsible and careless on the job.[43]
By 1902, the Doukhobor navvies organized themselves in order to secure better pay and conditions. They refused as a body to work on railway projects unless they were allowed to furnish their own tools, board themselves and work by the piece (by the cubic yard rather than day) having learned from experience that when their supplies were provided by the contractors at exorbitant premiums, along with their board bill, doctor’s bill, etc., there was little left coming to them.[44] As Doukhobor Aleksei N. Jmieff recounted, “There was work on the railroad, a dollar twenty-five a day and your own food, ten hour days. Worked on the ‘extra gang’ at a dollar seventy-five, but with their food, so seventy-five cents went for food and you were paid one dollar.”[45]
As well, Doukhobors were soon able to demand higher rates for rail construction than were offered, aided by the leader of the Community, Peter V. Verigin, widely regarded by many English-Canadians as “one of the shrewdest businessmen in the mighty west” and “a veritable captain of industry”.[46] According to one anecdote,[47] when a Winnipeg contractor offered him 25.5 cents a cubic yard for grading in late 1902, Verigin insisted on 27.5 cents. The contractor told him that was the price the railway paid him, so he couldn’t make a profit. “No company will profit by our work,” Verigin replied. “I have known all along that you were getting 27.5 cents from the railway. Now you can take it or leave it.” Good workers were hard to find. The contractor took it.
By 1903 to 1905, half the able-bodied Doukhobor males living north of Yorkton – over a thousand men – were working on railway building each summer,[48] while the remainder farmed at their villages. The money they received from this work was substantial. In 1903, they earned $100.00 per man and $111,679.00 in total from railroad construction;[49] a comparable sum in 1904;[50] and $114,136.60 in 1905.[51] Their earnings were carefully hoarded and brought back to their villages each fall, where they were deposited into a common treasury for the benefit of all Community members.[52]
The pooling of outside earnings from railway construction not only lifted the Community out of poverty, but within several years, enabled it to become self-sufficient and even prosperous. By 1903, it accounted for 66.9% of Community income and covered 52.4% of its expenditures, and by 1905, it accounted for 60.1% of total income and covered all of its expenditures.[53] The Community was thus able to improve existing village dwellings and build new structures, expand its landholdings, draft horse herd and farm machinery, and to develop new enterprises including flour mills, linseed oil presses, sawmills, tanning mills, lime kilns, blacksmiths, grain elevators, brickyards, concrete block plants, trading stores and warehouses.
By 1906, Doukhobors dominated the railway labour market in Western Canada, with each railway vying to secure them for its operations. Indeed, that July, the Canadian Pacific Railway complained of labour shortages and wage inflation largely due to the Canadian Northern Railway and Grand Trunk Pacific “having pretty well cleaned up” the Doukhobor labour supply, and expressed concern that it would have to suspend its prairie construction work by harvest.[54] The latter companies had over 1,600 Doukhobors working at the time.[55]
Undoubtedly, the strong social cohesion, cultural homogeneity and religious devotion within the Community, together with its centralized communal structure, exceptional leadership and adroit business management allowed the Doukhobors to excel at railway construction to a greater degree than other immigrant groups working as disparate collections of individuals.
Railway Subcontractor
After six years, the experience it gained from railway construction enabled the Doukhobor Community to assume the role of a subcontractor – one degree removed from the railway company – on large projects. Few if any other immigrant groups had achieved this level of autonomy while labouring on Canadian railways.[56] As a subcontractor, the Community could manage its own work, choose the sections of line it worked on and retain greater earnings than it could by hiring out men individually; however, it also assumed a greater degree of risk and responsibility for the work. Undaunted, the Community bid on difficult jobs that other railway builders would not accept or take hold of at any price.[57]
Doukhobor Track-Laying Crew, circa 1904. Simon Fraser University, Doukhobor Collection, MSC121-DP-046-01.
The first subcontract the Community received was in September 1905 from the McDonald-McMillan Company,[58] with company president Malcolm McMillan announcing that “the Doukhobors had done most excellent work in the past in the matter of railway construction and that he anticipated that in the future their leaders might develop into construction men of exceptional ability. There was no doubt of their ability to carry out the contract.”[59] The work entailed moving a million cubic feet of earth to complete 17 miles of grade on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway St. Lazare-Spy Hill line through the Assiniboine and Qu’Appelle River valleys, over some of the roughest, most demanding terrain on the line, for which the Community would receive $200,000.00; twice the annual revenue received over the past three years.[60]
In March of the following spring, the Community mobilized a thousand men at St. Lazare, together with 300 teams of heavy working horses, large quantities of equipment purchased for the work, as well as food and clothing supplies.[61] They set up several camps along the line, each with a cookhouse, store, stable and blacksmith, accompanied by a group of women who washed and mended the workmen’s clothes and milked the cows.[62] The orderliness and cleanliness of the encampments was remarked upon by the press and government officials, as was the splendid condition of the horses, with The Winnipeg Tribune noting, “it is easy to see how well they are thought of by their owners.”[63]
The Doukhobors carried out the grade work under the supervision of Community managers Vasily A. Potapoff and Nikolai S. Zeboroff.[64] Their workmanship was lauded by the press, with The Winnipeg Free Press writing, “to say that these uneducated Russians are good road-builders is putting it mild – they are simply experts. Large cuts and big grades are all built with the same accuracy, and are as level and straight as the sight. There is no carelessness or recklessness among these men, none whatsoever.”[65]At harvest, 500 of the men returned to their villages while the remainder completed the subcontract in October 1906.[66] The subcontract cemented the Doukhobors’ reputation, with Malcolm McMillan of the McDonald-McMillan Company proclaiming them “the best railway builders in this country”.[67]
This success did not go unnoticed by Grand Trunk Pacific Railway officials. While touring the new line in August 1906, company vice-president Frank W. Morse was struck by the efficiency of the Doukhobor workmen, declaring, “The service rendered by them is in every way satisfactory, and I only wish we had more Doukhobors available.”[68] By October, Morse and company president Charles Melville Hays relayed requests through the Russian Consul in Montreal, Nikolai Struve, to Peter V. Verigin to bring 10,000 more Doukhobors from Russia to help complete their transcontinental line over the next two years.[69] The importation of foreign labour for railway construction was controversial but not new; the Canadian Pacific Railway imported 17,000 Chinese workers to complete its British Columbia section in 1880-1885.[70] Verigin travelled to Russia from October 1906 to February 1907, ostensibly to make the necessary arrangements; however, the deal purportedly fell through when Tsarist authorities refused to cooperate and the railway declined to sign a contract on the terms Verigin proposed.[71]
Doukhobor ‘extra’ gang completing CNoR line between Arran and Pelly SK, 1909. Linda Arishenkoff private collection.
Over the next three years, the Community continued to secure small subcontracts using up to several hundred men, notably on the Canadian Pacific Railway Sheho-Lanigan line in 1907-1908,[72] the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Melville-Saskatoon line in 1907-1908[73] and Yonker-Butz line in 1909,[74] and the Canadian Northern Railway Melfort-Prince Albert line in 1906,[75] Swan River-Benito line in 1908, Benito-Pelly line in 1909,[76] Rossburn-Russell line in 1907-1908[77] and Russell-Canora line in 1909. Smaller groups worked on projects as distant as the Canadian Pacific Railway Buda Tunnel in Northern Ontario in 1907[78] and the Great Northern Railway Cloverdale-Huntington line in British Columbia in 1908.[79] The majority of the men, however, remained at their villages, devoting their efforts to improving their farmland.[80]
Subcontracts were signed by Peter V. Verigin on behalf of the Community, since the Community, being unincorporated at the time, did not have the capacity to enter into contracts on its own. Consequently, all subcontract payments were made directly to Verigin. From the Community perspective, this obviated the need to collect wages from individual workmen, as well as the risk that all or some of those wages might be arbitrarily withheld or errantly misspent. Payments received on subcontracts were deposited by Verigin in the Community central office at Veregin and used for various expenditures.
Evidently, the Community was also paid in land and lots along the railway route.[81] Between 1906 and 1909, it acquired a section of land at Insinger, another section at Sheho and four lots in the Point Douglas industrial neighborhood of Winnipeg from the Canadian Pacific Railway for subcontract work.[82] In the same period, it received 11 lots in the town of Transcona from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.[83] The properties were held in the name of Peter V. Verigin in trust for the Community until its federal incorporation in 1917.
Railway General Contractor
Between 1905 and 1909, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway completed the Prairie section of its transcontinental railroad from Winnipeg to Edmonton. By January 1909, the company announced its plans to construct a network of branch lines throughout central Saskatchewan.[84] One such branch was a 30-mile line from Yorkton north to Canora, which it committed to extend to Hudson Bay at a later date.[85]
The country through which the branch line would pass was predominantly low, nearly level, wet prairie grassland dotted with bluffs of small popular and clumps of willow, with numerous sloughs and marshes, much of which was alkaline, and broken land associated with the Whitesand River and its tributaries, the Little Whitesand River (Yorkton Creek) and Boggy Creek (Wallace Creek) over which it crossed. It was by then well-settled with English-Canadian, German, Polish and Ukrainian farmers cultivating adjacent lands.
Doukhobors Building the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway grade between Yorkton and Canora, SK, 1910. British Columbia Archives, Doukhobor History Photo Collection, A-01223.
By December 23, 1909, Grand Trunk Pacific Railway surveyors located the right-of-way for the line,[86] and following its approval by the Board of Railway Commissioners on February 28, 1910,[87] the company issued calls for tenders for clearing, grading, track-laying, bridge-building, fencing and telegraph construction along the line route. Two weeks later, on March 17, 1910, a contract was awarded to Peter V. Verigin, on behalf of the Community, for clearing and grading the line.[88]
The Contract
The contract award made headlines across the country, marking the first time the Doukhobors – or indeed, any immigrant group – would achieve the status of a general contractor vis-à-vis a Canadian railway company on a grade construction project, culminating from eleven years of extensive experience. Indeed, the Community was well-positioned to execute the work, having a fully-equipped, skilled and experienced workforce of 1,500 men, 400 teams of draft horses, 500 yokes of oxen, and necessary logistical support situated within a day’s journey of the line.[89]
The contract value was substantial, with the Community to be paid $70,000.00. However, the contract had an aggressive deadline, with railway officials expecting it to be completed by the fall of 1910.[90] The Community had to carefully coordinate the work around its farming operations. In this regard, on March 8, 1910, Peter V. Verigin wrote his followers to advise, “the plan is made as follows: we must sow together at home, after sowing from May 15th or June 1st go to the railroad work, and definitely return home for grain harvesting.”[91]
Significantly, while prior railway work helped the Community establish itself in Saskatchewan, the income from this contract was earmarked at the outset for the purchase of new lands in British Columbia, with Verigin noting in his letter, “This railway work will be of great help to us in settling in ‘Kolumbia’.”[92] The resettlement of Community members to British Columbia had been underway since 1908,[93] and this news was no doubt met with support by members still in Saskatchewan.
The Camps
On May 18, 1910, after completing spring seeding, a thousand Doukhobor workmen left their villages in the Buchanan, Canora, Veregin, Kamsack and Pelly districts and converged on Yorkton to begin construction of the line.[94] Accompanied by a group of women, they brought all their own tools and equipment along with 400 teams of horses, milking cows, temporary shelters, food and feed.
Following the model used on past railway subcontracts,[95] the Doukhobors organized themselves into 4 camps of 250 or so men each, set up at roughly 7-8 mile intervals along the route. Each camp had up to 25 ten-man tents for the men to sleep in, several for the women, a store tent for supplies, another for the cook house and mess hall, one for a blacksmith along with makeshift stables for 100 or so teams of horses. Dr. T.A. Patrick of Yorkton and Dr. E.M. Vesey of Canora were retained to provide medical assistance as necessary.
Within each camp, duties were well-ordered and systematically carried out. In the cookhouse, the cook built two ovens using local clay and stone – one for baking bread, and another on which was laid a large, heavy sheet of iron for a stove top for cooking borsch (soup); the ovens were fired all day as he prepared food. One man cut, split and stacked cordwood for the ovens. Another built tables for the mess tent. In the smithy, the blacksmith built a forge by excavating a large hole in the ground and lining it with stone, in which poplar logs were burned to make charcoal; wrought iron was then put in the forge and shaped with a hammer and anvil into necessary pieces. The women washed and mended clothing for the men and milked cows. At the stable, which had no sides and only tent cloth for roof, one got an idea of the care given to the horses; all were in fine shape, the dapples showing plainly on their glossy hides. One man prepared feed for the horses by chopping and soaking bailed hay, then mixing it with oats. Several men traversed the country, buying up all available feed oats for 10 miles on either side of the line. Others hauled drinking water from nearby creeks and wells in horse-drawn tank carts to the camp and grade.
The Grade
At each section of grade, Doukhobors were organized into work gangs responsible for clearing, making cuttings and fills or building embankments. Tasks were carried out in an organized and disciplined manner so that the scene, according to one journalist, “closely resembled a hive of bees”.[96]
Doukhobor Railway Camp on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Yorkton-Canora branch near the outskirts of Canora, SK, 1910. British Columbia Archives, Doukhobor History Photo Collection, C-06515.
Clearing was done almost entirely by hand. Following the surveyed route, an advance crew cleared a 100-foot right-of-way. Clumps of bush and bluffs of trees, particularly heavy in the broken land of the Whitesand valley and ravines, were cut away and chopped down using hatchets, axes and saws, while the stumps were grubbed out with pick-axes and spades. Logs suitable for cordwood were cut into lengths and stacked, while non-salvageable material, such as brush, roots and limbs, were piled and burned or buried. Rocks were grubbed out and moved by hand or with horses and chains into piles while larger, heavier ones were blasted with dynamite. Low alkaline wetlands, common throughout the route, were drained by digging trenches and then filled with rocks and soil.
Making a cutting was heavy work. Where a hill or bluff blocked passage of the line, it was cut away. On the face of the hill through which the cutting was to pass, a gang of scraper outfits was assembled. Each scraper had a blade running along the bottom of a C-shaped bucket mounted on runners and was pulled by a team of horses. As the teamster drove the team up to the face of the hill, a second man lifted the handle allowing the blade to cut into the ground and fill the bucket, then pulled the handle down so it would stop digging and slide along the ground to a designated spot where the handle was lifted and the soil dumped. The soil was then moved in horse-drawn dump carts to low areas for fill or to build up the grade. After successive passes by the scrapers, the hill was laid open and a gullet excavated through it.
As there was not enough soil available from hill cuttings, the route being mostly level, the Doukhobors took earth from a side cutting to build up the grade. Gangs of scraper outfits and wheelbarrow men with spades excavated a cutting on either side of the grade, the soil from which was then used to bank up the earthwork in between. The cuts had to be kept level and straight, so that the end result consisted of a raised grade with a ditch running on either side.
Building the embankment was particularly demanding. It had to be solid and permanent, requiring little maintenance or upgrading; straight and level, to allow the trains to run at full speed at all times; and raised to allow for adequate drainage. To this end, the Doukhobors built a four-foot grade along the level parts of the route, while through low areas and valleys it was as high as 15 or 20 feet. It was 8 feet broad at the top to carry a standard-gauge rail track (4 ft 8 ½ in) and three times that breadth at the base. A Doukhobor foreman continually patrolled the section to ensure that it precisely met these requirements.
At the embankment, horse-drawn scrapers and dump carts loaded with earth were drawn along its top to ‘the dump’. At the dump, the man in charge directed the teamster as to where to dump the soil and in what amounts. The horses were then carefully made to stop and turn at exactly the right instant; the horses and teamster went aside but the scraper or dump cart went on and at the right place was checked and tipped with its tons of material. Gangs of wheelbarrow men laboured alongside, with one man shoveling soil from the side cutting into a wheelbarrow, then another man pulling the loaded wheelbarrow up the plank walks built up the side of the embankment to the dump; in this way, the wheelbarrows moved upward and back in a continuous stream.
Completion of the Line
Labouring 15 hours a day, the Doukhobors built the grade up and forward, advancing steadily north. By late June, they reached the banks of the Whitesand. And by July 26, 1910, the grade was completed to Canora.[97] Upon reaching the terminus, most workmen returned to their villages for haying and harvest. Incredibly, the Doukhobors cleared and constructed 30 miles of grade, moving over five million cubic feet of earth, consuming 72,263 man-hours of labour,[98] over a 69-day period. This equated to 73,000 cubic feet of earth moved per day, or 5,000 cubic feet of earth moved per worker, all done manually.
After the grade was built, an ‘extra’ gang of a hundred men laid the track. Doukhobor Aleksei I. Makortoff recounted how this was done. “The ties are laid down the width of the railroad. Then some sand is dumped and you walk along with shovels, one from that side, one from this side. In this way the sand is packed under the ties. And it will be tamped in full. And so you walk down the line. And coming behind they would be laying the rails down on these ties. All the way along. As soon as the rails are laid down, then on each tie two spikes are placed. Particularly, for young boys, this was an easy job. So you walk along, drop two spikes on this end and two on the other end. And then next they come with hammers and drive in these spikes beside the rails as they should be. There was that work. And then comes yet another group, jack. It would happen that a tie is too high or too low and so they line them up so they’d be even. You pump the jack and it lifts it, whatever amount. And the foreman, as if, follows and lays on the rail and looks with one eye to make sure they’re even. Or he’ll shout: ‘Raise it’, or lower it in some places.”[99] A steam engine with cars loaded with sand ballast, ties and rails followed behind.[100]
By August 1910, additional crews followed to install cattle and snow fencing and telegraph lines along the line, raise a trestle bridge across the Whitesand River, and construct a GTP station at Canora.[101] By October 1910, the first freight came over the line to Canora by steam engine, and by June 1911, twice-daily freight and passenger service was established on the Canora-Yorkton branch.[102]
The arrival of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a tremendous boon to Canora, transforming the village from a local rail point into a major regional rail junction. It now had direct rail access to southern points which, until then, were only accessible via Winnipeg on the Canadian Northern Railway.[103] A building and settlement boom followed, with Canora declared a town by August 1910.[104]
New communities also came into existence, with railway engineers surveying townsites and sidings along the line. Thus Young’s Siding, Mehan, Pollock’s Spur, the village of Ebenezer, the hamlet of Gorlitz and Burgis became important new grain-handling points for local farmers.
As part of the ensuing development, the Community erected a 30,000-bushel grain elevator at Ebenezer in 1910 to receive, store and ship local grain and also received 20 lots in the townsite from the railway.[105] At Canora, it built another 30,000-bushel grain elevator on the Canadian Northern Railway and a large commercial block and annex warehouse that summer.[106]
As for the contract payment, Peter V. Verigin drew $70,000.00 from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in Winnipeg on September 20, 1910 and left with it to British Columbia,[107] where he completed the purchase of the 1,200-acre Vaughn Ranch[108] and 480-acre Macey Ranch[109] at Grand Forks, acquired earlier that spring for Community settlement and fruit-growing.
Map of Western Canadian Railways Built by Doukhobor Labourers, 1899-1912. Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. Note this map does not include the 105-mile Doukhobor-constructed Marchand, MB to Rainy River, ON line.
Railway Building after 1910
The Yorkton-Canora line in 1910 would be the pinnacle of Doukhobor railway construction on the Prairies. While several hundred Doukhobors worked on subsequent rail projects, notably the Canadian Northern Railway Prince Albert-Blaine Lake line in 1909-1910, Hudson Bay-The Pas line in 1911,[110] Pelly-Preeceville line in 1911,[111] and Canora-Sturgis line in 1912[112] and the Canadian Pacific Railway Coronation-Consort line in 1911,[113] the Community no longer bid on sectional contracts or subcontracts nor did substantial numbers of Doukhobors engage in railway work thereafter. There were several reasons for this decline.
First, almost all of the railroad building undertaken by Doukhobors between 1899 and 1912 fell within a 200-250 mile radius of their settlements north of Yorkton. This represented the practical limit of the Community’s ability to deploy its manpower and resources to carry out railway work afield while still maintaining its farmland at home. By 1912, however, most of the lines were completed within this scope of reach. There was little left to build.
Second, with the resettlement of over 5,700 Doukhobors from Saskatchewan to British Columbia by 1912, the Community no longer had the manpower on the Prairies to carry out extensive railway construction.[114] By this time, only 1,200 Community members remained in Saskatchewan,[115] of which no more than 250 were able-bodied men. The Community’s resources were further depleted by the defection of over 2,000 members who became Independent Doukhobors over the 1906-1912 period.[116]
Third, when the Doukhobors first arrived on the Prairies in 1899, they sought railway work as a necessary means of survival, and later as a means of achieving communal self-sufficiency. Ultimately, however, they came to Canada to farm and not to build railways. Once they achieved a measure of prosperity through agricultural and related income, it was no longer essential for most to supplement it with such work.
Track Maintenance Work
While most Doukhobor railway labourers were engaged in construction work, at least some carried out track maintenance. As early as 1901, a group of Doukhobors worked as trackmen on the Canadian Pacific Railway Calgary division, where they participated in a nationwide strike from June to August 1901.[117] Other groups laboured at the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway yard in Saskatoon in 1908[118] and at the Canadian Northern Railway yard in Saskatoon in 1911.[119] Still others worked on Canadian Northern Railway ballast crews at Langham in 1908[120] and between Portage la Prairie and Humboldt in 1912.[121] In 1913, a large contingent of Doukhobors ballasted the Great Northern Railway Fruitvale-Columbia Gardens line, repaired washouts on its Waneta-Columbia Gardens line, and built spurs and repaired washouts on its Salmo-Ymir lines.[122] As late as 1916, a group of Doukhobors repaired washouts on the Canadian Pacific Railway Kaslo-Nakusp line,[123] a crew worked on right-of-of way clearing for the Copper Mountain Railway at Princeton in 1918,[124] while another dismantled the Great Northern Railway Phoenix-Grand Forks line in 1919.[124]
Permanent Railroad Employment
For most Doukhobors immigrants who arrived in 1899, railway construction and maintenance constituted seasonal, secondary work while agriculture remained their primary vocation. However, for the over 900 Doukhobors[125] who arrived later, between 1909 and 1914, free homestead land was no longer readily available on the Prairies, forcing many to seek wage labour in towns and cities. A substantial number found permanent employment as railroad brakeman, section men and linemen, particularly on the Canadian Northern Railway which passed through the Doukhobor districts north of Yorkton.[126] Many first, second and third-generation Canadian Doukhobors would also hold such employment.
Conclusion
Between 1899 and 1912, thousands of Doukhobor men left their families and villages each summer to seek employment clearing right-of-ways, building grade and laying track on the railways extending across Western Canada. This form of hired labour, however undesirable, was necessary in order to ensure their early survival, and thereafter, to lift themselves out of poverty to become agriculturally self-sufficient, even prosperous, as a Community. Indeed, the pooling of revenue from this work formed their primary income for much of their first decade in Canada.
Defying prevailing stereotypes about foreign workers, the Doukhobors quickly earned an outstanding reputation for honesty, reliability and workmanship, making them highly sought after by railway companies for construction work. Owing to their work ethic, group cohesion and solid leadership, the Doukhobors not only found ways to organize and advocate for their economic needs, but to progress from a collection of navvies to subcontractors and finally to general contractor – a feat unmatched by other immigrant railway labourers.
The centrality of Doukhobor labour to the building of the railway in Manitoba and Saskatchewan into Alberta made settlement and development, both rural and urban, possible. Within this region, railway construction crews comprised in part or in whole of Doukhobors built over 1,666 miles (2,681 kilometers) of line, serving an area of over 39,984 square miles (103,558 square kilometers), within which over 268 communities came into existence.
The railway was essential to Canada’s growth and development as a country. The Doukhobor contribution to this province-building and nation-building process deserves to be recognized and acknowledged.
Appendix A – Prairie Railway Lines Built with Doukhobor Labour
Railway
Line Type
Section
Railway Mileage
Total Mileage
Stations and Stops
Total Stops
Year
WGNR (CNR)
Dauphin – Hudson Bay
Cowan-Swan River, MB
261.5 – 292.3
30.8
Cowan-Renwer-Minitonas-Sevick-Thunderhill Junction-Swan River
Hudson Bay-Wachee-Nepas-Ceba-Chemong-Otosquen-Cantyre-Turnberry-Whithorn-Westray-Freshford-The Pas
11
1911
CNR
Sturgis – Swan River (Thunderhill)
Pelly-Preeceville, SK
204.5 – 174.8
29.7
Pelly-Norquay-Hyas-Stenen-Sturgis
4
1911
CPR
Kerrobert – Lacomb
Coronation-Consort, AB
84.4 – 116.5
32.1
Coronation-Throne-Veteran-Loyalist-Consort
5
1911
CNR
Regina – Hudson Bay
Canora-Sturgis, SK
152.5 – 174.8
22.3
Canora-Amsterdam-Tadmore-Hassan-Sturgis
3
1912
TOTAL
1666.1
268
After Word
Special thanks to Robert Coutts (Editor, Prairie History) for his editorial advice, encouragement and patience. Also, my sincere thanks to Doukhobor writers and historians Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff (University of Saskatchewan), Jim (D.E.) Popoff and Koozma J. Tarasoff who reviewed this article in its draft form and who sought to improve its quality and sharpen its focus with their comments.
This article originally appeared in the following journals and periodicals:
Prairie History. The Journal of the West. No. 5, Summer 2021.
ISKRA (Grand Forks, Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ) Nos. 2167 & 2168 (2021).
End Notes
[1] Most studies of Doukhobor settlements on the Prairies largely pass over the annual migration to the railway grade, for which few primary sources exist, leaving only fragmentary newspaper accounts, local histories and personal memoirs from which to piece together the story.
[2] G. Woodcock & I. Avakumovic, The Doukhobors (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1977) at 17-34; K.J. Tarasoff, Plakun Trava: The Doukhobors (Mir Publication Society, 1982) at 1-3; S.A. Inikova, “Spiritual Origins and the Beginnings of Doukhobor History” in A. Donskov, J. Woodsworth & C. Gaffield (eds), The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada, A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on their Unity and Diversity (Ottawa: Slavic Research Group and Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa, 2000) at 1-21.
[4] Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 31-32, 58-61; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 3, 10-11; J.R. Staples, Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe, Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783-1861 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2003) at 37-38, 93-106; N.B. Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers: Religious Dissent and Russian Colonization of Transcaucasia, 1830 – 1890 (PhD dissertation in history) (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1998) at 17-58.
[5] Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 84-106; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 20-28.
[6]Sergei Tolstoy and the Doukhobors: A Journey to Canada, Diary and Correspondence (Ed. A. Donskov). (Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 1998) at 1, 183, 237-270; L.A. Sulerzhitsky, To America with the Doukhobors (M. Kalmakoff, Trans.) (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1982) at 38; S. Lapshinoff & J.J. Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists, 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley, 2001); J.J. Kalmakoff, Index to Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists, September 27, 2000: https://www.doukhobor.org/Shiplists.html.
[7] Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 136; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 35-36; C.J. Tracie, ‘Toil and Peaceful Life’ Doukhobor Village Settlement in Saskatchewan 1899-1918 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1996) at 1-94; and K.R.M. Szalasznyj, The Doukhobor homestead crisis 1898–1907 (M.A. thesis) (University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan: 1977) at 65-71.
[9] Note this organization had its beginning in Russia in 1893-1894: Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 152-181; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 49-66.
[10] W. Blakemore, Report of Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria: Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, 1913) at 20; Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 160-161; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 54, 56, 58-59.
[11] For generations in Russia, Doukhobors were religiously and culturally predisposed toward agricultural labour, which they viewed as ‘fulfilling the will of God’ while hired labour was considered ‘unfitting for proper Christians’: Sulerzhitsky, supra, note 6 at 170 and 193; Bonch-Bruevich, V., ed., V.O. Buyniak, trans. The Book of Life of the Doukhobors (Doukhobor Societies of Saskatchewan, 1978 at XL); Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 160-161.
[12] A. Androsoff, “The Trouble with Teamwork: Doukhobor Women’s Plow Pulling in Western Canada, 1899” in Canadian Historical Review (Vol. 100, No. 4, December 2019) at 540-563; A. Androsoff, “…With A Stout Wife” Doukhobor Women’s Challenge to the Canadian (Agri)Cultural Ideal”, (Rural History Conference, Bern, Switzerland, August 2013).
[13] Simeon F. Reibin, “Toil and Peaceful Life, History of Doukhobor’s Unmasked (Sacramento, CA, 1955) at 34.
[14] S. Mirzoyan & C. Badem, The Construction of the Tiflis-Aleksandropol-Kars Railway (1895-1899) (Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, 2013) at 27-28.
[16] See: C. Toews, The life of a navvy: a study of the relationship between ethnicity and status within railway work camps on the Kettle Valley line, 1910 to 1914 (M.A. Thesis) (University of British Columbia, 2019); F.A. Talbot, The Making of a Great Canadian Railway (Toronto: Musson Book Co., 1912); F. Leonard, A Thousand Blunders: The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and Northern British Columbia. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996); J. Selby, “One Step Forward: Alberta Workers 1885-1914” in A. Finkel et al, Working People in Alberta, A History (Creative Commons, 2012).
[17] Several Doukhobors were killed on the railroad soon after arriving in Canada: J Elkinton, The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada (Ferris & Leach, 1903) at 64; Winnipeg Tribune, 1906-07-10.
[18] Sulerzhitsky, supra, note 6 at 164-204, V. O. Buyniak, “The 1899 Manitoba and Northern Railway Dispute with the Doukhobors” in Saskatchewan History (40, 1987, No. 1).
[26] Reibin, supra, note 13 at 42; Jack Twilley, Between the Hills: Life in the Swan River Valley, 1787-1958 (1958) at 68; Swan River Star, 1900-02-22.
[27]Manitoba Free Press, 1901-05-04; Swan River Star, 1901-06-21, 1901-07-5, 1901-10-11.
[28]Manitoba Free Press, 1902-05-02; Elkinton, supra, note 17 at 46; George Henry Hambley, The Golden Thread or The Last of the Pioneers: A Story of the Districts of Basswood and Minnedosa, Manitoba, From Community Beginning to Our Present Day, 1874 to 1970 (Altona, 1971) at 170; Kelwood Bridges the Years 1890-1967 (Kelwood Centennial Committee, 1967) at 273.
[29] M. C. Kinney, Tyvan: As it Was in the Beginning (Regina, 1987) at 36.
[30]Manitoba Free Press, 1904-08-12; Star City: Pioneer Days to Jubilee Year (Jubilee Editorial Committee, 1955) at 170.
[31]Swan River Star, 1900-01-11; Leader Post, 1901-04-18; Manitoba Free Press, 1901-04-13; Birtle Eyewitness, 1901-09-03.
[32]The Hands of Time, Village of Buchanan 1907-1987, R.M. of Buchanan 1913-1988 and District (Buchanan History Book Committee, 1988) at 572; Medicine Hat News, 1901-09-05.
[33] Sanderson, R. M. and W. J. Sanderson. The Souris Story (Souris: Sanderson Printing, 1979) at 113-114.
[35] R. J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930 (University of California Press, 2007) at 114; Hands of Time, supra, note 32 at 390 and 793-794; San Francisco Examiner, 1900-03-10; Oakland Tribune, 1900-01-15; San Francisco Chronicle, 1900-01-11; San Francisco Call, 1900-05-26; Sacramento Bee, 1900-01-15.
[38]Hands of Time, supra, note 32 at 768; Parkland Trails: Histories of R.M. of Invermay and villages of Invermay and Rama (Invermay, Rama History Book Committee, 1986) at 282, 649 and 658.
[39] J.F.P. Barschel, A History of Canora and District (Canora Golden Jubilee Committee, 1960) at 36.
[45] M. Malloff and P. Ogloff, Toil and Peaceful Life, Portraits of Doukhobors. Sound Heritage, Volume VI, Number 4 (Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1977) at 25.
[47] J. P. Zubek and P.A. Solbert, Doukhobors at War (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1952) at 70; Pierre Berton, The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 (Doubleday Canada, 2011).
[55]Windsor Star, 1906-08-25; The Province, 1906-10-13.
[56] P.E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (UBC Press, 1990) at 50-61; A.J.W. James, Class, race and ethnicity: Chinese Canadian entrepreneurs in Vancouver (M.A. Thesis) (University of Manitoba, 1996; P. Wegars, “Who’s Been Workin’ on the Railroad?” in Historical Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1991 at 37-65; V. Kukushkin, From Peasants to Labourers: Ukrainian and Belarusian Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada (McGill-Queen’s Press, 2007) at 98-102.
[57] J. Hawkes, The Story of Saskatchewan and its People, (Volume 2), (Chicago, S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1924) at 682.
[58]Manitoba Free Press, 1905-09-28, 1906-06-30; Winnipeg Tribune, 1905-09-28,1906-06-16, 1907-03-27; Calgary Herald, 1905-09-20, 1906-11-3; The Gazette, 1905-09-29; Ottawa Journal, 1906-03-12; Edmonton Bulletin, 1906-08-08; “Report of T.F. Chamberlain, M.D., Edmonton, July 25, 1906” in Report of the Minister of Agriculture, 1906-7 (7-8 Edward VII, Sessional Paper No. 15, 1908) at 31, 34; Wandering in Wattsview: Wattsview History, 1879-1967 (Wattsview Centennial Club, 1967) at 94; Ellice, 1883-1983 (RM of Ellice Centennial Book Committee, 1983) at 144, 234, 289, 298.
[61]The Labour Gazette: The Journal of the Department of Labour (Ottawa, Queen’s Printer) Volume 6 (July 1905-June 1906) at 1112; Supra, note 51; Winnipeg Free Press, 1906-03-12, 1906-04-24, 1906-06-30; Ottawa Journal, 1906-03-12; Richmond Hill Liberal, 1906-03-15; Russel Banner, 1906-03-29, 1906-04-26; Winnipeg Tribune, 1906-04-24; Swan River Star, 1906-05-09; Reibin, supra, note 13 at 57.
[63]Ibid; “Report of T.F. Chamberlain, M.D., Edmonton, July 25, 1906” in Report of the Minister of Agriculture, 1906-7 (7-8 Edward VII, Sessional Paper No. 15, 1908) at 31, 34; Winnipeg Tribune, 1906-04-24.
[64]Winnipeg Free Press, 1906-11-17; The Province, 1906-11-17.
[68]Ottawa Journal, 1906-08-14; Hawkes, supra, note 57; The Gazette, 1911-08-22.
[69] The GTPR authorized Verigin to offer free transportation to Canada and repatriation after two years to 10,000 Doukhobor workmen, who would be lodged by the railway and paid forty rubles monthly: The Gazette, 1906-10-22, 1907-02-21; Ottawa Citizen, 1906-12-10; Winnipeg Tribune, 1906-12-08, 1906-12-10, 1907-03-26; Ottawa Journal, 1906-10-23, 1907-03-08; Agassiz Record, 1906-12-10; Reibin, supra, note 13 at 55-77; J. Woodsworth, Russian Archival Documents on Canada, The Doukhobors: 1895-1943 (Catalogue No. 2) (Carleton University, August 1996), Document Nos. 1906-11-10b-d, 1906-12-09a-g; D. Davies, “The Pre-1917 Roots of Canada-Soviet Relations” in Canadian Historical Review 70, 2 (June 1989): 191-92.
[70] Railway companies continued to lobby the Canadian government to relax labour immigration requirements for years thereafter: Roy, supra, note 56.
[81] Canadian railways sometimes paid contractors and lobbyists in land for their service: R. Haycock, Sam Hughes: The Public Career of a Controversial Canadian, 1885-1916 (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1986) at 108; “Laidlaw, George” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 11, (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003).
[82] Sections 7-29-8-W2, W ½ 9 & W ½ 3-30-9-W2: 1920 Cummins Rural Map of Saskatchewan, Map 150; Lots 10, 11, 12 and part of 17, Plan 109, Winnipeg, MB: V.A. Snesarev, The Doukhobors in British Columbia (M.A. Thesis (UBC, 1931) Appendix 1.
[83] Lots 13, 14, 15 and 16, Block 15; Lots 7, 8, 21, 22 and 23, Block 20; Lots 13 and 14, Block 30; all in Plan 1505, Transcona, MB: Snesarev, ibid.
[84]Leader-Post, 1909-01-19; J. A. Lower, The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and British Columbia (M.A. Thesis) (University of British Columbia, April 1939) at 80 and 83.
[87]The Railway and Marine World, April 1910, at 277.
[88]The Gazette, 1910-03-17; Winnipeg Tribune, 1910-03-25, 1910-03-26; Ottawa Citizen, 1910-04-01; National Post, 1910-04-02; Vancouver Daily World, 1910-04-08; Edmonton Journal, 1910-04-11; The Province, 1910-04-16; Lethbridge Daily Herald, 1910-04-18; The Hosmer Times, 1910-04-28; Canadian Engineer (Monetary Times Print Company, 1910) Volume 18 at 284; The Railway and Engineering Review (April 23, 1910), Volume 50 at 407; Report of the Minister of Agriculture for Canada, 1911 (Queen’s Printer, 1911) at 105; The Railway and Marine World, April 1910 at 289 and May 1910 at 379; Yorkton Enterprise, 1910-03-31; Hawkes, supra, note 57; Barschel, supra, note 39 at 48.
[90]The Gazette, April 15, 1910; The Railway and Marine World, May 1910, at 391 and June 1910 at 487.
[91]Letter from Peter V. Verigin to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Verigin Station, March 8, 1910, Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DC-021-005.
[93] From 1908 to 1912, over 5,700 Community Doukhobors resettled to British Columbia to develop lands for fruit-growing: Blakemore, supra, note 10 at 36; Woodcock & Avakumovic, supra, note 2 at 225-250; Tarasoff, supra, note 2 at 99-116. While the Community did not build railway grade in British Columbia per se, it did become a major supplier of railway ties from its land-clearing and logging operations, see: Nelson Daily News, 1910-09-21; Victoria Daily Times, 1910-09-28; The Province, 1911-03-17; Winnipeg Free Press, 1911-04-25.
[94]Kamsack Times, 1910-05-20; Nelson Daily News, 1910-05-18; The Province, 1910-05-18; The Gazette, 1910-05-18; The Victoria Daily Times, 1910-05-18, 1910-05-25; Winnipeg Tribune, 1910-05-19; The Watchman-Warder, 1910-05-19; The Argus, 1910-05-25.
[95] ”Appendix No. 15, Report of A.E. Clendenan, M.D., Edmonton, Alberta, March 31, 1911” in Report of the Minister of Agriculture for the Dominion of Canada For the year Ended March 31, 1911 (2 George V, Sessional Paper No. 15, 1912) at 105; Manitoba Free Press, 1906-06-30.
[97]Manitoba Free Press, 1910-07-26; Yorkton Enterprise, 1910-07-28; The Leader Post, 1910-08-16, 1910-11-19; The Gazette, 1910-11-19; Star Phoenix, 1910-11-19; Vancouver Daily World, 1910-11-19; The Railway and Marine World, September 1910 at 741.
[98]Report of Road Work Between Yorkton and Canora with the Designation of Days and the Amount of Earnings in 1910, October 6, 1910, Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DC-074-005.
[104]The Leader Post, 1910-08-16; Barschel, supra, note 39 at 46.
[105] J.J. Kalmakoff, “Doukhobor Development in the Ebenezer District” in Ebenezer Book of Memories, Centennial 1905-2005 (Ebenezer Centennial Committee, 2005).
[106] J.J. Kalmakoff, “The Doukhobor Trading Company in Canora” in The Canora Courier, 2018-02-25, 2018-03-14, 2018-03-21, 2018-03-28.
[107]Vancouver Daily World, 1910-09-20; The Victoria Daily Times, 1910-09-21.
[121]Letter from Peter V. Verigin to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Verigin Station, June 18, 1912, Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DC-086-003.
[122] Nelson Daily News, 5 May 1913, 2 Jun3 1913, 5 June 1913, 16, June 1913.
For over three centuries, Doukhobors have celebrated Christmas, a festival commemorated annually by Christians across the globe. As we once again make ready to do so, it is essential to remind ourselves how this holiday is understood in Doukhobor religious philosophy, how it differs in key aspects from that of other Christian denominations, as well as the Doukhobor cultural and folk traditions associated with Christmas.
Orthodox Christmas
Since the introduction of Christianity to Russia in 988 AD, Rozhdestvo Khristovo or ‘the Nativity of Christ’ (Christmas) was celebrated by the Orthodox Church to remember the birth of Jesus Christ. It was traditionally observed under the Julian (Old) Calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian (New) Calendar, putting it on January 7th rather than December 25th when it is now commonly observed.
To the Orthodox, Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God incarnate, born to the Virgin Mary by immaculate conception through the Holy Spirit. That is, he was considered the literal, supernatural embodiment of God on earth, having taken on human body and human nature, who performed miracles, cured the sick and raised the dead.
The Orthodox celebration of Rozhdestvo Khristovo was preceded by a forty-day fast, during which meat, dairy products and eggs were not eaten, and parishioners engaged in prayer and charity. When the festival finally arrived, church attendance was compulsory by law.[i] On the evening of Christmas Eve, parishioners attended the church liturgy service, whereafter they went home and ate a meal of twelve meatless dishes. That night, they returned to church for an all-night vigil to observe Jesus’ birth. After hours of standing (the Orthodox church had no seats) and praying, the priest led a procession out of the church, with the parishioners carrying icons and candles led by the priest burning incense in a censer. They circled the building until midnight, after which they returned home. On Christmas morning they once again returned to the church to attend the nativity liturgy service after which they went home for feasting and merriment.
Winter Doukhobor village scene. Joseph Elkinton, “The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada” (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903).
Doukhobor Repudiation of Orthodox Christmas
During the mid to late 1700s, while the Doukhobors were still living among Orthodox Russians, they outwardly continued to celebrate Rozhdestvo Khristovo in the obligatory manner. Some went to church for appearances’ sake; while others made excuses to not attend at all. At home, they observed the festival with simple moleniye (‘prayer meetings’) followed by visits among fellow believers.
However, by this time, Rozhdestvo Khristovo had already acquired an inner, spiritual meaning and significance among Doukhobors that differed substantially from that of their Orthodox neighbours, and which was founded on dramatically different ideas concerning God and Christ.
They ceased to believe that the Christmas fast offered any spiritual advantage to the soul; for true fasting was not in abstaining from food but from vice and gluttony. Attending the church at Christmas was not essential to salvation, for they believed the ‘true’ church was not built by human hands – it was spiritual, invisible and within us. The priest’s conduct of Christmas mass was unnecessary, for they understood the Spirit of God resided in the soul of every person and could be directly understood and interpreted – without need of an intermediary – by listening to the voice within.
Indeed, Doukhobors came to view the Orthodox observance of Christmas – with its complex and elaborate ritual, Slavonic chanting, burning of incense, lighting of candles, bowing and crossing, as well as the resplendent robes of the priest and the richly adorned church with stained glass windows, gold candelabras and crucifixes, icons, sacred relics and ornately decorated domes – to be a contrived, outward sensory and material experience that served only to distract from a true, inner spiritual understanding of the holiday.
What is more, they believed that the Orthodox depiction of Christ’s birth and existence as something ‘mystical’, ‘superhuman’, ‘supernatural’ and ‘otherworldly’ was an artificial embellishment introduced by the church in order to mystify and confound its followers as to his true nature.
Doukhobor household in winter. Joseph Elkinton, “The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada” (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903).
Christ and Christmas as Understood by Doukhobors
According to Doukhobor belief, Jesus was neither immaculately conceived nor born of a virgin, nor was he the literal Son of God incarnate in human flesh. Rather, he was an ordinary mortal man, born to an ordinary woman named Mary. In the physical sense, Jesus was no different from other men. In the spiritual sense, however, God chose Jesus as his anointed one by endowing him with divinely-inspired, extraordinary spiritual intelligence in his soul, lucid and enlightened beyond that of his fellow man.[ii] Because of this, Jesus was able to attain the highest, purest, most perfect understanding of God’s Law, and was therefore the Son of God, a man, but not God himself.
Doukhobors believed that Jesus’s enlightened teachings and life revealed mankind’s true meaning and purpose, which was to fulfill God’s Law – to love God with all of one’s heart, soul and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. God’s Law was manifested in Jesus through his loving attitude toward other people.[iii] The role of his followers, Doukhobors believed, was to emulate Christ by living, as he did, according to God’s Law, to strive to follow his example, and thus be saved through their own works.[iv]
For Doukhobors, then, Christmas marks the day when the world was given a child to lead the world through God’s Law to peace on earth – good will among men. Doukhobors celebrate it as a sign of honour and glory for Jesus Christ.[v] We observe this occasion during all the days of our life as we endeavor to emulate him in our own actions.[vi]
Doukhobor Christmas Customs in Russia
Once Doukhobors openly rejected the Orthodox Church and its teachings in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they discarded many Orthodox feast days as being unnecessary and superfluous. However, they continued to celebrate Rozhdestvo Khristovo as an important holiday in accordance with their own beliefs and interpretations. In doing so, they adapted some of the Christmas holiday rituals and customs from the Orthodox, imbuing them with new meaning and significance.
Both during their settlement along the Molochnaya River near the Sea of Azov (Molochnye Vody) from 1801-1845 and in the Caucasus (Zakavkaz) from 1841-1899, Doukhobors are recorded as having celebrated Christmas over a three day period commencing January 6th, being Christmas Eve under the Old (Julian) Calendar.[vii]
On Christmas Eve, the men performed their daily agricultural chores while the women cleaned the house and baked, cooked and prepared food for the upcoming Christmas feast.[viii] At dinner, Doukhobor families ate twelve meatless dishes, a tradition retained from Orthodoxy, which might include any of the following dishes: borshch (cabbage-based soup), vareniki (boiled dumplings with savory fillings), lapshevniki (‘baked noodles’), pyure iz fasoli (‘mashed beans’), rybnyi kholodets (pickled fish), kvashenye ogurtsy (pickled cucumbers), kartoshniki (‘mashed potatoes’), pyrohi (‘baked savory pies’) and pyroshki (‘baked sweet tarts’), bliny (‘pancakes’), holubtsy (‘cabbage rolls’), kvashenaya kapusta (‘sauerkraut’), vinaigrette (‘salad’), kasha (‘rice porridge’), uzvar (homemade fruit juice), and always, kutya (a boiled wheat dish sweetened with honey).[ix] In the evening, grandmothers recited psalms while the family gathered to listen.[x]
At midnight on Christmas Eve, Doukhobor villagers assembled at a common dwelling or prayer home to hold a moleniye (‘prayer meeting’).[xi] The Christmas moleniye traditionally began with the Doukhobor psalm, Narodilsya nam Spasitel (‘Our Savior was Born’)[xii] which reads as follows:
“Our Savior is born, an Enlightener to the whole world. Sing praises to Him. All the world glorifies Him eternally. Rejoice ye, prophets who have the power of prophesizing, those who are with their oath! The Savior is coming at the last moment. Sing praise to Him, in joyous sweet songs, sing and play to Him. A star is travelling from the East to the place of the new-born prophet. The angles are singing in unison, expressing their love with the sound of their voices. Animals announce with their voices to the shepherds that a miracle has happened. There are clear signs announcing the birth of Christ. Three Wise Men bring Him the most precious gifts; gold frankincense and myrrh. The Father of the future ages offers you rich gifts. He came here to redeem the poor mankind. Eternal God was born and has taken human flesh. Glory be to our God.”[xiii]
Early Christmas morning, Doukhobor villagers again gathered for moleniye to worship, then returned home.[xiv] The adults would not eat breakfast and would carry out their morning chores.[xv] Children were given nuts or fruit as a special treat. Throughout the afternoon, Doukhobors would stroll through the village streets, singing psalms and greeting friends and neighbours,[xvi] with the following customary greeting: Na zdorov’ye! (‘To Health!’), to which the customary reply was Slava Bohu! (‘Thank God!’).[xvii]
Later, the entire family would sit down to enjoy Christmas dinner, which typically consisted of the same dishes enjoyed the night before; however, meat dishes such as roast goose, chicken or pork were also included.[xviii] In the evening, the adults would visit or host relatives and friends while the young people enjoyed themselves at vecherushki (‘parties’).[xix] Often, the young people would dress up and masquerade about the village, an ancient Russian folk custom.[xx]
The third and final day of the Christmas celebration (today, Boxing Day) was spent in much in the same manner – with merry visiting, singing and feasting throughout the village.
Winter open-air Doukhobor prayer meeting. J. Elkinton, “The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada” (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903).
Doukhobor Christmas Commemoration in Canada
These Christmas traditions continued to be practiced, without change, through the 20th century to the present day by the Doukhobors of Gorelovka, Georgia and surrounding villages. However, among the Doukhobor followers of Peter Vasil’evich Verigin, several significant changes were made to the Christmas celebration after 1887.
First, in November 1894, those Doukhobors stopped eating meat in accordance with the teachings of Verigin, then in exile in the Russian Far North, brought back by his messengers to his followers in the Caucasus.[xxi] Thereafter, no meat (including fish) was consumed as part of the Christmas feasting.
Second, following their migration to Canada in 1899, the Doukhobors initially continued to celebrate Christmas as they had in Russia, over a three-day period according to the Julian (Old) Calendar. In January 1901, the Swan River Star reported, “The Doukhobors appear to know how to celebrate Christmas. Their feast lasted three days and commenced on Jan. 6. They still use the old style of counting time.”[xxii] However, by 1903, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that “they have disregarded the Russian and adopted the Canadian calendar and are beginning to observe Canadian holidays and festivals.”[xxiii] Thereafter, the Doukhobors celebrated Christmas twelve days earlier in accordance with the Gregorian (Old) calendar, on December 24-26.
Third, at an all-village congress of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood held in Nadezhda village, Saskatchewan in December 1908, Doukhobor leader Peter V. Verigin, in an effort to modernize and simplify their worship, discarded many of the traditional rituals, psalms and feasts observed by the Doukhobors.[xxiv] Thereafter, Christmas continued to be observed within the Community, however, the celebration was paired down from three days to a day and a half, with worship services still held on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, but with the feasting and revelry reduced to a more modest scale befitting that of Christ’s followers.[xxv] Some of these changes were also adopted by Independent Doukhobors who left Verigin’s Community, to greater or lesser degrees.
In the years that followed, new psalms and hymns were added to the existing repertoire of those traditionally sung during Doukhobor Christmas moleniye [xxvi] while the foodstuffs enjoyed at their Christmas feast varied according to local availability and economic conditions.[xxvii] However, the essence of the traditional Doukhobor Christmas celebration, as it evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries continued to be observed by many Canadian Doukhobors well into the 1950s, and indeed, to the present.
Doukhobor villagers assembled outdoors in winter. Joseph Elkinton, “The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada” (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903).
Conclusion
Although there was none of the ubiquitous commercialism associated with Christmas today, including notions of gift-giving, Santa Clause, Christmas trees and outdoor light displays, Christmas as traditionally understood and celebrated by Doukhobors was and is a most meaningful and anticipated event.
After Word
Publication
A previous version of this article was originally published in:
To experience and participate in a traditional Doukhobor Christmas prayer meeting, contact your nearest Doukhobor society or organization to find in-person dates and times or whether online streaming of services are available.
Traditional Doukhobor Kut’ya Recipe
To prepare traditional Doukhobor Kut’ya like that mentioned above, see the following Doukhobor Kut’ya Recipe. This recipe was adapted from that shared by Doukhobor Vasily Stroyev and family, formerly of Troitskoye village, Bogdanovsky region, Georgia, now residing in Markevichevo village, Shiryaevsky district, Odessa region, Ukraine.
End Notes
[i] In Imperial Russia, receiving the Orthodox sacraments and attending church on Sundays and feast days was compulsory by law: see for example, M. Raeff, Imperial Russia, 1682-1825 (Michigan, University of Michigan, 1971); D. Longley, Longman Companion to Imperial Russia, 1689-1917 (New York: Pearson Education Limited, 2000).
[ii] Regarding the Doukhobor belief in Jesus, born a man, see: Bonch-Breuvich, Vladimir Dmitr’evich, Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev (St. Petersburg: V.M. Volf, Sib. Nevskiy Pr., 1909), Psalms 1 (Q/A 3), 7 (Q/A 10), 12 (Q/A 6 and 8, 64, 71, 73, 85, 88, 94 and 375.
[iii] Regarding the Doukhobor understanding of Jesus as a keeper of God’s Law, see: Zhivotnaya Kniga, ibid, Psalms 2 (Q/A 14, 15 and 16), 4 (Q/A 7), 5 (Q/A 17), 7 (Q/A 11 and 12), 8 (Q/A 24, 25, and 26), 9 (Q/A 24), 47 (Q/A 1) 59 (Q/A 4), 185, 373 and 374.
[vii] Novitsky, Orest Markovich. Dukhobortsy: Ikh Istoriia i verouchenie (Kiev, 1882) at 254-255.
[viii] Stroev, Vasily (Tula, Russia), correspondence with the writer, November 25, 2020.
[ix] Stroev, ibid; Svetlana Inikova., Holidays and Rituals of Doukhobors in the Caucasus (Doukhobor Genealogy Website); Linda Osachoff (Canora, SK), correspondence with the writer, December 18, 2020.
[xiii] Vladimir Dmitr’evich Bonch-Breuvich, Book of Life of Doukhobors (Translated Version by Victor O. Buyniak) (Saskatoon, Doukhobor Societies of Saskatchewan, 1978), Psalm 340.
[xiv] Stroev, supra, note v; Inikova, supra, note vi.
[xxiv]Minutes of Community meeting, 1908 December 15, Nadezhda village. (SFU Item No. MSC121-DB-025-002); Letter from Peter Vasil’evich Verigin to Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy dated February 2, 1909 in Gromova-Opulskaya, Lidia, Andrew Donskov, and John Woodsworth, eds. Leo Tolstoy–Peter Verigin Correspondence (Ottawa, Legas: 1995) at 87-88; Letter from Ivan Evseyevich Konkin to Vladimir Dmitr’evich Bonch-Breuvich dated February 12, 1909 in Zhivotnaya Kniga, supra, note ii.
[xxv] Wendy Voykin (Castlegar, BC), correspondence with the writer, December 18, 2020.
[xxvi] For example, some of the Doukhobor psalms and hymn traditionally sung at Christmas moleniye in Brilliant, British Columbia include: Psalms: Chistaya Deva Mariya; Rechyot Khristos Uchenikam Svoim; Vysoko Zvezda Voskhodila. Hymns: Kto v ubogikh yaslyakh spit; Nyne vse vernye v mire likuyut; Dnes’ my likuem v kupe vospevaem; Vot Spasitel’ s nebes k nam soshyol; Vnov’ Khristos narodilsya; Vspomnim te slova Khrista; Tikhaya noch’, divnaya noch’; Khristos v Tebe dusha nashla ( New Year’s to the tune of Auld Lang Syne). Very special thanks to Mike and Mary Kanigan of Ootischenia, BC for sharing this list with the writer, via Wendy Voykin.
[xxvii] For instance, it is doubtful whether the Doukhobors had the luxury of enjoying all the foodstuffs mentioned for their Christmas feast during the hardships of their early settlement in Saskatchewan after 1899 and in British Columbia after 1908.
During the First World War (1914-1919), the overwhelming majority of Doukhobors in Canada opposed the conflict, based on strongly-held pacifist tenets. Relying upon the exemption from military service granted to them under Order-in-Council No. 1898-2747 by the Dominion government upon their arrival in Canada, they not only refused enlistment and conscription, but actively resisted any direct, partisan support for the war effort. Notwithstanding their staunch anti-war position, many Doukhobors felt great compassion for those suffering from the conflict. This prompted them to seek opportunities to provide humanitarian aid in ways that did not run counter to their pacifist principles. One most notable example was their donations of jam.
Since 1911, the Doukhobor Society had been communally processing the fruit and berries grown in its Kootenay and Boundary orchards into hundreds of tons of jams, jellies and preserves at its jam factory and canning facilities in Nelson, and after 1915, Brilliant, BC under the famous ‘K.C. Brand.’[1] And when the Nelson Daily News reported in late 1916 that Canadian soldiers were asking for jam, this stirred the Society into action.
The Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works as seen at Brilliant, BC, sometime between 1919 and 1923. British Columbia Archives, D-06930-141.
On Sunday, December 10, 1916, a mass sobraniya (‘gathering’) of many hundreds of members of the Doukhobor Society was held at Brilliant, where their leader Peter V. Verigin explained to them in detail the sufferings of the men at the front, and of the recent losses at the Somme and Ancre rivers in France.[2] The reaction of those gathered was one of utter shock and heartfelt compassion.
Living apart from the world in remote rural settlements, and being mainly illiterate in written and spoken English, the rank-and-file members of the Society had been largely unaware of the monumental scale of human devastation occurring on the European continent, and when told this, the Doukhobor women openly wept.[3] Once informed of this terrible news, however, they set about to act.
The women at the meeting resolved to gift a railcar load of jam, made by fruit grown by them in their own orchards and gardens, and manufactured at their jam factory in Brilliant, to the convalescent and sick soldiers in hospitals across Western Canada, their wives and children.[4]
Jam was rationed within the Society, and those at the meeting realized that in sending the carload to the soldiers, they would have to go without it themselves.[5] Nonetheless, they were willing to do so as an expression of their sympathy and desire to help those who were suffering.
The carload comprised 5,000 five-pound tins totaling 24,000 pounds (12 tons) of jam from the last season’s pack.[6] It was valued at $5,000.00 at the time and was composed chiefly of strawberry jam, the Doukhobors understanding “that the soldiers like strawberry better than plum and apple and jams of that kind.”[7]
Labelling Room at the Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works in Brilliant, BC. c. 1916. University of British Columbia, Rare & Special Books Collection and University Archives.
The gift was formally conveyed by the Doukhobor women to British Columbia Premier Harlan C. Brewster in Victoria on December 15, 1916 via William Blakemore, newspaper editor of The Week and former commissioner of the 1912 Royal Commission on Doukhobors.[8] It was expressed on behalf of the women that, “You know we do not believe in fighting; we are anxious to see the war end, but we will do what we can to assist those who are suffering through the war.”[9]
Premier Brewster publicly conveyed the thanks of the province and the soldiers “to the women whose kindness of heart ha(d) prompted this generous gift”.[10] He also arranged through government and private channels for the distribution of the jam in “in such manner that the wishes of the donors for its full usefulness shall be fulfilled.”
Headline from the Victoria Daily Times, December 15, 1916.
The jam consignment had originally been given to the Province of British Columbia; however, by mid-January 1917, provincial authorities in charge of the distribution found that the “quantity was so large that it would be well to share it with outside institutions.”[11] The Doukhobors readily consented to the other provinces sharing in the gift. Premier Brewster subsequently notified the Doukhobors through William Blakemore that “Communication has been made with representatives of the governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta with the result that the offer has been gratefully accepted.”[12]
Accordingly, 14,000 pounds of the consignment was kept in BC, and was turned over to Major J.S. Harvey, commandant of the Military Convalescent hospital at Esquimalt, for use in the convalescent hospitals and homes in that province.[13] The remaining 10,000 pounds was distributed through the Mewburn wholesale supply house as follows: 2,000 pounds to the St. Chad’s Military Convalescent Hospital in Regina, SK; 2,000 pounds to the Returned Solders’ Association in each of Calgary and Edmonton, AB; and 4,000 pounds to the Returned Solders’ Association in Winnipeg, MB.[14]
In addition to being distributed through military hospitals to convalescing soldiers, a free jam gift was made through local women’s patriotic clubs and veterans’ committees to every soldier’s household in those cities.[15]
The donation elicited many public expressions of appreciation of the kindness and thoughtfulness of the Doukhobors. For instance, Miss Violet M. Ryley, the General Organizing Dietician for Military Hospitals in Canada wrote, “Jam is the most universally popular delicacy on the soldier’s menu, whether he is sick or well, and no gift could be more welcome.”[16]
It was also widely applauded across the Canadian press, with the Vancouver Province calling it a “magnificent gift”[17], while the Edmonton Journal wrote, “the Doukhobors have conscientious scruples against fighting. But they are at any rate helping to win the war with good honest jam.”[18]
Headline from the Edmonton Journal, February 22, 1917.
The outpouring of public appreciation for the jam donation came at a time when Doukhobors across Western Canada encountered widespread discrimination and censure because of their refusal to actively participate in the war effort. These sentiments can be seen in the backhanded reporting by some newspapers such as the Edmonton Journal, which wrote that “their donation of fruit jams to convalescent soldiers… went a long way to atone for their pacifist attitude”.[19]
Inspired by the overall response, the Doukhobor Society redoubled its assistance. One month later, in January of 1917, Peter V. Verigin declared that the Society would make a donation of two more carloads (48,000 pounds or 24 tons) of Doukhobor jam worth $10,000.00; this time for shipment overseas to the soldiers at the front.[20]
Yet again, in January of 1918, the Doukhobor Society (now incorporated as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood) donated another carload (20,000 pounds or 10 tons) of jam worth $5,000.00 from its jam factory in Brilliant to the Canadian Military Hospitals Commission for distribution to convalescing soldiers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.[21]
This latest (and what would be the last) consignment comprised 7,500 pounds of strawberry jam, 7,500 pounds of raspberry jam, and 5,000 pounds of various other kinds, including peach and plum.[22] The Community members, in making their gift, reiterated “their abhorrence of war and that it is against the tenets of their faith to go into battle” but that they were quite prepared to assist those who suffered as a result of it.
The public response was once again overwhelmingly positive, with the Regina Leader-Post writing, for example, that the “universally popular” jam consignment gifted by the Doukhobors “is recommended as being just like mother used to make.”[23]
In total, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood gifted 92,000 pounds (46 tons) of jam worth $20,000.00 ($375,000.00 in today’s dollars) to convalescing soldiers and their dependent families across Western Canada between 1916 and 1918. This was by no means the only humanitarian aid provided by Doukhobors in the First World War; however, it was undoubtedly the most popular and well-known example.
In making these donations, the Doukhobors navigated between two of their fundamental religious values: demonstrating compassion and brotherly love for those in distress because of war, while fulfilling the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Headline from Calgary Herald, February 2, 1918.
After Word
An earlier version of this article was originally published in:
[4]Ibid;Victoria Daily Times, December 15, 1916; Grand Forks Sun, December 22, 1916; Kelowna Record, December 28, 1916; Vernon News, December 28, 1916; The Montreal Star, January 3, 1917; Greenwood Ledge, January 4, 1917; Similkameen Star, January 5, 1917; Creston Review, January 5, 1917; The Montreal Gazette, January 11, 1917; Brantford Daily Expositor, January 27, 1917; Macleod News, February 1, 1917; Munson Mail, February 17, 1917; Courtney Review, February 22, 1917; Hedley Gazette, March 15, 1917.
[20]Edmonton Journal, February 22 and December 31, 1917.
[21]The Leader Post, January 3, 1918; Montreal Daily Star, January 5, 1918; Brantford Daily Expositor, January 7, 1918; Calgary News Telegram, January 7, 1918; Kingston Whig-Standard, January 8, 1918; Edmonton Bulletin, January 17, 1918; Calgary Herald, February 2 and 4, 1918; Macleod News, February 7, 1918; Alderson News, February 7, 1918; Irma Times, February 7, 1918; Bow Island Review, February 8, 1918; Kamloops Telegram, February 14, 1918; Munson Mail, February 14, 1918; Bassano Mail, February 14, 1918; Claresholm Review-Advertiser, February 15, 1918; Drumheller Review, February 22, 1918; The Ledge, March 14, 1918; Lethbridge Telegram, April 2, 1918.
