Brilliant History – Fading Into Obscurity

by William M. Rozinkin

Today, few travelling on Highway 3A from Brilliant to Ootischenia across the Kootenay River notice the concrete foundation on the rocky bluff overlooking the river. Fewer still know or recall its history. In the following article, reproduced by permission from the Nelson Daily News (March 2 & 6, 1995), long-time Kootenay resident and historian William M. Rozinkin (1923-2007) documents the history of the “Besedushka”, the stately “retreat house” built for Peter “Lordly” Verigin by his followers in 1922. In the quiet atmosphere of its location, the Doukhobor leader spent time writing and meditating. However as Rozinkin recounts, the destruction of the building by arson in 1924 heralded decades of strife and factionalism within the British Columbia Doukhobor community.

For many years motorists travelling on Highway 3A from Castlegar through Ootishenia and across the Kootenay River bridge at Brilliant saw the old Doukhobor bridge upstream to their right, while to their left are settlements of Brilliant. Slightly to their left but straight ahead, they also could see Verigin’s Tomb and a cement foundation directly below it. Today motorists can also see a newly constructed Brilliant Intersection road as it sweeps below the tomb and the cement foundation.

This new road, costing almost $4 million, now joins the new bridge across the Columbia River leading to the city of Castlegar and the Celgar Pulp Mill giving an alternative route to motorists who otherwise would have to travel through Ootishenia. This new road and bridge were opened to the public late last year at a cost of about $28 million.

Today no evidence remains to suggest or remind motorists that Brilliant was the headquarters of the Canadian Doukhobor communities of The Christian Community Of Universal Brotherhood that had about 90 communal villages in British Columbia and settlements in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is no doubt that with the passing years interesting Brilliant history is also fading into obscurity.

Nonetheless, Brilliant’s past includes Verigin’s Tomb and the old bridge whose histories are briefly recorded while the cement foundation remains forgotten. It, indeed, also has a unique place in the pages of this region’s history.

View from near the “Besedushka” overlooking Brilliant and Ootischenia across the Kootenay River, 1924.  British Columbia Archives A-08737.

After the Doukhobors moved to the Kootenay and Columbia regions from Saskatchewan in 1908, their determination to succeed with hard work brought forth almost amazing results.

By living and working communally under the leadership of Peter Lordly Verigin, in less than a decade they transformed the forested wilderness into village settlements with orchards and gardens around them. They also built a wooden pipe plant to manufacture water pipes for domestic needs and irrigation along with sawmills, planer mills, flour mills, linseed oil plants and a jam factory to serve the villagers of Brilliant, Ootishenia, Pass Creek, Glade, Shoreacres, Slocan, and Grand Forks.

In Grand Forks where purchased lands included some cleared with small orchards, they built a brick factory to produce quality bricks for all their needs along with occasional shipments to the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company in Trail, B.C.

The main administrative office was in Brilliant. It was also here that the famous Kootenay-Columbia Jam Factory was located along with a towering grain elevator, fruit-packing shed, a retail store, Mr. Verigin’s residence and other buildings.

In late 1920 Mr. Verigin asked his nephew Vasily Lukianovich Verigin and his family to move to Brilliant from Shoreacres to help in maintaining his residence there. Their family consisted of Vasily, his wife Margaret, three daughters, Fanny, Lucy, and Margaret, when they moved into a house on the hillside overlooking Brilliant. Also living with them were their grandchildren, Andrew, Peter, and Johnny Semenoff whose mother Nastia (their first daughter) had passed away earlier in Shoreacres, and their father, Andrew, was away occasionally for extended periods of time to work on community projects.

Vasily and Margaret’s second oldest daughter, Mary, was married to John Fedorovich Masloff and resided across the river from them in Ootishenia.

With flourishing communities organized and growing in development, its members decided in 1921 to express their appreciation to their leader — president Peter Lordly Verigin for his administrative and religious guidance.

The following year, in 1922, this was done with construction of a small, ornamentally designed house on a solid, almost flat-surfaced rock overlooking the settlements and lush orchards of Brilliant and Ootishenia along with a grand view of the sparkling waters of the Kootenay River as it races to join the rushing currents of the Columbia River near Castlegar, about a mile downstream.

The house was specially designed to accommodate the space on the rock. It was about 23 feet long and almost 17 feet wide and with a veranda on cement pillars around it, the house appeared much larger. Construction of the building was neatly finished and painted white with blue trim and the veranda elegantly decorated with an interlaced ornamental fret work as it embraced the beautiful house. It was the pride of the community craftsmen.

Approaches to the house followed a well arranged walkway with flower beds on either side that led to concrete steps leading down to the main entrance below, while around the house, rock walls were built to form benches filled with earth in which beautiful flowers and lawns adorned the immediate surroundings.

The house had a full basement that was divided into two rooms and its solid rock floor also served as a base for the brick chimney. It had a separate outside entrance and a window on the west side.

Peter “Lordly” Verigin’s retreat house in Brilliant, British Columbia. ISKRA.

With Mr. Verigin’s main residence near the business section of Brilliant proper below, this new house on the hillside above was used by him as a place where he met special visitors and friends and a place to rest and relax. Some of his writings were done there in the quiet atmosphere of its location, at times late into the night.

The house was located almost on the same level of the hillside and a short distance from the home of Vasily Lukianovich and his family who looked after the new building with its colorful gardens. The family also maintained an apiary of no less than 60 beehives for the communities.

More than ever, during that period in the 1920’s life in the communities honoured with pride Peter Lordly Verigin’s slogan, “Toil and Peaceful Life”. Under his administration, not only did they show exceptional accomplishments needed for their daily lives, they also were on the threshold of retiring all their financial debts.

Among occasional problems that occurred in the villages, most were resolved with tolerant appeals for common sense and understanding. There were also occasions Lordly Verigin was asked to help with advice.

At times a disrupting threat to the villagers came from a small group of people who broke away from The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood a few years after the Doukhobors arrived from Russia in 1899 to settle in Saskatchewan. Among the Doukhobors this group was commonly called “nudes”. Later they became more known as Freedomites.

These people, whose closest residence to Brilliant was three miles away in Thrums, often harassed the villagers by disrupting their meetings with heckling and stripping nude. Many times Mr. Verigin would help his members to manually escort these nudes from their meetings after they forced their way inside.

A small Freedomite settlement in Thrums was alongside several farmers among whom were some (Independents) who left the communities through disagreements. Although some farmers befriended the Freedomites, they were shocked to see three Freedomite women that lived nearby, quickly disrobe and standing stark naked to watch an airplane fly by in 1919.

It was Sunday, April 20, 1924, after attending a morning prayer meeting Vasily Lukianovich and his wife were enjoying their usual Sunday rest with their children when suddenly they heard a loud female voice singing by Mr. Verigin’s house. They all ran to the vacant house to search for the intruder and found a nude Freedomite woman, who they recognized, hiding behind a linen drape hanging on the veranda.

They pleaded with her to leave in peace and return home to Thrums, but she refused to leave. With fears she would damage the house, they sent word to the villages for help. Their neighbours arrived with a team of horses harnessed to a wagon, loaded the female intruder on it and took her home in Thrums.

When Vasily Lukianovich and his family went to bed that same Sunday night after a very disturbing day that appeared to have ended peacefully, they did not expect a loud hammering on their door after midnight and hear a loud voice yelling that Mr. Verigin’s house was on fire. It was a guard from Brilliant, Nikolai Lebedoff, who saw the flames spreading through the house and rushed there to try help save it. They ran to the burning building and with garden hoses poured water on the blaze while more people from nearby villages came running to help, without success.

With the frightful fire so close to their house, the children were terrified. And as the light from the nearby flames shone through their windows and flickered brightly on the walls and floor in their house the terrified children began to fear their own house would also be attacked by arsonists. Their fears rose to helpless panic, and in desperation to at least save some family valuables, 12 year old Lucy, their second youngest daughter, grabbed her father’s special box that contained valuable correspondence and writings they all treasured and with it she ran to hillside bushes to protect and hide it.

The flames from the burning house on the hillside were visible for miles around when suddenly it was discovered that the Brilliant school and two Ootishenia schools were also in flames.

The following day it was noted that the three schools and the house were set on fire at about the same time, indicating that several terrorists had done it.

The three schools were valued at $1,500 each while the value of Mr. Verigin’s house was estimated at $2,500. Not included in the house value was fine furniture and irreplaceable books, correspondence, writings and other personal items. Heirloom rugs alone were valued at more than $600 in 1924.

The night before this happened in Brilliant a school in Grand Forks was set a fire but was saved before fire spread.

While these unfortunate events were happening, CCUB president Peter Lordly Verigin was away on business on the prairies. Following the fires he was notified and immediately he returned to Brilliant.

Another view of the “Besedushka” in Brilliant, British Columbia prior to its destruction by arson, 1924.  British Columbia Archives, Koozma Tarasoff Collection.

While community Doukhobors with emotion condemned the Freedomite terrorists and vowed not to let them enter their settlements for any reason whatsoever, Mr. Verigin studied the situation, and four days after these attacks, he sent an appeal to the Premier of British Columbia John Oliver for assistance to stop Freedomite attacks on schools and community property.

In his letter dated April 25, 1924 he wrote the premier: “Last Sunday night towards Monday morning, April 21, a lot of buildings were burned in the Doukhobor Colony at Brilliant, namely three schools and a small house of mine which was built on a rock about two years ago with beautiful architecture.”

In his lengthy letter Mr. Verigin explained that since the arrival of the Doukhobors to Canada in 1899 “different opinions were formed in the Doukhobor Society result of which three parties came out.” Almost in detail he addressed many differences of these parties. Describing the parties he said the first party was under his control and carries the name of The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood. “. . . This party is upkeeping the principle, religion, and customs which the Doukhobors I have had in Russia.”

The Second Party he pointed out are “the people who left the Doukhobor Society (to become independent farmers) and have accepted the homesteads in the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and became British subjects.”

Describing the Third Party that became more known later as Freedomites, he said: “The Third Party, although very small in number that left the Doukhobor Society under the name “Nudes” are absolutely anarchists acknowledging no moral laws, desire to work nothing, hatefully looking on all the cultured progressive arrangements …”

Such party is under suspicion are the ones who is setting fire amongst Doukhobor Colonies in British Columbia.” “… I have decided to bring to your notice and respectfully ask you to remove this party from nearby community settlements otherwise these people are threatening to start burning the good arrangements as possessed by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood. I am very much surprised that the setting a fire to schools had been started sometime ago and the government does not take any steps whatever in order to punish the guilty ones …”

Further in his letter he pointed out that, “There will be about 20 or not more than 30 of such people who are living around the Community Colonies.”

Mr. Verigin concluded his letter with these words: “If the government will appoint an Inspectorate to pick out the “Nudes” or in other words anarchists, I will give exact list of names and surnames of such people. I beg to remain with the hope that you will take quick action on my report. Respectfully yours,
(Signed) Peter Verigin, President”

Upon receiving Mr. Verigin’s letter desperately asking for protection against the Nudes’ (Freedomites’) violent attacks on schools and buildings in the Doukhobor communities, it is not known how the 67 year old B.C. Premier John Oliver planned to respond although he apparently viewed the trouble with Freedomites as “incomprehensible”.

What is known is he and his Liberal party were heavily involved in preparations for an approaching provincial election less than two months away. That election on June 20, 1924 saw all campaigning political party leaders defeated including John Oliver although his Liberal party won enough seats to form a minority government.

To return as head of the B.C. Liberal Party and Premier of the province, Mr. Oliver ran in a by-election in Nelson where he defeated a local candidate. Harry Houston, and triumphantly returned home to Victoria to remain as provincial premier until he died on August 17, 1927 from incurable cancer.

Today it appears the only historical evidence of that fateful day of April 21, 1924 is found in Mr. Peter Lordly Verigin’s letter in the provincial government archives and the surviving concrete foundation just below Verigin’s Tomb and above the newly constructed road of the Brilliant Interchange as seen daily by motorists travelling north across the Kootenay River bridge between Ootishenia and Brilliant.

Writer’s Note: A lot of information for this story came from my wife’s (Lucy) grandparents Vasily and Margaret Verigin’s family members.

Doukhobor History of the Lundbreck-Cowley Area of Alberta

by Margaret Salekin

In 1915-1917, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB) purchased 13,500 acres of land in the Lundbreck and Cowley areas of Alberta. There, in the foothills of the Rockies, they planted extensive grain fields, raised large livestock herds and established thirteen communal villages as well as a flourmill, two elevators, central storehouse, prayer home, blacksmith shops, granaries and barns. Following the demise of the CCUB in 1937-1938, the lands were sold and the villages were dismantled. A number of Doukhobor families, however, chose to remain in the area as farmers, where they continued to practice their faith and culture. The following article, reproduced by permission from ISKRA Nos. 2034-2036 (Brilliant: USCC, 2010), examines the history of Doukhobor settlement and life in the area, through the experiences of the Konkin family.

On March 11th, 2010, the Doukhobor Prayer Home in Lundbreck, AB was designated as a Provincial Historic Resource. Today, the Prayer Home stands as a reminder of a once thriving Doukhobor community that worked and developed the land in the Lundbreck-Cowley area of south western Alberta.

How did this community come into existence? Let us follow the development through the experiences of the Harry Konkin family.

Harry and Nastia Konkin with their four daughters near Lundbreck, AB c. 1915.

Some years after the migration of the Doukhobors from Saskatchewan to British Columbia, it was realized that land needed to be bought for grain growing and raising horses. The grain was needed for milling and for feed. The horses were needed for the community in BC where they were used for logging, etc. Land was chosen in the Cowley and Lundbreck area of Alberta. In 1915, fourteen workers and their families made the move from BC. Some of the first settlers were Samuel Verigin, Vanya Ewashen, Misha Maloff, Fedya Sookochoff, Vasya Zibin and their families. The first land that was purchased was nine miles north of Lundbreck and it was given the name Bogatoi Rodnik. This is where the Harry Konkin family eventually settled. In 1916, more men were added to the workforce: Vanya Ribalkin, George Maloff and sons, George and Samuel Kalmakoff, Michael Salekin and family, Cecil N. Maloff and others. Peter Lordly Verigin also approached Harry Konkin, who was a horse trainer and asked him to gather his family and other dependable people who were capable of working with horses to relocate to south western Alberta. Steam engines, grain separators (threshing machines) and ploughs were purchased. Oxen, cows and horses were acquired.

CCUB steam engines – “Doukhobor Plow Horses” – at Cowley, AB, c. 1925.

Approximately, 10,000 acres were bought in Lundbreck and Cowley. Another 2,000 acres were purchased a couple of years later. Thirteen villages were established: four in Lundbreck, five in Cowley and four others in the vicinity. Some of the villages and names of some of the people who lived there were:

  • Bogatoi Rodnik – Verigin, Ewashen, Maloff, Sookochoff, Zibin
  • Lundbreck – Hoobanoff, Konkin
  • Stoopnikoff Village – Stoopnikoff, Parakin
  • Ribalkin Village – Ribalkin, Faminoff, Maloff, Ozeroff
  • Faminoff Village – Paul Faminoff with his three sons, Fred, Joe and Sam
  • Gradovaya Dolina – Kabatoff, Kooznetsoff, Verigin
  • Sibir – Vishloff, Konkin, Shkuratoff, Sookochoff
  • Cowley – Vishloff, Hoobanoff, Kalmakoff, Konkin, Potapoff
  • Bozhiya Milost – Verigin, Negraeff
  • Maloff Village – Maloff, Sookochoff
  • Village east of Cowley – Maloff, Babakaeff, Vishloff
  • Bozhiya Celo – Ewashen, Bojey, Kooznetsoff, Barisenkoff, Stoopnikoff, Larin, Shkuratoff

The community also built a flour mill in Lundbreck and grain elevators in both Cowley and Lundbreck. A house was built for Peter Lordly Verigin in Cowley that he used when he visited the community and checked on the farming operation. This building was also used as the headquarters for the community. A Community home was also located on the same street. The community which grew to 360 people prospered until the break-up of the CCUB in 1938. The community hall was then dismantled.

CCUB flour mill at Lundbreck, AB. Relocated there from Pincher Creek in 1922, it was operated until its destruction in 1936.

In the late 1930’s, some families left the CCUB and began to work for themselves. Some found employment with the CPR while others rented land that they farmed. After the demise of the CCUB in 1938, the number of Doukhobors in the Lundbreck-Cowley area decreased by a third. Most of these people moved to British Columbia to be part of the larger group living there.

The National Trust Co. made the Alberta members responsible for over $91,000 of the CCUB debt. Assessments were made of the various lands to total the indebtedness. In many cases the member took possession of the land that he was already residing on, making payments and eventually obtaining a clear title as a private owner. Payment for the land was made on a one-third crop share basis as the members did not have cash. They were given ten years to clear the debt, which they all did.

Doukhobor village of Bogatoy Rodnik north of Lundbreck, AB which two son-in-laws of the Konkin’s – Peter M. Salekin and Anton W. Mushta – purchased in 1938.

By this time, all of Harry and Nastia Konkin’s daughters had married. Their youngest child, a son Harry, passed away at the young age of twenty-four. Two brothers-in-law, Peter M. Salekin and Anton W. Mushta, husbands of Helen and Emma, bought Bogatoi Rodnik, the farm where they had been living. Their mother-in-law Nastia, who was now a widow, lived there with them. The oldest daughter Mary and her husband Alex F. Vishloff bought communal land near Cowley and their youngest daughter Ann and her husband Mike S. Verigin bought communal land further east. Their other daughter Nastia and her husband Nick A. Shkuratoff bought communal land west of Bogatoi Rodnik. The Shkuratoff family later relocated to the Slocan Valley of BC.

Along with the farming, the two brothers-in-law, Peter and Anton went to work in the coal mines of the Crowsnest Pass to help pay for the land. This additional income allowed them to occasionally buy such luxury items as corn flakes and peanut butter for their families. Large fields of potatoes were also planted. After the harvest, sacks of potatoes were sold door to door on weekends, in the mining communities of the Crowsnest Pass.

Alex F. and Mary H. (nee Konkin) Vishloff, Lundbreck, AB. Nastia H. (nee Konkin) and Nick A. Shkuratoff, Lundbreck, AB.

When the sons in the two families were old enough to work with their fathers, it became evident that more land was needed to sustain the two families. The Mushta family sold their share to the Salekin family and bought a farm east of Lundbreck. For a number of years, they retained some land for pasture at Bogatoi Rodnik.

The people in the Lundbreck and Cowley areas continued to uphold their Doukhobor religion and culture. A Russian school existed for a couple of years. An organization for the youth was established. Petrov Dyen was commemorated annually with picnics at Bogatoi Rodnik, near the Castle River at Bozhaya Dolina or on the South Fork River between Pincher Creek and Cowley.

Helen H. (nee Konkin) and Peter M. Salekin, Lundbreck, AB. Emma H. (nee Konkin) and Anton W. Mushta and son Peter.

Sobraniye were held in individual homes. Visiting choirs from BC and other guests were always welcomed. Choir presentations were held in the local community hall. Rent had to be paid for the use of the community hall and private homes often became crowded and their location, at times, was inconvenient. It was decided that they needed to build a dom for their own use. Fundraisers were held. The women held raffles where prizes included a homemade wool blanket and rugs that were made on the loom. Suppers, such as vereniki feeds, were held. All the ingredients for the suppers and the items for the raffles were donated. Construction commenced in 1953 with the men working as volunteers.

On August 22nd, 1955, a meeting, chaired by Peter C. Maloff, was held at the Peter M. Salekin farm at Bogatoi Rodnik. It was decided by all those present to register their organization as the United Doukhobors of Alberta Lundbreck-Cowley. The first chairman was Steve S. Faminow and the secretary-treasurer was William S. Kabatoff. The first trustees were Alex A. Vishloff,

Peter C. Maloff and Mike S. Faminow.

Ann H. (nee Konkin) and Mike S. Verigin, Lundbreck, AB.

Though it was not entirely completed, the dom was first used in 1955 for the funeral of Paul N. Potapoff, who served as the manager of the CCUB in that area.

Once again, in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of Doukhobors living in the Lundbreck-Cowley area continued to decline. The older generation was aging. In some families, sons or daughters were taking over the farming operations. Others began to leave the family farms to either further their education or to obtain employment in the cities.

This trend was evident in the Salekin family. Peter and Helen’s oldest sons, Mike and Harry continued to farm together with their parents. Additional land was acquired south of Lundbreck and Mike and his wife, Mary moved to this farm but they continued to farm as one unit. They began to do custom work to help pay for the land and the farm machinery. Eggs, cream and butter were also sold. Larry, the youngest son in the family, had always helped with the farm work but upon graduation from high school, he pursued post-secondary education and obtained a teaching degree in Lethbridge.

Aerial view of Bogatoy Rodnik taken in the early 1960’s.

Larry and I were married in 1970. We lived at the Bogatoye (as it was fondly referred to) for a few months after our marriage and I had the opportunity to learn some of its history from Larry’s parents. I enjoyed listening to my Mother-in-law’s stories of her experiences. She moved south of Lundbreck to live with her husband’s parents once she was married. The Salekin family lived there with the Parakin, Semenoff and other families. Their two oldest sons were born there. The young family then moved to Bogatoi Rodnik. By this time, another house had been built there by the Doukhobors. This house was referred to as the “blue” house while the original house was referred to as the “yellow” house as that was its colour at the time of purchase. Each of these houses was home to 50-55 people. Mother-in-law talked of taking her weekly turns at preparing meals for all who lived in the house, milking cows, working in the large gardens, etc. She also explained how an area of the house, bedroom, referred to as the hornitsa, that consisted of a sitting room and a bedroom, was used only by Peter Lordly Verigin and later by Peter P Verigin (Chistiakov) during their visits to the area. In the 1950s when John J and Laura P Verigin toured the area with a choir, the Salekin family was pleased to welcome them into their home to see where the elder Verigins had stayed.

In 1971, Peter and Helen sold the farm to Mike and Harry. They moved to Grand Forks, BC to spend their retirement years living near their daughter, Vera and her husband, Pat Semenoff. They joined the USCC organization. Good health allowed them to enjoy and participate in various events and functions. For a number of years, Helen was able to participate in the Ladies Organization (cooking groups).

The two brothers continued to farm for three more years. In 1974, after almost sixty years (1915-1974) of Doukhobor ownership, the farm was sold.

Cousins Nick N. Shkuratoff and Harry P. Salekin taken in front of the barn at Bogatoy Rodnik. Note the hand-carved shingles on the front of barn.

Today, the original house that had been bought with the land in 1915 and the large barn, with room for up to fifty horses, which had been built by the Doukhobors, are still in use and are still in good condition. There is an interesting fact to note. The house had been ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue in the late 1800s by the original owner of the land, a Mr Terril. Such houses are called Eaton’s houses. The second house was dismantled in the early 1940s. The last of the former CCUB land in the Lundbreck area was sold in the early 1990s by the sons of Jack and Mabel Semenoff. Mabel was a granddaughter to Harry and Nastia Konkin and the daughter of Anton and Emma Mushta. The flour mill once stood on the land that was sold by Vince. Terry sold his land which had once been part of the Faminoff village. A small amount former CCUB land in the Cowley area is stilled owned by Maloff descendants.

During its 50+ year history, the Dom was used for many occasions. Moleniye, sobraniye, funeral services and even a couple of wedding showers were held there. To this day, the Dom has never been used for a wedding. In 1994-1995, the Voices for Peace Choir held practices there. Meetings of the CCUB Trust Fund Board were held there when it was Alberta’s turn to host the delegates. Council of Doukhobors in Canada (Unity) meetings were held in Lundbreck because of its central location between BC and Saskatchewan. Guests were always welcomed and many meals were served. With the decline in the membership came the decline in the usage of the Dom. The commemoration of Petrov Dyen continues to be observed annually at the end of June. The Dom is available for use whenever it is required. Today out of a membership of about twenty-five, four members live in the area – Michael M Verigin of Cowley who served for many years as the secretary-treasurer of the United Doukhobors of Alberta, Mary Stoochnoff of Lundbreck, William G Maloff and Helen Juroloff of Hillcrest. They are grandchildren or great grandchildren of the original Doukhobors that came to the area.

The United Doukhobors of Alberta Prayer Home in Lundbreck, AB.

Many of the descendants of Harry and Nastia Konkin, who were life-long members and strong supporters of the CCUB, continue to be contributing and active members in the Doukhobor community. Many, living in Kelowna, Grand Forks, the Kootenays and here in Alberta, are members of the USCC, the organization that succeeded the CCUB.

A highway sign had been erected in 1974 just west of Cowley to give recognition to the contribution made by the Doukhobors to the area.

Now, with its Provincial Historic Resource designation, the Prayer Home in Lundbreck will continue to be a place of welcome and may its presence in the community continue to tell the story of the Doukhobors and their contributions in the Lundbreck-Cowley areas…

I extend my gratitude to Michael M Verigin and Peter A Mushta for providing and confirming some of the historic information. I trust that this article will provide a better understanding of this often forgotten and sometimes misunderstood, piece of Doukhobor history.

View Cowley-Lundbreck, Alberta Doukhobor Villages, 1915-1939 in a larger map.

The Kylemore Doukhobor Colony

by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff

The Kylemore Colony was a Doukhobor communal settlement established by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood in the Kylemore district of Saskatchewan between 1918 and 1938. Numbering 300 people at its peak, the self-sufficient agricultural colony was organized on the principles of common ownership and the Doukhobor faith. While its existence is generally known, remarkably little has been documented about its history. The following article, compiled from a wealth of published and unpublished sources, examines the Kylemore Colony in rich, descriptive detail from its settlement and early development, communal life and organization, to the eventual demise of the Community and break-up of the colony.

Introduction

In the early 1900’s, the main body of Doukhobors in Canada, under the charismatic leadership of Peter Vasil’evich Verigin (1859-1924), known as Gospodnyi (the “Lordly”), formed themselves into the spiritual, social and economic organization known as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB). It was organized on a communal basis, according to the precepts of the Doukhobor faith, under the close supervision and direction of Verigin.

By 1918, the CCUB was at the height of material achievement as an industrial, agricultural, forestry and trading enterprise in Western Canada. It was incorporated under a Dominion charter with a capitalized value of over $1,000,000.00, although its total assets were estimated at several times that figure. It had landholdings in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan totaling over 50,000 acres on which were built numerous communal villages, sawmills, brickworks, jam factories, canning and fruit-packing plants, trading stores, flour mills, grain elevators, irrigation systems, reservoirs, roads and bridges, along with extensive cultivated crops, orchards and gardens. Underpinning the success of the organization was a membership of 6,000 adult Doukhobors (5,000 in British Columbia and 1,000 in Alberta and Saskatchewan) who provided a large, readily-mobilized pool of free, willing labour, guided by the slogan “Toil and Peaceful Life”.

Group of CCUB Doukhobors at Veregin, SK, c.1918. At the time, the CCUB was at the height of material achievement as an industrial, agricultural, forestry and trading enterprise. Photo courtesy National Doukhobor Heritage Village.

Verigin’s overall strategy at this time was to ensure that the CCUB became self-sufficient in agricultural production, while at the same time developing a variety of means to earn cash to fund its operations. Under this plan, grain grown by Doukhobors on the Prairies would be exchanged for fruit and timber produced by Doukhobor settlements in British Columbia. The surplus would be sold to the outside world, where wartime shortages and high prices provided profitable markets for the wheat, lumber, bricks, fruit and other outputs of the communal enterprise. In order to carry out this strategy, however, it was necessary for the CCUB to acquire additional wheat-growing land on the Prairies.

The Kylemore Purchase

To this end, the CCUB acquired a block of eighteen square miles of land, or the equivalent of half a township, in the Kylemore district of Saskatchewan in 1918. The land was acquired in three transactions. First, the CCUB leased 640 acres of Hudson’s Bay Company land (Section 8 in Township 33, Range 12, West of the Second Meridian) on April 1, 1918. The CCUB then leased an additional 109 acres of land (Legal Subdivision 8 of SE ¼ of Section 9 and Legal Subdivision 5 and 12 of the W ½ of Section 10 in Township 33, Range 12, West of the Second Meridian) from the Department of the Interior. Finally, on May 7, 1918, the CCUB purchased 10,613 acres of land (Sections 1-5, 7, 9-12, N ½ of Section 6 and S ½ of Sections 13-18 in Township 33, and Sections 32-36 in Township 34, Range 12, West of the Second Meridian) from the Chicago-based Fishing Lake Land and Farm Co. Ltd. under an agreement for sale for $265,343.00.

Taken together, these acquisitions provided the CCUB with a total landholding of 11,362 acres in the Kylemore district. Only 607 acres of the land was broken at the time – the rest was covered in dense trees and scrub. For this reason, the CCUB acquired the land for substantially less than developed agricultural land in other areas.

Doukhobor work crew clearing land at Kylemore, SK, 1920. At the time of purchase, the colony was covered in dense trees and scrub. Photo courtesy Koozma J. Tarasoff.

At the same time, the land lay adjacent to the Canadian National Railway, which provided essential transportation access. This was a key component of Verigin’s strategy to ship agricultural and industrial goods between Doukhobor settlements and to market.

Perhaps most importantly, the ‘Kylemore Colony’ formed a large, contiguous block of land that was semi-isolated and largely self-contained, where the Doukhobors could speak their own language, practice their religion and culture, and follow their distinctive form of communal organization, separate and apart from the larger Canadian society.

Early Development and Settlement

From the outset, the colony at Kylemore was established according to the carefully laid out plans of the CCUB leadership. On June 14, 1918, just weeks after the land acquisition, CCUB General Manager Michael W. Cazakoff outlined these plans in an interview with the Manitoba Free Press while in Winnipeg, Manitoba to purchase equipment for the new colony. He declared that the majority of the lands would be dedicated to grain growing, being ideally suited for that purpose, while the lighter, south-easterly lands adjacent to Fishing Lake would be reserved for livestock-raising. There would be a settlement of families on each section. There would also be a store, in which fruit shipped from the Doukhobor settlements in British Columbia would be distributed within the colony and sold publicly. Finally, an elevator would be built through which the Doukhobors in Kylemore would ship wheat to the British Columbia settlements and market their surplus and that of their neighbours.

A group of Doukhobor workers enjoys a break near Kylemore, SK, 1920. Photo No. 208 courtesy ISKRA.

The development of the colony occurred over a period of several years. Beginning in 1918, and for each summer thereafter until 1924, work crews of 65 or more Doukhobor men from British Columbia and elsewhere in Saskatchewan arrived in Kylemore to clear the land and erect buildings. Temporary tent camps were set up on Section 10 for their accommodation. To carry out this work, the main CCUB settlement at Veregin, 70 miles to the east, supplied them with six steam engines and sixty teams of horses.

Land-clearing and breaking began at the northern end of the colony along the Canadian National Railway and slowly advanced to the southern end. This backbreaking work began at sunup and ended after sundown. First, the trees were cut, then the workers used pick axes to grub the stumps. After, workers came with teams of horses and steam engines to pull out the roots and break the land with the plough. The broken land was then sown into crop the following spring. Over 1,600 acres of land were developed in this manner in 1918 alone. Thereafter, Doukhobor work crews cleared and broke an additional five hundred acres of land each year.

The first permanent village in the colony was established in 1918 on Section 9 at the former residence of W.H. McKinnon, one of the prior landowners. This ornate, eight-room, two-story wood frame structure with lumber siding was the only dwelling on the land when the CCUB purchased it. There, between 1918 and 1921, the CCUB also constructed a large central meeting house for colony members and a gornitsa (special guest quarters) where Peter V. Verigin could stay when he visited the area.

The McKinnon home west of Kylemore, SK. Built in c.1910, the large, ornate home was the only structure on the land when the CCUB purchased it in 1918. It formed part of the Chernoff Village, the first village in the colony. It was destroyed by fire in 1924. Remembering Times.

Doukhobor work crews constructed eight additional villages on Sections 6, 7, 9, 10, 31 and 33, approximately two per year, from 1919 to 1924. These were a variation of the village design used by the Doukhobors in British Columbia and consisted of a single 26’ x 26’ two-story dwelling of wood frame construction on a concrete foundation. The exceptions were two villages on Sections 9 and 31 that had twin structures. These multi-family communal doms (dwellings) were constructed using timber shipped from the CCUB sawmills in the Kootenays. Six were clad in brick supplied from the CCUB brickworks at Veregin. The remainder had cedar shake siding shipped from the Kootenay settlements. Each had a hip roof and verandah clad with cedar shakes. All had large cellars for the storage of foodstuffs.

Each village had a large barn for housing draft horses and milking cows along with numerous outbuildings including stables, sheds, granaries, chicken coops, a kuznitsa (blacksmith shop), banya (bath-house) and peche (clay oven). At least two villages had large ledniks (ice cellars) dug for cold storage. Each had a large garden plot for growing vegetables and fruit.

Unnamed twin-dom village constructed by the CCUB adjacent to the Canadian National Railway at Kylemore, SK in c.1919. Photo courtesy John J. Trofimenkoff.

As work crews completed each village, CCUB families began arriving in Kylemore to take up permanent residence in them. The first families to arrive were those of Peter S. Chernoff from Veregin, Saskatchewan and Vasily V. Solovaeff from Prekrasnoye, British Columbia in 1918. They were followed by a number of families from the Kootenays each year between 1919 and 1924. These included the families of Ivan and Michael S. Arishenkoff, Ignat A. Arishenkoff, Nikolai D. Bedinoff, Ivan V. Chernoff, Ivan I. Fofonoff, Ivan P. Hoolaeff, Ivan F. Hoodikoff, Ivan V. and Vasily I. Kazakoff, Vasily V. and Nikolai N. Konkin, Grigory N. Kanigan, Peter and Ivan S. Malikoff, Kuzma V. Kolesnikoff, Alex I. and Vasily V. Makortoff, Dmitry I., Nikolai N. and Ivan A. Malakoff, Andrew P. and Trofim W. Markin, Vasily A. Morozoff, Nikolai N. Ogloff, Peter A. Osachoff, Kuzma S. and Alex I. Pereverseff, Ivan V. and Peter, Semyon and Grigory S. Popoff, Ivan A. Postnikoff, Fyodor K. and Ivan I. Samsonoff, Ivan F. Sysoev, Ivan and Nikolai P. Sheloff, Pavel V. Planidin and Evdokim A. Sherbinin. According to oral tradition, each family was hand-picked by Peter V. Verigin to help develop the colony.

As the colony took shape, the CCUB undertook the task of constructing a large grain elevator on Section 9 along the Canadian National Railway. Beginning in 1918, work crews constructed a 120,000 bushel capacity elevator of wood crib construction on a concrete foundation. It was approximately 45’ x 60’ wide and 75’ high with a pyramidal roof and a centrally located pyramidal-roofed cupola. At the time it was completed in 1920, it was the largest elevator in Saskatchewan. Thereafter, the Kylemore Colony began receiving, storing and shipping grain in bulk quantities to the Doukhobor settlements in British Columbia and to markets elsewhere.

Doukhobor work crew constructing grain elevator at Kylemore, 1919. Photo courtesy Peter and Agnes Malekoff.

The CCUB also began construction of a large trading store and warehouse on Section 9 along the rail line in 1918. The three-story structure was built of wood frame construction with a full concrete basement. It had cedar shake siding. It was 60’ x 36’ with a gambrel roof and two 20’ lean-tos. It was completed in 1922. The storefront was located at the north end of the main floor, where fruit, produce and other merchandise from the Doukhobor settlements in British Columbia were distributed to the colony families as required and the surplus sold to the public, while the south end of the main floor and the basement were utilized as a warehouse. It is known that Pavel V. Planidin managed the store from 1922 to 1925 and Nikolai N. Ogloff from 1928 to 1935.

By 1924, the Kylemore Colony was thriving and prosperous, with approximately 250 Doukhobor men, women and children. It had a herd of 500 cattle, 1000 sheep and 30 horses. Over 4,000 acres of land was now under cultivation, producing substantial quantities of grain. A sizeable acreage was also devoted to pasture. The community elevator and store were now in full operation. Peter V. Verigin’s plans for the colony had begun to bear fruit.

CCUB communal structures adjacent to the Canadian National Railway at Kylemore, SK, c.1924. (l-r) CCUB grain elevator, CCUB trading store, and unnamed twin-dom village. Photo courtesy Koozma J. Tarasoff.

The Kelvington Annex

Even as the development of the Kylemore Colony was underway, Peter V. Verigin had planned its expansion in the outlying area. In August of 1921, the CCUB purchased an additional 8,000 acres of land (Sections 3, 7, 9, 15, 17-19, 21, 27, 31 and 33, W ½ and SE ¼ of Section 5, E ½ of Section 25, all in Township 27, Range 12, West of the Second Meridian) in the Kelvington district, twenty miles to the north. It was acquired from the Winnipeg-based Canada West Security Corporation under an agreement for sale.

The ‘Kelvington Annex’ was unbroken at the time of purchase and was covered in trees and scrub, making it cheaper and more affordable than developed land in other districts. Unlike the Kylemore Colony, it did not form a contiguous block, but was segregated into separate section parcels interspersed among non-Doukhobor landholdings. However, it lay adjacent to the Canadian National Railway’s proposed Thunderhill Branch Line extension from Kelvington to Prince Albert, which, once built, would enhance its property value and provide strategic rail access.

Doukhobor work crew clearing land by hand near Kylemore, SK, c. 1924. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

The Kelvington Annex was administered as an offshoot of the Kylemore Colony. It was primarily used for summer pasturage for the colony’s horse herd, although some land-clearing and grain-growing did occur. No villages were constructed there; however, single-family dwellings were built on Sections 18 and 27 to house four families permanently stationed there. Other families were rotated from Kylemore to Kelvington on a temporary basis over summer to tend the communal horse herd, during which time they lived in tents.

Community Life and Organization under Peter V. Verigin: 1918-1924

During the era of Peter V. Verigin, the Kylemore Colony was comprised of nine (unnamed) villages containing family groupings of four to six extended families per village. All the villages in the colony were organized as one commune.

Doukhobor family at Kylemore, SK, 1920. (l-r) Mabel, Tanya, Peter, John, Peter A., Helen G., and Mike Chernoff in their chore cloths. Seems Like Only Yesterday.

The CCUB central office coordinated the agricultural and commercial operations of the colony, carried out all transactions on its behalf, managed its finances through a common treasury and provided for the daily needs of its members. This was managed out of the CCUB headquarters in Veregin, Saskatchewan. A manager elected by the members administered the day-to-day affairs of the colony and acted as an intermediary authority between the central office and colony members. It is known that in 1925, the Manager of the Kylemore Colony was Dmitry I. Malakoff and from 1926 to 1928, Nikolai I. Cazakoff. Major decisions affecting the colony were introduced at a sobraniye (general meeting) of all members where everyone could have a voice.

The CCUB owned all of the colony’s land, buildings, machinery, tools and livestock. These were distributed among the villages of the colony, so that each village possessed its own teams of horses, wagons, implements and other resources necessary to farm the acreage allocated to it. All the grain was delivered to the CCUB elevator and traded under its name, as was all stock and merchandise shipped to the CCUB store. Indeed, all proceeds from the output of the colony went to the central office.

CCUB General Manager Michael W. Cazakoff (right) inspects communal draft horses with Vasily V. Soloveoff (left) near Kylemore, SK, c.1924. Photo No. 273 courtesy ISKRA.

Individual members were expected to contribute their labour to the operation of the colony and pay an annual levy to the central office, which was mainly paid in-kind through labour rather than cash. They received no income for communal work, and when they found it necessary to work outside the colony, their earnings were deposited directly with the central office or collected by the Manager of the colony. Hence, few members of the colony actually handled money. Within this moneyless system, the colony provided for all the essential needs of its members, such as food, shelter, clothing and other supplies.

Daily life in the Kylemore Colony revolved around the cycles of the farming year. In spring, the women and men worked together in the fields sowing crops. Afterwards, in summer, they laboured to clear and break additional land. The women also dug seneca root, the sale of which was an important source of revenue for the colony. Later in summer, haying and stooking was performed by both men and women. At harvest time, the men threshed while the women prepared meals and did chores. In late fall, the men got up before sunrise, took packed lunches and traveled south toward Fishing Lake to cut wood. They would cut enough to last the colony for the whole winter and the surplus was sold locally. The days that followed were spent sawing and splitting the wood into “stove-sized” pieces. During winter, the men worked in the villages or sought outside employment. The women, elderly and children maintained the household and performed yard chores.

Doukhobors at Kanigan Village near Kylemore, SK winnow grain to remove chaff. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

The colony was almost entirely self-sufficient in food production. Colony members grew potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes and other vegetables in their large gardens. This was supplemented by fruit, jams and preserves supplied from the Doukhobor settlements in British Columbia. Wild berries, nuts and mushrooms were also picked locally. Milk, cream, cheese and butter were obtained from the community cattle herd. As they kept chickens they also had a fresh supply of eggs. Meat was unnecessary as colony members were strict vegetarians. Flour was produced from the wheat they grew, which was hauled by horse and wagon 18 miles south to Foam Lake to be ground and milled. Only sugar, salt, raisins, rice and a few other staples were purchased outside the colony by the men.

The colonists also manufactured most of their own cloths, tools and furniture. The women sheared wool from the communal sheep herd which they then washed, carded, spun and wove to make cloth and yarn. They were expert in sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, quilt and mattress making and other handicrafts. The men produced furniture, tools and equipment and performed shoe repair, harness-making, blacksmithing, horse-shoeing and other skilled tasks.

Peter Chernoff and John Soloveoff mounted on horseback on the prairie near Kylemore, SK, c.1920. Photo No. 207 courtesy ISKRA.

While there were few opportunities for leisure, colony members still found time to enjoy the natural beauty and recreation opportunities at Fishing Lake during the hot summer months. There, at a scenic lug (meadow) on the north shore of the lake, Doukhobors throughout the colony gathered to celebrate Petrov Den’ (Peters Day), hold outdoor meetings and enjoy picnics, swimming and rafting.

A mainstay of spiritual life in the colony was the moleniye (prayer meeting) held each Sunday. According to oral tradition, each village initially conducted its own moleniye; however, over time, a number of villages joined together for this occasion. This was a time when the members of the colony abandoned their work and gathered for hours to pray, discuss spiritual matters and sing psalms. There were reputedly many exceptional singers in the colony, and the psalm singing inspired the people and reinforced their religious faith and values for the ensuing week.

A gathering of Doukhobor children at Kanigan Village near Kylemore, SK, c. 1924. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

A special highlight was when Peter V. Verigin visited the Kylemore Colony to meet with the members, hear their concerns and inspect their progress. This was a joyous occasion accompanied by special celebrations, meetings and meals. It is known that Verigin made at least two such trips to Kylemore in the summer of 1921 and the fall of 1924, and probably several more.

On the whole, life in the colony at this time was characterized, not only by hard work and sacrifice, but by simple, peaceful living in an atmosphere of happiness, comfort and harmony. This way of life is poignantly described in the historical novel Tanya, by Doukhobor writer Eli A. Popoff, which is based on the remarkable true story of Tanya Arishenkoff, the central character, who lived in the colony from 1919 until its demise.

Doukhobor shepherds tend communal sheep flock at Kylemore, SK, c.1924. Photo courtesy National Doukhobor Heritage Village.

Death of Peter V. Verigin and Aftermath

Disaster struck the Kylemore Colony in May of 1924 when one of the villages on Section 9 was destroyed in an accidental fire. This included the village dom, central meeting house, the gornitsa where Peter V. Verigin stayed and other outbuildings. During this same period, the dom at another village on Section 9 also burned to the ground.

However, these events paled in comparison to the sudden death of Verigin in October of 1924 in a mysterious train explosion at Farron, British Columbia. His passing was a devastating blow to the membership of the CCUB, who revered him as their guide, counselor and protector. The entire Doukhobor Community was thrown into shock and mourning, and the Kylemore Colony was no exception.

Leaderless and directionless, the Doukhobors at Kylemore carried on essential tasks, such as grain growing and store and elevator operations, but postponed decisions on most important issues until a replacement leader could be appointed who would help them decide. For example, the construction of village buildings to replace those which had burnt on Section 9 was suspended. The CCUB organization went into a period of slow stagnation and decline.

Larion Malakoff mounted on horseback in front of Malakoff Village dom near Kylemore, SK, c.1924. Photo courtesy Fred J. Chernoff.

With financial difficulties mounting, the Directors of the CCUB decided to consolidate their debts with one creditor. The Community negotiated a loan for $350,000.00 with the National Trust Company, representing the Canadian Bank of Commerce, in December of 1925. To secure this loan, the National Trust Company obtained a blanket mortgage on all of the land and buildings on which no other creditors held liens. This meant that everything owned by the CCUB would now be encumbered with debt, including the lands of the Kylemore Colony.

Arrival of Peter P. Verigin and Reorganization

It was several years before Verigin’s son, Peter Petrovich Verigin, known as Chistiakov (the “Cleanser” or “Purger”), was able to come to Canada and assume the leadership of the CCUB. His arrival in September of 1927 was greeted by his followers with tremendous enthusiasm, who hoped for a rejuvenation of the ailing CCUB communal structure.

On his first of many visits to the Kylemore colony, Peter P. Verigin impressed his followers as a forceful, eloquent orator and a persuasive, dynamic and brilliant organizer. He declared his immediate goals to be to free the CCUB from it burden of debt and to unite the various factions of Doukhobors in Canada. Seeing and hearing him speak, the Kylemore Doukhobors firmly believed that his objectives would be achieved.

The family of Peter P. Verigin seen here at the Chernoff Village near Kylemore, SK in 1928 (l-r) John J. Verigin (his grandson), Anna F. Verigin (his wife) and Evdokia G. Verigin (his mother). Photo No. 303 courtesy ISKRA.

Almost immediately, Peter P. Verigin reorganized the CCUB on a new basis to encourage greater self-reliance, industry and diligence among its members and to foster a renewed interest in the soil and in the welfare of the commune. To this end, he decentralized the CCUB, made life less rigidly communal, and reduced the size of each commune to a new unit known as the ‘Family’, which in Saskatchewan was comprised of 25 persons.

The Kylemore Colony land, buildings, machinery, tools and livestock were redistributed to each Family to farm communally. Each Family was granted broad autonomy over its agricultural operations and business transactions. An annual assessment was still paid to the CCUB central office. However, any excess revenue from the land or from outside earnings, over and above the annual assessment, was retained by the Family. A Starshina (Elder), elected by its members, managed the day-to-day affairs of each Family. It is known that in 1928, these were: Ivan N. Konkin, Nikolai P. Popoff, Ivan I. Samsonoff, Vasily V. Solovaeff, Ivan V. Chernenkoff, Alexei I. Pereverseff, Ivan V. Popoff, Vasily A. Morozoff, Semyon S. Popoff, Ivan A. Posnikoff, Peter S. Chernoff, Grigory N. Kanigan and Ivan P. Sheloff.

John V. Soloveoff stands beside a white stallion that had belonged to Doukhobor leader Peter V. Verigin at the newly-formed Arishenkoff Village near Kylemore, SK, c. 1928. Photo No. 229 courtesy ISKRA.

The system of buying and selling was introduced into all aspects of relations between the CCUB central office and the Families or branch communes, as well as between individual members. Individual Doukhobors were now permitted to handle money. Thus, money transactions replaced the unwieldy barter system of earlier years.

In total, 13 Families of 25 persons (comprising one to two extended families) were set up in the Kylemore Colony in 1928. Each Family was allocated a section of land in the colony on which to live and farm. Where a village already existed on a section, it was given to the Family assigned to that section; where there was none, a new village was built for the Family placed on that section.

Accordingly, six existing villages on Sections 7, 9, 4 and 10 (thereafter known as Popoff Village, Malakoff Village, Chernoff Village, Sheloff Village, Kazakoff Village and Kanigan Village) were reassigned to Families. Three existing (unnamed) villages on Sections 6, 9 and 31 were either moved to new locations or dismantled and the materials used to build new villages elsewhere. Seven new villages (thereafter known as Chernenkoff Village, Pereverseff Village, Hoodekoff Village, Konkin Village, Makortoff Village, Samsonoff Village and Arishenkoff Village) were built for Families on Sections 2, 3, 5, 32-35. These new villages differed from the earlier villages in that they were comprised of small, single-family residences built of wood frame construction with cedar shake siding.

Vasily V. Soloveoff stands beside a Belgian draft horse at the newly-formed Arishenkoff Village near Kylemore, SK, c. 1928.  Note the communal barn under construction in foreground. Photo No. 228 courtesy ISKRA.

This reorganization resulted in changes to nearly every household in the Kylemore Colony. Consequently, throughout the summer of 1928, there was much moving to and fro, and wagons piled high with goods and chattels were continually driving in one direction or another as families relocated to their new villages. It was at this time also that the CCUB families stationed at the Kelvington Annex relocated to the Kylemore Colony, where they were incorporated into Family branch communes.

In addition to the Families, which maintained a direct connection with the CCUB central office, a provincial branch of the CCUB was set up in Saskatchewan to operate business enterprises in the various areas, including the grain elevator and trading store at Kylemore. These were now run on a wholly cash basis. The CCUB trading store now purchased the fruit it received from British Columbia and sold it to colony members, although it no longer enjoyed a trade monopoly among them. The CCUB elevator maintained a buying monopoly over all the surplus grain grown in the colony, however, it was now purchased from each Family and sold to British Columbia.

Early threshing outfit owned by the CCUB at Kylemore, SK, c. 1928. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

Community Life Under Peter P. Verigin: 1927-1931

The reorganization of the Kylemore Colony was accompanied by three main developments during the early years of Peter P. Verigin’s leadership. First, there was an expansion and consolidation of the capital assets of the colony to increase earning potential and reduce the CCUB’s massive debt. Second, colonists joined a new umbrella organization, the Society of Named Doukhobors, aimed at the unification of the main Doukhobor factions in Canada. Third, new emphasis was placed on education as the Doukhobor youth of the colony were enrolled in local schools. These developments are discussed below in greater detail.

Capital Expansion and Consolidation

The years 1928 to 1931 saw a noteworthy expansion, improvement and consolidation of CCUB capital assets in the Kylemore Colony. Buildings were erected for new villages to the value of $13,000.00. As well, leased lands (640 acres from the Hudson’s Bay Company and 109 acres from the Department of Indian Affairs) were purchased outright for $16,264.60. Also, the balance owing on the 10,613 acres purchased from the Fishing Lake Land and Farm Co. Ltd. was paid in full. Finally, land-clearing activity was redoubled in order to increase agricultural production and earnings.

New Chernoff Village dom completed in 1928 to replace the original destroyed by fire in 1924. Note the collection of machinery of that era. Seems Like Only Yesterday.

At the same time, the CCUB raised money by allowing some of its Prairie members to opt out of the communal system and buy or lease its land. To this end, 3,000 acres of hitherto-undeveloped land in the Kelvington Annex was leased or sold under agreements for sale to CCUB members. These included the families of Peter J. Goolaeff, Peter A. Morozoff, John J. and Peter J. Kanigan, Simeon A. Horkoff, Harry N. and Trofim N. Kanigan, Fred W. Antifaeff, Mike W. and Wasyl W. Bloodoff, George F. and John F. Kazakoff, Nick W. Pepin, Wasyl L. Shukin and Wasyl A. Juravloff.

Statistical data from 1931 illustrates the extent of CCUB property in the Kylemore Colony at this time. The landholdings totalled 11,774.60 acres, valued at $316,724.85. Another 4,945.23 acres of land was held in the Kelvington Annex, assessed at $87,174.62. The investment in buildings on the farm land, including houses, barns and other structures, was valued at $47,900.00. The store and warehouse along with the grain elevator were appraised at an additional $29,000.00. The investment in livestock – which included 240 working horses and 130 milking cows – was valued at $42,500.00. Finally, the investment in farm machinery was assessed at $18,500.00. Thus, the total valuation of the Kylemore Colony’s capital assets in 1931 was $541,799.47 – over half a million dollars – two years into the Great Depression.

Communal barn and horse stable at the Arishenkoff Village, one of the new villages formed in 1928 near Kylemore, SK following the reorganization of the CCUB by Peter P. Verigin. Photo No. 274 courtesy ISKRA.

Unity

Upon his arrival in Canada, all of the main Doukhobor factions – the CCUB, the Independents and the Sons of Freedom – acknowledged Peter P. Verigin as their spiritual leader. He made it his avowed purpose to heal the divisions between the groups and reestablish unity among all Doukhobors living in Canada.

To this end, in June of 1928, Verigin formed a new, all-embracing organization, the Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada, for the purpose of uniting his followers. Through a series of conferences attended by delegates from the CCUB and Independent Doukhobor settlements, the Society, under Verigin’s leadership and direction, promoted a policy of non-violence, the teachings of Christ, marriage based on love, acceptance of public education, the accurate registration of births, deaths and marriages, the peaceful resolution of disputes among members by the Society’s executive, the automatic expulsion of members who committed crimes, and more.

Doukhobor maidens at Kylemore, SK, 1927 (l-r) Milly W. Konkin, Polly W. Konkin and Mary Makortoff. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

For their part, the Kylemore colonists readily participated in the new organization, joining en masse, paying regular membership dues, sending delegates (Alexei I. Hoodekoff in 1934 and Havrila N. Kanigan in 1937) to its conferences and implementing its resolutions. By December of 1930, there were 150 male and 148 female members of the Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada from Kylemore.

Education

From the outset of his leadership, Peter P. Verigin emphasized the importance of public education among his followers. The education of their children in English schools, and the establishment of their own Russian schools and libraries, he declared, would begin a new era for Doukhobors in Canada. His views towards education were actively promoted through the Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada.

Group of Doukhobor schoolchildren in front of North Kylemore School, 1941. Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

As members of the Society, the Kylemore colonists were now committed to accept education, and from 1928 onward, began enrolling their children in Kylemore School in the hamlet of Kylemore. In 1929, the school was destroyed in a suspicious fire when a group of Sons of Freedom visited the area and classes were held in the CCUB trading store until a new school was built the same year. By 1936, Doukhobor student enrollment increased to such an extent that a second school was opened at the south end of the colony. The older school became known as the ‘North Kylemore School’ and the newer one the ‘South Kylemore School’. Colony youth also attended Russian language classes in the evenings.

South Kylemore School, c. 1936. Back row (l-r): Fred Hoolaeff, Nick Ogloff, George Arishenkoff, John Hoolaeff, Helen Morozoff, Helen Makortoff, Lucy Makortoff. Middle row: Mike Arishenkoff, Peter Arishenkoff, Bill Samsonoff, Peter Konkin, Peter Pereverzoff, Mary Hoodekoff, Donalda Mawhinney (teacher), John Cazakoff. Front row: Alex Pereverzoff Bill Morozoff, Larry Hoodekoff, Alex Hoolaeff, Mac Pereverzoff, Doris Hoodekoff, Bill Konkin, Annette Hoodekoff, Mary Konkin, Mary Pereverzoff, Nellie Makortoff. Front: Beverly Broley (teacher’s niece). Remembering Times.

Demise of the CCUB

The twelve years of Peter P. Verigin’s leadership from 1927 to 1939 saw a number of remarkable accomplishments. However, despite his concerted efforts, the Doukhobor leader was unable to eliminate the massive CCUB debt (although he did reduce this debt by over half), nor bring about a lasting unity with other Doukhobor groups (the Society of Named Doukhobors collapsed in 1937). At the same time, his irregular character and actions eroded the enthusiasm and confidence of the CCUB membership, whose zeal for utopian communal living was already in decline.

When the Great Depression struck in the Thirties, the financial situation of the CCUB deteriorated rapidly because all the communal property was mortgaged and no further loans could be negotiated due to lack of collateral. With no credit, and with membership and cash income falling rapidly, Verigin attempted to sell off CCUB assets to raise the necessary capital to enable the corporation to continue to operate, and at the same time, to stave off the ever-increasing demands of its creditors.

Front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, October 18, 1934 announcing the sale of CCUB holdings in Saskatchewan.

To this end, in October of 1934, Peter P. Verigin publicly announced that the CCUB would be selling its entire holdings – land, stock, equipment and elevators – in the districts of Kylemore, Kelvington and Veregin, Saskatchewan. This represented the wholesale liquidation of all CCUB capital assets in the province. A similar announcement was made in April of 1935. Later that month, some Saskatchewan members of the CCUB were served with notices to vacate their villages and lands. These events were met with shock and disbelief by the Saskatchewan members, who had not been consulted.

Reputedly, several offers to purchase the Kylemore lands were made to the CCUB central office in Brilliant, British Columbia; however, no sale ever materialized. Nevertheless, in April of 1936, the Saskatchewan branch of the CCUB sold the elevator at Kylemore to James Richardson. The CCUB trading store in Kylemore was closed later that year. In light of these events, all the Kylemore colonists could do was wait in anticipation of a better tomorrow. But for the CCUB, prosperity never returned.

CCUB elevator in Kylemore. When completed in 1920, it was the largest in Saskatchewan. It was sold in 1936 to J. Richardson and resold  to the Pioneer Grain Company, which operated it until 1990. Wadena News.

By 1937, a combination of complex factors, including the Great Depression, financial mismanagement, diminishing revenues, a declining membership base, mounting debts, depredations against communal property, and government assimilation efforts, all unhelped by Verigin’s increasingly erratic leadership style, led to the eventual (and arguably, inevitable) bankruptcy of the CCUB. The following year, in 1938, the National Trust Company foreclosed on its mortgage over the CCUB lands and chattels in Kylemore, Kelvington and elsewhere. Thereafter, the CCUB ceased to exist as a corporate entity.

Break-Up of the Colony

Following the bankruptcy and foreclosure of the CCUB, the Doukhobors living in Kylemore were faced with a difficult dilemma: either join the majority of their brethren in British Columbia or else remain in Saskatchewan as independent farmers. Many of them were already middle-aged, and to begin a new life with nothing, dependent only on themselves, with no Community to fall back on, must have been daunting prospect.

William W. Kanigan and his mother doing chores on their farm near Kylemore, SK, c.1940.  Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

About a third of the Kylemore Doukhobors immediately moved to British Columbia in 1938 to be part of the larger group living there. Numerous others followed the move to British Columbia during the War Years (1939-1945) to avoid the military call-up. Still others decided to abandon their old way of life altogether, take their few possessions and depart into the world unknown.

Approximately a third of the Kylemore Doukhobors chose to repurchase their lands from the National Trust Company in 1938 under agreements for sale. Payment was made on a one-third crop share basis, as the Doukhobors had little or no cash. They took possession of their land, moved in village structures (dwellings, barns, stables, etc.) or utilized existing ones on the land, and purchased on credit the necessary horses, implements and equipment to set up their own farming practices. Fortunately, there were prosperous years in the Forties, and within ten years of independent farming, all the Doukhobors obtained clear title to their land and many acquired additional land, modern vehicles and machinery for their farms.

Social gathering of Kylemore Doukhobors, c. 1947. Photo courtesy Peter and Agnes Malekoff.

While most Doukhobors stayed on as farmers, several established stores and business in Kylemore. In the Thirties, William M. Fudikuf owned a general store in Kylemore, selling everything from groceries and furniture, to cream separators and machinery. In the late Forties, Peter G. Kanigan ran a blacksmith shop, general store and gas pumps. Finally, in the Fifties, Louis L. Osachoff operated a general store in the hamlet.

Those families who remained in Kylemore continued to uphold their Doukhobor faith and culture. In the Forties, they formed the Kylemore Doukhobor Society, which became their main religious and social organization. Moleniye (prayer meetings) and children’s Sunday school classes were held weekly at the Sunderland School. Petrov Den’ (Peters Day) was commemorated annually with picnics at Fishing Lake. A local choir was organized, and visiting choirs from British Columbia and elsewhere in Saskatchewan were always welcomed. In 1954, the Society purchased the former South Kylemore School and moved it into Kylemore for use as a ‘prayer home’ or meeting house. The Society remained active until the Nineties, when, due to an aging and dwindling congregation, it was dissolved. About six Doukhobor families remain in the Kylemore district today.

Kylemore Doukhobors holding moleniye prayer service, 1959.  Photo courtesy William W. Kanigan.

Conclusion

Today, there are few physical reminders of the CCUB colony at Kylemore. An abandoned two-story village dom stands on the north side of the No. 5 Highway, a silent sentinel of the communal past, while at least two smaller village dwellings can be found nearby. The concrete foundations of other village doms, barns and reservoirs dot the surrounding countryside. Many of the original Doukhobor colonists lay at rest in God’s Blessing Cemetery, still in active use. Recently, a stream running through the former colony was christened Blahoslovenie (Blessing) Creek in their memory.

A more enduring legacy of the Kylemore Colony is its living one. For today, the descendants of the original 300 colonists, who surely number in the hundreds if not thousands, can be found throughout Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the rest of Canada. They continue to preserve the memory of these pioneering Spirit Wrestlers.

The Chernoff Village dom (originally two stories) still stands west of Kylemore, SK. Photo by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

A dwelling from the Arishenkoff Village, shrouded in vines south of Kylemore, SK. Photo by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Bibliography

  • British Columbia. Report of Royal Commission on matters relating to the sect of Doukhobors in the province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria, King’s Printer: 1913, p. 58).
  • Dawson, Carl A., Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1936).
  • Friesen, John W. and Michael M. Verigin, The Community Doukhobors: A People in Transition (Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1996).
  • Gooliaff, Cecil, Lawrence Kalmakoff, Randy Konkin, Jennifer Osachoff, Wally Vanin, Doukhobors of Saskatchewan: Past, Present and Future (November 1972).
  • Hawthorn, Harry (ed.), The Doukhobors of British Columbia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1955).
  • Hudson’s Bay Archives, File No. RG1/21/7.
  • Kalmakoff, Jonathan J. Field research notes for Kylemore district; July 2003; June 2008.
  • Kalmakoff, Jonathan J., Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada, 1930 Saskatchewan Membership List (Regina: 2002).
  • Kelvington Historical Society, Tears Toil and Triumph, Story of Kelvington and District (Kelvington: 1980).
  • Kuroki History Book Committee, Seems Like Only Yesterday, 1892-1980: The History of Kuroki and District (Kuroki: 1980).
  • Lapshinoff, Steve, Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada, 1937 Membership List (Crescent Valley: self published, 2001).
  • Lethbridge Herald, “Doukhobors Reorganize Community Life” (April 4, 1928).
  • Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Indian Affairs, Volume 6707, Reel C-8077.
  • Library and Archives Canada, RG95, Corporations Branch, Series 1, Volume 1297, The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Limited.
  • Malekoff, Peter P. Personal interviews with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, July 31, 2003 and June 21, 2008.
  • Manitoba Free Press, “Doukhobor Head Here: Tells of Work New Community Hopes to Enter Into” (June 14, 1918).
  • Manitoba Free Press, “Land for New Doukhobor Settlement” (June 1, 1918).
  • Manitoba Free Press, “Views of Wadena, Saskatchewan” (May 24, 1926).
  • Popoff, Eli A. Tanya (Grand Forks: Mir Publication Society, 1975).
  • R.M. of Kelvington No. 366, Tax Rolls (1921-1939).
  • Saskatchewan Archives Board, Cummins Rural Directory Map for Saskatchewan; Map Nos. 172 & 193 (1920, 1922, 1926, 1930).
  • Snesarev, Vladimir N. (Harry W. Trevor), The Doukhobors in British Columbia (University of British Columbia Publication, Department of Agriculture, 1931).
  • Sysoev, Theodore I. Correspondence with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 8, 2008.
  • Tarasoff, Koozma, J., Plakun Trava (Grand Forks: Mir Publication Society, 1982).
  • Veregin, Nora. Personal interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, August 1, 2008.
  • Wadena Herald, “Doukhobors to Stay: Veregin Closes Deal for 10,000 Acres of Prairie Land” (June 27, 1918).
  • Wadena History Book Committee, Remembering Times: Wadena and Area Dating Back to 1882 (2 vols.) (Wadena: 1992).
  • Winnipeg Free Press, “Doukhobor Group Will Resist Any Attempt to Evict Them from Farms” (April 27, 1935).
  • Winnipeg Free Press, “Doukhobors Are Leaving Sask.” (October 18, 1934).
  • Winnipeg Free Press, “Doukhobors Will Sell Property in Saskatchewan” (April 8, 1935).
  • Woodcock, George & Ivan Avakumovic, The Doukhobors (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1977).

View Kylemore, Saskatchewan Doukhobor Villages, 1918-1938 in a larger map

An earlier version of this article was published in a compilation by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff and Anne Sanderson entitled Their Story in the Wadena News from July 9 to August 20, 2008. That compilation received a first place award for Best Saskatchewan Cultural Story of the Year at the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association’s 2009 Better Newspaper Competition Premier Awards.

This article was subsequently reproduced by permission in:

The Mysterious Death of Peter Verigin

by Larry Hannant

Eighty years ago, the charismatic Doukhobor leader Peter “Lordly” Verigin died in a spectacular railway explosion near Farron, British Columbia.  Today, his death remains unresolved.  Reproduced by permission from the pages of The Beaver magazine (November 2004, Vol. 84:5), the following article by Larry Hannant discusses the various competing theories – some controversial – that have been formulated to explain his mysterious death.

Known by the single name “Lordly,” he lived like royalty among a modest people whose motto was “Toil and Peaceful Life.”  He was revered as a semi-deity.  On his travels, he was often accompanied by a choir of young women singing his praises.  He commanded an empire that encompassed tens of thousands of acres of land spread over three western Canadian provinces.  His public statements were studied by politicians and became the grist for many newspaper headlines.

Peter “Lordly” Verigin (1859-1924)

Peter Vasilyevich Verigin’s aristocratic presence inspired thousands of his Doukhobor followers. But it also incited jealousy, both outside and inside his community.

When 7,500 Doukhobors first arrived in Canada in 1899, they were labelled “Clifford Sifton’s pets” because government critics believed that the new Russian immigrants were receiving excessively generous treatment from the interior minister, who regarded them as a key component of peopling the prairie West.

Farmers and townsfolk in the areas bordering Verigin’s empire resented his economic power.  The Doukhobor commune relied on a cheap, internal labour supply and bought its supplies in bulk from outside the region.  The contempt of residents in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia for these Russian immigrants and their insular way of life was shared by provincial governments.  Official bias was demonstrated by restrictions on the Doukhobors’ right to vote, by non-recognition of their marriages, and by determined efforts to corral their children into state schools.

During World War I, people whose sons were forced into military service objected that young Doukhobor men won exemption because their pacifism was recognized by the Canadian government.  At the end of the war and into the early 1920s, nativist sentiment mounted, especially in British Columbia.  The Doukhobors were a highly visible target, and no Doukhobor was more visible than Peter Verigin.

Verigin also had enemies among the Doukhobors themselves.  In the space of a few years after 1899, three internal dissident movements emerged.  One was the Independents, who surveyed the prosperity Canada promised and reached out for it.  They resented Lordly’s restraining hand on their ambition, and thousands abandoned the commune.

Another challenge to Verigin was Doukhobor zealots, who were appalled by the turncoats in their own ranks.  The path of private accumulation chosen by the Independents represented an abandonment of true Doukhobor principles, and the zealots took it unto themselves to warn any of their fellows who contemplated such a desertion.  These Sons of Freedom, as they would become known, started by burning threshing machines and other signs of modernity.  But by the early 1920s, the radicals were attacking bigger targets – schools built by the Doukhobor commune and even Verigin’s splendid home at Brilliant, in southern BC.  Verigin found himself squeezed between determined opponents of assimilation and governments that were determined to enforce it.

Even among Verigin’s closest followers there were skeptics, dubbed “pseudo-believers.”  They were the managers of his vast commercial empire who had acquired a degree of power and comfort unknown to ordinary Doukhobors.  Interested in material gain, they supported Verigin as long as he served their interests.  By 1924, some were wondering if it was in their interests to see him out of the way.

Verigin also faced a formidable challenge in his son, Peter Petrovich Verigin.  Raised in Russia by Lordly’s divorced wife, the younger Verigin visited Canada in 1905.  The reuniting of father and son yielded not reconciliation but recrimination.  Peter Petrovich, then twenty-five, openly ridiculed his father as a “crook and bandit, liar and cheat,” and an “old reprobate” who had no mind for “anything but young girls.”  No one else dared to speak this way about Lordly, and after a few months the son was ordered to return to Russia.  Before departing, Peter Petrovich reportedly threatened to kill his father. 

Peter Lordly Verigin, second from left, in 1924, shortly before his death, with his companion Mary Strelieff. Photo courtesy Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection.

By October 1924, Peter Verigin saw before him many challenges. He hinted to his followers that his remaining time with them might be brief. Few guessed just how brief.

Late in the evening of October 28, 1924, Verigin boarded a Canadian Pacific Railway train at Brilliant, BC, the headquarters of his empire, bound for Grand Forks, 140 kilometres west.  The sixty-five-year-old leader was accompanied by his current favourite, twenty-year-old Mary Strelaeff.  Already on the train was the newly elected MLA for Grand Forks, John McKie.  They were joined at Castlegar by other passengers, including several Doukhobors.

Just past one in the morning, shortly after the train had left Farron, between Castlegar and Grand Forks, a powerful explosion shattered the coach’s dark silence.  Centred under Verigin’s seat, the explosion blew away the roof and sides of the car coach.  Of the twenty-one persons in the car, all but two were killed or injured.  More than half of the passengers were blown clear of the car.  The body of Peter Verigin, one leg gone entirely, was found fifteen metres from the car, near John McKie’s.  Verigin, Strelaeff, McKie, and six others died in the explosion.

Speculation immediately turned to a plot against Verigin.  Members of his own community, particularly the Sons of Freedom, were suspected.  The remains of an Italian clock wired to a battery were found blown almost seventy-five metres away by the force of the blast.  This discovery turned the inquiry toward the theory that a time bomb was responsible.

The CPR wished to discount any claim that the gas used to heat and light the car caused the blast.  This might explain why a CPR investigator pointed to a mysterious and never-located Russian watchmaker, Metro Grishen, whose bomb-making expertise could have been used by dissidents within the Doukhobor community.

Copy of what may be the only photo of Coach No. 1586, which carried Doukhobor leader Peter “Lordly” Verigin, after its explosion on October 28, 1924 near Farron, BC. Rare Books and Special Collections, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia Library.

But Grishen could equally have been a tool of the Soviet government, intent upon punishing Verigin’s affront to the USSR.  Verigin’s star was not high in Russia.  Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet officials had made overtures to Verigin, inviting him and his followers back to Mother Russia to assist in its reconstruction.  The Doukhobors, after all, were skilled farmers who knew how to operate a commune.  But after considering the idea, Verigin demurred, snubbing the Soviets.

In the 1960s, the RCMP would devote many hours to tracking down an entirely different theory – that Verigin’s own son, Peter Petrovich, was behind his father’s death.  The RCMP concluded in 1963 that there was too little evidence to confirm or refute this theory.  But one fact is certain: The younger Verigin would become the supreme Doukhobor leader in 1927 after heeding the call from the Doukhobor community to abandon Russia and come to Canada.

Another view, put forward by many Doukhobors at the time and that some continue to believe to the present day, was that the Canadian government had assassinated their revered leader.

Yet another theory suggests that the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan from Oregon killed Verigin, in order to throttle his contemplated move to Oregon.  In early 1924, Verigin had considered relocating his beleaguered people.  He visited Oregon and bought land there.  Locals feared any transfer of pacifist Russian “communists” to the US, and the prospect outraged the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan.

An intensive investigation by provincial police and the CPR yielded nothing.  A provincial government reward of $2,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction led to neither.  Accident or assassination?  Every possible explanation of the cause of Peter Verigin’s death still remains nothing more than a theory.

Some seven thousand people attended the funeral of Peter “Lordly” Verigin on a hillside overlooking Brilliant, BC. Photo courtesy Simon Fraser University Doukhobor Collection.

Notes

For more information about the mysterious death of Peter Verigin, visit Explosion on the Kettle Valley Line: Death of Peter Verigin. This website, which is part of the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project, provides a vast amount of historical information which students and other users may use for historical research.

The Mounted Police and the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan, 1899-1909

by Carl Betke

With the arrival of the Doukhobors on the Canadian Prairies, the North West Mounted Police were assigned to assist the immigrant settlers in adjusting to their new environment. In doing so, they were expected to demonstrate tolerance towards the settlers’ diverse habits so long as they proved to be successful agricultural producers. In documenting Mounted Police confrontations with the Doukhobors during their first decade in Canada, from 1899 to 1909, historian Carl Betke demonstrates that the disruptive activities of a minority of the Doukhobor immigrants were handled very gently by the force in order to assure the agricultural production of a massive number of effective farmers. Reproduced by permission from Saskatchewan History (27, 1974, No. 1).

After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, settlement in the prairie lands of western Canada increased gradually and the Indian and Metis population came to be regarded as a lessening threat to agricultural development. In the Canadian House of Commons critics of the government began to insist on reductions in the size of the North West Mounted Police force. In answer Sir John A. Macdonald, though he admitted that the previous principal purpose of the force, “to protect the few struggling settlers who were going in there from Indian outrages,” might now have ceased to exist, contended that the police were still required to keep the peace. He alluded to the influx from below the border of “people with all kinds of habits” including raiding, stealing of cattle and smuggling of liquor. His listeners, however, were not long satisfied, for what sort of advertisement was Macdonald’s description for intending immigrants? Every increase in western immigration and settlement ought to reduce the need for a special police force.

Full dress mounted parade by members of the North-West Mounted Police, Calgary, Alberta, c. 1901. Library and Archives Canada PA-202180.

Some reductions were made in the size of the force but, even before the accession of the Laurier government, a new justification of the North West Mounted Police was developed. From the early 1890’s until the advent of the first World War, supporters of the force argued that increasing settlement required greater distribution of the police to perform new services for the struggling pioneers. Besides protecting property and watching the normally docile Indians, the police were now required to take responsibilities for prairie fire prevention and suppression, quarantine enforcement during times of epidemic and quarantine enforcement at the border to prevent the spread of contagious animal diseases. As the North West Mounted Police Comptroller at Ottawa, Fred White, remarked in 1903, ” ‘Police’ is almost a misnomer . . .” But, White assured Laurier, should their services be administered separately by the different government departments, not only would the cost rise but the country would be deprived of the presence of a disciplined force ready for instant mobilization.

Importance was now attached to those police duties which increased the “comfort and security of the settler” who was unaccustomed to the pioneer life and required not only information but also assistance, even to find stray animals. The police often provided relief to destitute farmers or those overcome by winter conditions. New patrol procedures initiated in the late 1880’s, while intended to prevent crime by circulating police officers visibly throughout the countryside, were in fact used to watch over a remarkable range of pioneer activity:

In each District a number of small Detachments are placed at convenient points, each, immediately under a non-Commissioned Officer, or senior Constable. These detachments patrol all the time, and carry patrol slips with remark columns, which are signed by all the settlers they call upon, and every week each of these detachments send in their slips, with a report on the state of the country, crops, crime, settlers coming in and stock they bring, disease, if any, among stock; Indians seen, etc., etc…

The police often encountered the immigrants as early as at their first disembarkation from the train: the police would even sometimes drive them “over the most desirable districts for settlement,” providing not only transport but also “cooking utensils, and giving advice and information.” In special cases the police were asked to supply transportation to foreign immigration promoters: one Berliner was driven “to see the German colonists near Regina, who have made the best progress in farming, as he proposes to take letters from them to further his work in Europe.” Once settlers were established countless police reports on their progress were submitted to the offices of the Commissioner and the Comptroller, for referral to the appropriate officials should action seem necessary.

Instructions to patrolmen emphasized that reports should include fairly detailed information about the agricultural progress of the settlers but they did not normally require comment about the ethnic background of the settlers. Among patrolmen it was common, nevertheless, to identify ethnic groups in reports, so that the relative suitability of different groups was thus incidentally compared. One report, for example, stated that:

the majority of the settlers who are in reduced circumstances are Austria-Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians and Russian-Germans from the Black Sea District, but few of whom appear to have brought a single dollar with them into the Country. With the British and German settlers it is otherwise.

While the British, American, Scandinavian and German settlers were generally believed superior acquisitions, other groups distinguished themselves with the police by their unacceptable behaviour. In police reports it is difficult clearly to distinguish personal antipathies to “foreign” elements from legitimate careful judgments of the limits of their agricultural suitability. Ultimately, however, the most important criterion of a settler’s merit was the measure of his self-sufficiency and prosperity, despite any patrolman’s private feelings about a group. So, for example, early doubtful expressions about the desirability of the “unclean” Galician settlers were eventually replaced by grudging approval of their productive success. In fact the police were often called upon to produce reports to counteract sweeping condemnations levelled at the “Galicians” by fellow settlers. Similarly, a distaste for allegedly isolationist habits among Mennonites was overridden by evidence of obvious agricultural ability. On the other hand, disapproval (sometimes accompanied by overtones of personal prejudice) of certain Belgian, French and Jewish colonies in police reports was never reversed, at least in part because those colonies quickly proved to be economic failures.

In only two outstanding cases did alien habits threaten to overshadow productive expertise in importance. In the Mormon example, police attention to the settlers’ supposed polygamous propensities was discontinued in order that Canada might reap the benefits of their irrigation experiments; in the Doukhobor example, the Canadian government waited in vain for disturbances to subside, repeatedly pointing out their remarkable farming progress. In these situations, in which the police sense of outrage was not matched by that of the government, we see most clearly that the police were meant to minimize alien social variables while maximizing agricultural expertise in their evaluations of immigrants. They were to assist the settlers in adjusting to the new environment.

A constable of the North-West Mounted Police, c. 1890. Library and Archives Canada PA-122660.

By describing a most extreme case, the following account of Mounted Police confrontations with Doukhobors in Saskatchewan illustrates the tolerance with which settlers of diverse habits were treated as long as the majority proved to be successful farm producers. One must keep in mind that Doukhobor demonstrations never involved a majority of the Doukhobor settlers and that, as a rule, the demonstrators did not employ violent tactics. The police were not, that is to say, confronted with anything like a Doukhobor “uprising”. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that despite some animosity on the part of neighbouring settlers and despite the limits to which police patience was occasionally driven, the demonstrators received exceptionally benign treatment. Much more serious aberrations would have to have been displayed to undermine the Canadian government’s determination to fill the west with good farmers.

Doukhobor immigrants to the North-West Territories began arriving at Winnipeg on January 27, 1899; by September, 7,427 Doukhobors had entered the area. 1,472 of them shortly established themselves on the North Saskatchewan river west of Carlton near Battleford; 1,404 settled in the “Thunder Hill” or “North” colony on the border of Manitoba and the Territories, and the largest group, some 4,478, located in the vicinity of Yorkton. Occasionally the North West Mounted Police would refer to members of the last group as “Cyprus” Doukhobors because about a quarter of them had been temporarily situated in Cyprus. Canadian officials had accepted from Russia’s Count Tolstoy and other Russian and English patrons recommendations of the moral uprightness and agricultural ability of the “Russian Quakers”. Upon their arrival even their appearance fostered great expectations:

. . . their fine physical appearance . . . coupled with the not less important fact that they are skillful agriculturalists, thrifty and moral in character, affords good grounds for congratulations to those who have been instrumental in their coming to this country, especially when it is considered that this has been brought about without incurring any expenditure of public moneys, other than about the amount usually paid in the form of bonuses for continental emigrants.

The police found much to admire in the Doukhobor pioneer operations. They showed unique skills in breaking horses, constructing ovens of “home-made sun-dried bricks” and building clean and sturdy though dark houses and stables of sod, mud and logs. They were orderly, quiet, well-organized, “patient, industrious and self-supporting;” the women proved equal to the men in strength and skill at manual labour and attended to household duties besides. From the Yorkton area nearly seven hundred Doukhobor men left to work for wages during the first summer, principally at railway construction. Some of the women supplemented their income as domestic servants. It was true that the police learned of one case of collective “indecent exposure”, that many were slow to depart from their vegetarian principles and that “their communistic way” would prevent them from quickly assimilating Canadian customs, but no objections had been noticed to the announcements which the police made to various Doukhobor assemblies about the ordinances relating to prairie fires, game regulations, registration of births and deaths and control of contagious diseases. The signs in general were of peaceful and successful adaptation to western Canadian life. The greatest excitement was provided by the efforts of California land agents and speculators to lure several hundred Doukhobor families to California, efforts vigorously and successfully resisted by Canadian Immigration officials. They were not willing to give up so easily a people as productive as the Doukhobors were showing themselves to be.

Doukhobor family, Saskatchewan, c. 1903. Glenbow Archives NA-2878-15

But it soon became evident that not all of the Doukhobors were happy with the laws requiring individual registration of land holdings and registration of the births, marriages and deaths among their people. These requirements evidently violated an ingrained Doukhobor tradition to submit to no human authority. The federal government officials, according to one recent analysis, had three alternatives open to them: they might immediately have insisted on total compliance with the laws (but the cause of the “Russian Quakers” was popular abroad and, to a degree, in Canada), or they might have effected a clear special set of compromises with the laws for the Doukhobors. Instead, they elected to follow a third course, evading the issue and hoping that the conflicting demands of the Doukhobors and the State would work themselves out without any irrevocable government intercession. Officials were optimistic “that as they come to appreciate the benefits of Canadian laws and customs, the prejudice will gradually disappear, and they will gladly comply with the requirements of the government. ” It was a plausible course of inaction, but it left the Mounted Police to oversee the “gradual” but turbulent transition stage. There was no set strategy for such an operation and Christen Junget (later Assistant Commissioner Junget), the North West Mounted Police Commanding Officer at Yorkton in those years, recalled in his retirement that Mounted Police policy with respect to the troublesome Doukhobors in his district amounted to the single catchphrase: “Leave it for Junget.”

Some remarks of Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, illustrate the ambiguity of the police role in relation to the Doukhobors. On February 15, 1902 two delegates from the Thunder Hill colony presented to Sifton the Doukhobor claims for communal exemption from registration of land tenure, births, deaths and marriages. In the manner of a teacher setting school boys straight, Sifton suggested that if the Doukhobors would simply get on with registering their homesteads individually they would be permitted to live and work together in village communities and would not be compelled to fulfill homestead requirements individually. Aside from that concession, though, Canadian laws (which, Sifton was sure, had proven universally beneficial) would be “carried out in every case without fear” by “the strong hand of the law which protects you and your families from danger . . .” Of course, the Doukhobors were to rest assured that the officials of his department would “willingly do no injury to your conscience or your principles.” Perhaps this position, which required the police to be simultaneously not only the “strong hand of the law” but also sympathetic to unique Doukhobor principles, justified the police in referring to the Doukhobors as “Sifton’s pets”.

A massive Doukhobor demonstration took place in the fall of 1902. The recruits, most of whom came from the villages just to the north of Yorkton, undertook a somewhat undirected march. This phenomenon has been attributed to a combination of factors arising from the adjustments necessary for the Doukhobors to live in this new setting and from the erratic leadership of Peter Verigin. In the first place, the pressure to have the Doukhobors register their land individually exacerbated divisions within the Doukhobor communities. Those inclined to obey the law were joined, in the eyes of zealous traditionalists, with those heretics who had worked on the railways and adopted other such non-Doukhobor habits as wearing “English” clothes and eating meat. In addition, though, the entrenchment of the traditionalists were strengthened by their desire to please Peter Verigin upon his expected imminent arrival among them: Verigin had been sending fancifully philosophical letters condemning the use of cattle in such a paradise of easily cultivated vegetation and speculating about the benefit to the brain of “solar heat” in some haven “near the sun.” Thus, mystical Doukhobor claims to be searching for this kind of hot paradise during their marches were joined to that desire of some to embarrass the government and force concessions to their demands on the issues of land and personal registration.

At first Corporal Junget registered some alarm. On October 22, 1902 he reported that there had recently been considerable missionary movement amongst them. From the Kamsack and Assiniboine villages they have walked in bands of several hundred (men and women) visiting other villages holding meetings and trying to make converts to their very extreme and somewhat dangerous views.

Doukhobor pilgrims leaving Yorkton to evangelize the world, 1902.  Note the mounted escort of N.W.M.P. special constables in the upper left foreground. Library and Archives Canada C014077.

But the march was soon recognized to be non-violent and Junget’s concern changed:

. . . the Doukhobors themselves are quite harmless, but they carry no provisions with them whatever, and their number increasing every day, it will be impossible for them to find shelter and food in the villages they go through, and no doubt many of the women and children will perish if a snow storm sets in. I have reported the above to the different officials of the Department of Interior up here …

North West Mounted Police Commissioner Perry detailed Inspectors D’A. E. Strickland and J. 0. Wilson with a party of men to afford protection to settlers along the Doukhobors’ way if the need should arise and to give any assistance Interior Department officials might ask. When the marchers reached Yorkton on October 28 the enormity of the situation appalled Junget: there were about 1,800 of these “Doukhobors seized by religious mania” for whom shelter had to be found and special guards posted to prevent disturbances in the town. The “pilgrims” were judged “peaceful and law-abiding” but “the immediate assistance of three or four constables is required to assist Dominion officials in their treatment of the people and for patrolling of abandoned villages” to “protect property.” Perry sent the desired four constables and wired Comptroller White in Ottawa for instructions, but was advised only to continue assistance to the Immigration officials.’ Colonization Agent C. W. Speers posted a “public notice” warning that all persons interfering with or appropriating any property of the marching Doukhobors “without legal right” or without giving notice to Inspector Strickland or his officer in charge would be prosecuted according to the law.

Efforts to disperse the missionaries back to their villages failed; the Doukhobors determined on October 29 to push on in a south-easterly direction. On November 2 Speers asked Inspector Strickland for a police escort to accompany the “pilgrims” in order “to prevent any inconvenience or annoyance to the other inhabitants of the Country, and avoid as far as possible, any breach of the Peace or collision which would be likely to result in violence.” On November 4 an officer and twenty non-commissioned officers and constables were placed under instructions from the Superintendent of Immigration, Frank Pedley. As this force travelled to catch up with the marching Doukhobors, a comical incident illustrated the extent to which the Department of the Interior (and, therefore, the police) were willing to take care of the stubborn “fanatics”. “We came to Birtle, Manitoba,” recalled Junget later,

and we heard that they were short of diapers. 1 told Jim Spalding to go to the departmental store and buy up a lot. And he blew up: “I didn’t join the Force to buy diapers for Doukhobors!”

Nevertheless, the diapers had to be obtained: Junget bought them himself.

Wintry conditions were setting in; it was decided the zealots should be stalled at Minnedosa, Manitoba, then returned to Yorkton and thence to their homes. At noon on Sunday, November 9 the wanderers were located in the Minnedosa rink with a Mounted Police guard at the door. At 5:00 p.m. a special train arrived to take them back to Yorkton but, upon leaving the rink, some 200 of the Doukhobors seemed determined to resume once more their eastward journey. Inspector Wilson’s report indicated only that “a few of the leaders” offered resistance “and had to be carried. About one hundred would get in a bunch and lock their arms and then bunches had to be broken up. which took considerable time.” The Yorkton Enterprise, however, provided a more graphic description: after the Doukhobors’ way had been blocked by the townspeople,

Agent Speers grabbed a fussy pilgrim by the arm and proceeded with him toward the cars, at the same time saying the others must follow. Some seemed inclined to do so, seeing which the spectators encouraged their wavering inclinations by vigorous means. Many of them, when seized by the arm, walked quietly to the cars, and were there received by the policemen in charge and placed in the cars. Others required vigorous application of Manitoba muscle, in the form of shoves and pushes, to make them at all inclined to obey the voice of authority. Others, resisting stubbornly all attempts to guide them in the desired direction, were unceremoniously downed by the more athletic of the spectators, and bodily carried to the train.

Once this minority was aboard, the others, who had remained in the rink observing the disturbance, resignedly followed and there were no further incidents during the train trip back to Yorkton. From Yorkton they were the next day escorted on their final foot journey to their villages; some had just thirty miles to walk, others as far as Swan River. The presence of crowds of spectators encouraged the Swan River men to hold back for a mile or two but they too soon followed the police lead, in fact developed a readiness to “do anything” for the police, as it was “snowing very hard and cold.” One escorting patrolman found it “very difficult to get information from the Doukhobors, as very few of them could or would speak English,” but they “all seemed to pay the greatest respect to the police, and at all times during the trip would do anything you told them to do.” Moreover, they were “a very clean people, their houses, stables, etc., being far ahead of the majority of settlers that I have seen in the country.”

The Doukhobor pilgrims carrying their helpless on their trek, 1902.  Library and Archives Canada C009784.

It subsequently became North West Mounted Police policy to “arrange for patrols to visit their [Doukhobor] villages occasionally, and keep an eye on them generally.” If pilgrimages occurred police were directed to assist Immigration officials “towards persuading these people to remain at their villages.” Coincidentally Peter Verigin’s impressive arrival at Yorkton in late December, 1902 convinced most officials that their troubles with the Doukhobors were at an end. Whether, as Junget originally thought, Verigin controlled and quieted the majority of the pilgrims, or the police patrols created the entire effect despite Verigin, in any case no further mass wanderings occurred. Instead the police were involved with fragmentary groups of two or three dozen demonstrators who began to develop some highly embarrassing tactics. The first report of nudity came at the end of November, 1902 from the Rosthern area in Battleford district. The Doukhobors in question were evidently naked at their own meetings, not particularly in revolt, but Commissioner Perry thought it opened “a very large question as to our treatment of the Doukhobors.” Clearly they were “not conforming to the laws of the country,” but Perry hesitated to enforce them without specific authority from the Interior Department, “as in all cases of infractions of the law it is on account of their religious belief.” No such specific instructions were forthcoming.

Soon the demonstrations and the nudity coincided; it is to be suspected that the curiosity and discomfiture with which certain police officers investigated meeting-house nudity simply demonstrated to the Doukhobors how effective public nudity might be. Enterprising newspaper and private photographers then increased the temptation by “offering inducements” to encourage Doukhobors to pose in a nude state. Heading off a march by a group of determined nudists took some ingenuity. One naive young constable in the Battleford district was forced to desperate measures:

I told a Doukhobor girl to tell the others that if they would stop and not march, but get their picture taken I would send it to the papers. They stopped and asked me to stand alongside of them. I told the photographer not to show the photograph or plate to anybody until I had seen it. … It was my intention to destroy the plate. …

Needless to say, his trust in the photographer was misplaced: information about the circulation of a photograph of nude Doukhobors flanked by a strapping North West Mounted Police constable reached Inspector Parker at Saskatoon by way of a Toronto Globe reporter who saw a copy in Moose Jaw. Constable Melanson was found guilty of disgraceful conduct, fined $5.00 and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour. Two weeks later the Commissioner was still sending out confidential letters trying to retrieve circulating copies of that photograph.

Punishment of nude pilgrims refusing to be dispersed to their homes was never very effective. They would be charged under the Vagrancy Act for indecent exposure and incarcerated in the Regina jail for several months. In jail, however, they were no less uncooperative than outside, refusing to eat regularly, carrying vegetarianism to the extremes of eating grass and refusing to work. Sifton believed it useless to flog them or to apply other normal disciplinary measures; surely a period of time on a frugal diet of bread and water with minimal special attention would bring them around. Rather than to free them all at the same time, the policy was to release them in “batches”.

By 1905 the Interior Department concluded that the Doukhobors had been in the country too long to remain in the position of special wards of the government; the Deputy Minister announced that henceforth they should be treated “exactly as other members of the community.” The police took that to mean much more harshly than previously and were delighted to see a Yorkton magistrate recommend that the men in a marching party apprehended in August, 1905 should be committed to Brandon Asylum. Unfortunately the North West Territorial Government refused to send the men to the Asylum, doubting that they were in fact insane. The police expressed disappointment: “if we are permitted to deal with them with a firm hand,” thought Comptroller White, “they will soon become reconciled to obedience to the laws of the country.”

But Junget did not consider this occasional restlessness “to be any trouble compared with what may arise between the Community and Non-Community Doukhobors,” that is, between those who wished to keep to the traditional communal style of life and those who wished to register their own homesteads. By February, 1905 Junget had lost all faith in Peter Verigin; he now believed Verigin’s influence to be instrumental in inciting dedicated “Community” Doukhobors to intimidate and even occasionally to assault prospective independent Doukhobor settlers, particularly in the northern villages near the Swan River. The police strength in Yorkton sub-district was increased to permit a strong detachment at Kamsack for constant patrol of the troubled area, evidently with good calming effect. The most worrisome villages were those near Fort Pelly, where the police kept anxious watch in order to try to prevent recurring incidence of “Community” Doukhobors taking forceable possession of or burning down the houses of “Independent” Doukhobors.

These homesteaders are waiting for a Dominion Lands Office to open the quarter-section homesteads on the Doukhobor reserves in Saskatchewan. The federal government’s cancellation of the Doukhobor entries led to an American-style land rush, one of the few witnessed in western Canada.

In April, 1906 the Interior Department inaugurated special investigations in areas of Doukhobor concentration of “unpatented homesteads entered for prior to September 1, 1905.” The purpose was to have all entries of Doukhobors in the community cancelled and then to ask the displaced Doukhobors to indicate their intention to become British subjects and conduct semi-regular homestead operations. If they did not re-enter the homesteads before May 1, 1907 they were to be placed on “reserves” of fifteen acres of land per occupant, the vacated lands to be opened for homestead application. Communities on non-registered land were no longer to be tolerated; the new Minister of the Interior, Frank Oliver, wanted them treated as any other squatters, to be served notices to vacate by the police. This news alone caused great excitement in the Fort Pelly area in early 1907; the tension was increased by orders to the police to put an end to the traditional illegal cutting of timber in that area and to seize the timber already cut. Further confusing the Doukhobors, Verigin had left them to their own devices since late 1906. The Fort Pelly police detachment expected another pilgrimage in the spring; Junget fretted that, as usual, “I presume we can do nothing with these people except watch their movements closely.” He worried that “the Doukhobor fanatics who have been repeatedly sent to prison from here” were once more gathering together, numbering near sixty in March. He would have liked to round up the leaders and have them “given the limit under the vagrancy act,” but was permitted only to give his detachments orders “if it should come to the worst to have them shut up in some uninhabited village and placed under guard.”

Constable Ross, N.W.M.P. holds this crowd in Yorkton, Saskatchewan during the 1907 Doukhobor homestead rush. Library and Archives Canada PA-022246.

The police presence seems to have delayed the group’s journeys’ meanwhile Junget was occupied with the land rush which resulted from the opening of Doukhobor lands in May. He had “never experienced a meaner job,” he wrote, than that of preserving order in the struggle for position at the land office in Yorkton. Then there was the associated problem of removing resistant “squatter” Community Doukhobors near Yorkton, an operation also necessary to some extent in the Prince Albert district. No sooner were the difficulties of these transfers cleared away than the anticipated pilgrimage from the Fort Pelly and Swan River areas got underway, triggered by the final dispossession. Over seventy strong, these Doukhobors proceeded in July in an easterly direction, rapidly passing from the jurisdiction of the Royal North West Mounted Police.

It was not long before they were back. Wintering at Fort William, they thoroughly alienated the populace of Ontario and were shipped by the Ontario government to Yorkton in late April, 1908. Junget, still having his troubles with the occasional local case of assault by Community Doukhobors on their independent neighbours, was in no mood to welcome them. The “seventy-one religiously demented Doukhobors, vagrants, consisting of men, women and children” were “absolutely destitute, have no homes to go to, most of them are nude and committing indecent acts already,” he reported. Verigin was typically unwilling to help and Junget, once the police did manage to get them off the train, struggling and disrobing, could not get any room for them at the Immigration Hall. He was ordered to see that they did not suffer or walk the streets nude; a disgruntled Junget would have preferred to send the worst of them “to a lunatic Asylum, and [have] the remainder of them charged with vagrancy, and . . . divided up between [sic] the different jails throughout the province.” The townspeople continued to resist Junget’s efforts to find lodging for the Doukhobors, but he finally succeeded in securing the Exhibition Building of the Agricultural Society and in having the naked Doukhobors carried in one by one. On May 18 they were moved, in the 1:00 a.m. stillness, to a house just outside the town.

The Saskatchewan government rejected Junget’s suggestion to commit the “worst” eighteen men and ten women to Brandon Asylum and the other thirty-one adults to jail as vagrants. Saskatchewan jails did not have the room and idea of such a concentration of Doukhobors in Brandon Asylum was not likely to appeal to the Manitoba government. Instead, on June 5 the Doukhobors were placed, again by a pre-dawn surprise manoeuvre, in a compound featuring a seven foot board fence three miles from Orcadia. An attempt to separate the men and women was soon abandoned; simply to prevent them from breaking out proved to require fifteen to twenty constables. Junget’s suggestion to remove eleven leaders in a body to await proceedings in a guard house, thus defusing the risk of an uprising in the enclosure, was evidently followed. The result, though, was unexpected: the remaining group went on a hunger strike, the adults preventing the children from eating. The children were removed, but the starvation continued, raising the spectre of embarrassing deaths in the compound. The police were therefore greatly relieved when Verigin was finally induced to take charge of the children and use his influence to bring the hunger strike to an end. The Doukhobors became sufficiently orderly that the camp was broken up in September.

Six men and six women identified as the “worst” ringleaders had in July been sentenced to six months in jail pending further proceedings. Junget would still have liked to see all of them incarcerated in Brandon Asylum and the rest of party jailed in order to avoid recurrences of the march but only four of the men were sent to Brandon, one by one to avoid too great a collective shock to their followers, and the others were released. This precipitated a re-congregation in an abandoned Doukhobor village; there followed continual reports that they intended marching to Brandon to demand the release of their leaders. A constable was placed on constant watch. Although he once had to bury a corpse left by the nude “fanatics” to decompose in the sun, his presence seemed to prevent any march. By the end of the summer some of them were departing from tradition to look for work.

At this time Verigin’s plans to locate a true Doukhobor community in the Kootenay area of British Columbia were maturing and a new chapter would soon be inaugurated in the history of relations between the Mounted Police and the Doukhobors. On the prairies the disruptive activities of a minority of the Doukhobor immigrants had been handled very gently in order to assure the agricultural production of a massive number of effective farmers. The police had been asked repeatedly to forego punitive measures to let the new settlers find their way to an acceptable mode of behaviour.

Group of Doukhobor pilgrims followed by small boys, Kamsack, Saskatchewan, c. 1909. Glenbow Archives NA-2878-17

The police did not act out of personal sympathy for the demonstrators. One may search Mounted Police records in vain for information which will lead to at least understanding of the motivations of the discontented Doukhobors. Police reports referred repeatedly to “Doukhobors seized by religious mania”, “fanatics”, “religiously demented Doukhobors” and “lunatics”; the police did not begin to exercise the considerable patience necessary to discover explanations for the Doukhobors’ unusual behaviour. Total lack of perception only increased police irritability, particularly when the activities of a small band of Doukhobors could command the attention of nearly a like number of policemen. Responsibility for the nature of the Mounted Police response to the Doukhobors rests elsewhere: with the federal government.

It is true that 1906 had marked a change in federal government policy: Doukhobors ignoring prescribed homesteading regulations were thereafter to be treated more harshly. It must be remembered, however, that those refusing to re-enter for homesteads according to the letter of the law were not quite summarily evicted: they were conceded reserves of land, even though this was at the inadequate rate of fifteen acres per occupant. The police, moreover, received no revised instructions for disbanding the ensuing Doukhobor march more roughly than they had preceding ones. Nor did that march involve massive numbers of recalcitrants reacting against harsh police treatment.

The very fact that so few Doukhobors (less than one percent of the Doukhobor population of Saskatchewan) participated in that final demonstration, despite its genesis as a result of what might easily have been described as a treacherous reversal of government policy, is significant. It sustains the argument that the peculiar indecisive course prescribed for the Mounted Police in this situation was justified. Nearly 2,000 had participated in the first march in 1902; it is remarkable that only a handful found sufficient reason to demonstrate thereafter. The police themselves apparently provided no cause. The adjustment of the great majority of the Doukhobors to peaceful agricultural pursuits represented a gratifying conclusion to the efforts of the Mounted Police and the government that directed them. That the policy they had enacted was not altogether successful would be proven in British Columbia, not in Saskatchewan.

This article originally appeared in the pages of Saskatchewan History, an award-winning magazine dedicated to encouraging both readers and writers to explore the province’s history. Published by the Saskatchewan Archives since 1948, it is the pre-eminent source of information and narration about Saskatchewan’s unique heritage.  For more information, visit Saskatchewan History online at: http://www.saskarchives.com/web/history.html.

Pacifism and Anastasia’s Doukhobor Village

by John W. Friesen

Following the death of Peter “Lordly” Verigin in 1924, his companion Anastasia F. Holuboff (1885-1965) was recognized by several hundred Doukhobors as his successor. The majority of Community Doukhobors, however, proclaimed Verigin’s son Peter “Chistiakov” Verigin as their leader. Disappointed, Anastasia and her followers broke away from the Community and in 1926 moved to the Shouldice district of Alberta where they established a break-away village. The following article by John W. Friesen, reproduced by permission from Alberta History (41(1) 1993), recounts Anastasia’s communal experiment in social, geographical and economic isolation. A combination of factors, including leadership style, internal dissension, land shortages and crop failures led to the eventual dissolution of the village in 1943.

The Doukhobor belief in pacifism originates from a conviction that every creature of God has a right to life. Doukhobors are fundamentally Russian in origin, and their beginnings were formalized in 1785 when a Russian Orthodox Archbishop named Ambrosius, called them “Doukhobortsi” or “Spirit Wrestlers.” He argued that their protestations against the state church were tantamount to fighting against the Spirit of God. The Doukhobors adopted the name, insisting that their interpretation of a living faith required a constant “wrestling in the Spirit.” Their orally-perpetuated belief system evolved, rather than being formally articulated, and consisted of communalism, pacifism to the extent of being vegetarians, an hereditary system of selecting leadership, a complete rejection of the written word, and a rejection of all forms of institutionalized religion including the priesthood. Doukhobors believe that each individual has a “Divine Spark” within them which entitles them to equality in the community and a right to life.

Doukhobor origins in Canada go back to 1899 when 7,500 souls immigrated from Russia and settled on the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border west of Winnipeg. During this time Canada was actively recruiting immigrants through the office of Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, and from 1890 to 1914, settlers from many parts of Europe and the United States took advantage of the generous invitation to receive title to free land. The Doukhobors established their first homes in the Kamsack-Yorkton district of Saskatchewan and built a series of 61 communal villages under one managing body. Four of the villages were temporary sites and 57 became functional. For a few years all went well, but the Canadian government became uneasy about the communal governance of the settlements and took steps to dismantle the organization.

Anastasia Holoboff (1885-1965). Photo courtesy Koozma J. Tarasoff.

After attacks by the Federal government and strong local community opposition to their communalism, the Doukhobors relocated to British Columbia in 1907. Their refusal to register communal property individually meant that their Saskatchewan lands were confiscated and assigned to incoming settlers. Their refusal cost them a total of 258,880 acres, of which 49,429 were cultivated. It was a boon for new immigrants to occupy lands already tilled, and in the frenzy of settlement no one paid much attention to Doukhobors.

As a token concession, the government made some of the lands available to the Doukhobors as a reserve, on the basis of fifteen acres per person. A total of 236 Doukhobors opted for individual land registration and thus became known as “Independent Doukhobors.” A smaller, more aggressive faction objected to their treatment and staged a public protest against the “militarism” of the government in the form of a march. Thereafter, they became known as the “Sons of Freedom.”

In British Columbia, Doukhobor life took on an entirely different format. Grain farming and cattle-raising were replaced by fruit-growing and the operation of sawmills, a brick factory and two jam factories. Some of the men worked for non-Doukhobor neighbours and contributed their earnings to the community – the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB) – through their leader, Peter V. Verigin. New homes were built comprising a total of 90 villages, each containing one or two large houses, each accommodating 30 to 50 people.

In 1915, an Alberta base was added to the CCUB. Verigin saw the advantage of establishing an Alberta “depot” to provide grain and flour to British Columbia members who in turn would furnish garden produce and other supplies to the Alberta farmers. He purchased 12,000 acres of farmland in the Cowley-Lundbreck area and placed three hundred people on the land. Verigin also supervised the building of a flour mill and two elevators.

The Alberta connection functioned effectively until the dissolution of the CCUB. There were occasional incidents of protest against the Alberta Doukhobors during the years following the First World War because of their pacifism, but for the most part there was little disruption of life in the community over such matters.

The CCUB was dismantled in 1938 due to a sudden and unprovoked bank foreclosure on the organization. Although the community had nearly $8 million worth of property, two business firms – National Trust and the Sun Life Assurance Company – held a series of demand notes worth four per cent of their total worth, or $319,276. The notes were called and the British Columbia Supreme Court allowed foreclosure action to commence. The way was then clear for the British Columbia government to take title to Doukhobor lands and properties. When the CCUB was dismantled, some lands were sold to Doukhobor adherents on a crop-share basis and the rest were liquidated to pay off the bank debt. The story of the foreclosure is a blot on Canadian history.

Residents of Anastasia’s village: Polly Verigin, Dunya Anutooshkin (seated) and Nastya Verigin, c. 1927.

On October 24, 1924, the revered leader of the CCUB, Peter the Lordly, died in a mysterious train explosion when he was travelling to Grand Forks. A much respected man, Peter the Lordly virtually ran the CCUB single-handedly, even though a board of trustees legally existed.

It is a Doukhobor custom that when a leader dies there is a six-week period of mourning. When the mourning is over the community reconvenes and a new leader is elected. After Peter the Lordly’s death, his longtime female companion, Anastasia Holuboff, wanted to be the next leader but she was defeated. Instead, the congregation chose Peter’s son, Peter Petrovich Verigin, who was living in Russia. He was subsequently contacted and moved to Canada to take over the CCUB. Anastasia was deeply offended; after all, it was she who had lived and travelled with Peter the Lordly for twenty years and she knew all of his teachings.

She reacted to the rejection by forming a breakaway group called “The Lordly Christian Community of Christian Brotherhood” and in 1926 she moved to Alberta. Anastasia purchased 1,120 acres of land near Shouldice and subsequently supervised the building of the first homes. From a small beginning, the village population eventually peaked at 165 souls with twenty-six separate homes on site.

From the very beginning, Anastasia’s village functioned quite differently from other Doukhobor settlements. Always there was an element of uncertainty about its stability and an atmosphere of mistrust prevailed. Administratively, Anastasia was never Peter Verigin’s equal, so she was constantly working to keep the community together. She lacked the dignity with which Verigin had carried himself, and she never gained the measure of respect that he had commanded.

Anastasia’s method of governance was to insist on respect from her villagers. On moving into the village, each resident was asked to sign a membership form with the following rules called, “Principal Points of the Doukhobor Religion”: Doukhobors do not have mortiferous firearms; do not kill animals for food; do not use intoxicating liquors; and do not smoke or chew tobacco.

Anastasia’s governance style revealed itself in numerous other day-to-day affairs as well. One former village resident suggested that when the first garden produce of the season was brought in, Anastasia insisted that she be the first to partake of it. She also saw herself as the principal spiritual resource for the village and personally took to teaching Doukhobor philosophy and community regulations to the children. She gathered her young charges together in the early hours of the morning and taught them to sing Doukhobor psalms and memorize the main tenets of Doukhobor ideology. Herself once a member of Peter Verigin’s travelling choirs, she placed considerable stress on music. She also decried materialism and militarism and originated a series of strict regulations in this regard.

This large barn served the whole community at Anastasia’s village. It was built in 1927 and is still in use.  Photo by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

She was known to mete out lengthy sermons to offenders who often escaped her diatribes simply by leaving the scene.

Following Peter the Lordly’s example, Anastasia originally purchased the farmlands for her settlement in her own name. Verigin said he would do this for the protection of the community when they first migrated to British Columbia, and true to his word, he did set up a board of directors for the CCUB and eventually turned all properties over to the organization. Anastasia also established a board of directors (consisting of three members) but she never signed the lands over to her community. Thus at her death there was a legal question about ownership. The actual village site and surrounding farmland were willed to her niece (recently deceased) who, along with her husband, maintained the village buildings and grounds to the present. Although resident in British Columbia, they spent summers at the village site to undertake maintenance work.

Anastasia’s board of directors was elected for one year terms and were primarily charged with looking after agricultural activities. Despite many attempts to live according to the spirit of brotherly love extolled by Doukhobors, there were frequent disputes (even fist-fights) among members of the village and Anastasia was not always able to successfully intervene. As a result there were frequent departures as people moved to more desirable places. When this happened, in most cases they forfeited their goods to the village and left with only the clothes on their backs. Some demanded a share of the goods and argued until some kind of settlement was made. This constant turmoil reflected badly on Anastasia’s abilities as leader and did little to maintain the morale of the membership or attract other Orthodox Doukhobors to the settlement. It also reflected poorly on a community allegedly bound by the principles of rationality which was to result in respect for one another by living in harmony. Despite this, the community became skilled at growing garden produce and contracted with members of the nearby Blackfoot Indian Reserve to trade these for coal supplies. They also obtained permission to do berry-picking on the reserve.

Doukhobor pacifism was internally put to the test when Anastasia appointed a close friend of hers, Wasyl (William) Androsoff, to run the village farm. The irritation caused by the appointment increased when Androsoff refused to move to the village. In addition, he and his brother, Ivan, also used community machinery to farm their own land. At William’s death, Ivan (also called John), took over farming operations until Anastasia’s passing. Her brother Michael is also reported to have helped with farming operations and as a reward Anastasia signed a quarter section of land over to him.

In some ways, Anastasia’s village was a communal experiment in isolation. It was an isolation from social interchange, and an isolation of economics and belief. In the first instance, village members were encouraged to have little to do with outsiders even though a certain amount of trade went on with neighbours. Also, when times were tough, Anastasia assigned certain men to work for neighbouring farmers. When work was done a strict reporting of activities away from the village to Anastasia was required. The philosophy of “them and us” was adhered to, which meant that everyone outside the village was considered an outsider – including other Doukhobors. Since Anastasia’s group was considered a renegade faction by mainline orthodoxy, there was an unspoken regulation about having too much to do with them. There were exchange visits between Anastasia’s people and those in the Alberta settlements near Lundbreck, but these were intermittent and basically social in nature.

Non-Doukhobor neighbours who still reside near the former village tell of sitting listening to Doukhobor singing emanating from the village. It was a beautiful and haunting sound, but carried a message of social distance in philosophy and practice. It was certainly difficult to operationalize the principle of loving one’s brother if social isolation was awarded such prime billing.

There is no indication that members of Anastasia’s village experienced public censure because of their pacifism during the period of the Second World War. On a national scale there were many Doukhobors who resisted participation in any alternative service program such as that yielded to by the Mennonites and Hutterites. Although some Doukhobor leaders in Saskatchewan tried to cooperate with the government push for alternative service, many young men resisted and at one time nearly 100 of them spent four months in prison in Prince Albert. In British Columbia, resistance was much more pronounced and the Sons of Freedom particularly gained press for staging public demonstrations. Inexperienced with this kind of upheaval, government officials tried to downplay the problem. Countless meetings were held and finally it was agreed that the Doukhobors should be disfranchised. On November 2, 1944, a form of taxation for Doukhobors was devised with monies derived therefrom going to the Red Cross. With the war nearly over, the proposal received endorsation by the majority of Doukhobors and additional conflict was defused. In evaluating the entire episode, one would have to praise government officials for their patience, dedication and long suffering in trying to accommodate Doukhobor beliefs.

Besides the question of the quality of administration in Anastasia’s village was the matter of institutional connection. With only limited social and economic ties to the local community, residents of the village also functioned with memories of having been forced to leave the membership of mainline orthodoxy when they sided with Anastasia after Peter the Lordly’s death. Combined with Anastasia’s inability to run a tight ship, this lack of institutional affiliation created an island community in an alien society and its demise was almost certain from the beginning. After all, who in Alberta, in a period of wartime, could really become concerned about the inner struggles of a remote pacifist, communal, renegade, Russian-derived group of people? Without vital connections, the experiment could not last.

When the Doukhobors first came to Canada they were seen as a very appealing kind of immigrant. They knew how to farm, they promised not to engage in any acts of civil disobedience, and they asked for little from the Canadian people. As time went on, however, a very negative image of Doukhobors evolved, partially brought on by the “leave us alone” philosophy of the Doukhobors themselves and Canadian suspicions of their pacifist, communal lifestyle. It did not help that the militant Sons of Freedom faction which originated after the seizure of Saskatchewan lands received so much publicity. In their zeal to discourage a growing materialism among their orthodox counterparts they sometimes engaged in acts of civil disobedience and violence to make a point. They set fire to buildings to illustrate the fleeting security of material goods. They burned schools in order to express their disdain for public education which they saw as part of the process of yielding to the Canadian value system of materialism, consumerism and militarism.

Undoubtedly the apparent inconsistency between what was promulgated as pacifist ideology, and demonstrated in acts of aggression (even if only against one’s own colleagues), drew little public support for the Doukhobor cause. An even more isolated and eccentric experiment (such as Anastasia’s village), would almost certainly be bypassed or stretch Canadian tolerance to its very limits.

Sources contend that the village never formally died; instead it simply dwindled away. By 1945, only Anastasia and her companion, Fedosia Verigin, remained on site. They lived alone there until 1960 when they moved to Calgary and spent their summers at the site. Anastasia died on November 24, 1965, and Fedosia on October 26, 1981. They are buried side by side in the cemetery located at the north end of the village.

Anastasia’s original house (and attached bath house). The structure is still standing.  Photo by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Physical reminders of the former village structure are numerous and include Anastasia’s original house (and attached bath-house), her newer home (built in the 1950s), a big barn and grain bin, the prayer home, and a several other buildings. Memories of life in the village also remain, locked in the inner recesses of the hearts of older Doukhobors who were once a part of this experience.

About the Author

John W. Friesen is an ordained clergyman of the United Church of Canada. He is Minister of Morley United Church near Calgary, Alberta. He also holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. He has published several articles on the Doukhobors. His book with Michael M. Verigin, The Community Doukhobors, A People in Transition (Borealis Press, 1996) is a detailed examination of the history of the Doukhobors in Alberta.

Doukhobors in Alberta

by Michael M. Verigin

The following is an excerpt from an address given by Michael M. Verigin at the Doukhobor Centennial Celebration held in Calgary, Alberta on April 3, 1999. It contains an excellent historic summary of the Doukhobor settlement in Alberta. Reproduced from the pages of ISKRA magazine, No. 1875 (Grand Forks: U.S.C.C., June 16, 1999

Dear Brothers & Sisters, Boys and Girls:

As I stand here before you today, and see so many of our Brethren who had to travel so many miles from far away, from Saskatchewan and British Columbia, to come here to Calgary, I couldn’t help but think, how much different everything would have been, if things had turned out as planned 100 years ago.

Before moving to Canada from Russia, the Doukhobors first sent delegates to look at suitable land and location. Two delegates came, Ivan Ivin and Peter Makortoff, with their wives and children, and (to assist them with the inspection of lands) Prince Dmitry Hilkoff and Aylmer Maude, arriving in Ottawa on September 12, 1898.

The first locality inspected was near Edmonton. A most promising location was found not far from Beaver Hill Lake, 276,480 acres or 12 townships of 36 square miles each, where the whole Doukhobor community could have been settled. But after returning to Ottawa to finalize the plans, these arrangements were upset and the Doukhobors were not allowed to settled here in Alberta and had to look for land elsewhere. As we all know now, they settled in Saskatchewan, and after the land loss in 1907, more than half moved into the Interior of British Columbia.

Prior to acquiring lands in British Columbia, Peter Lordly Verigin, in July of 1907, inspected lands in southern Alberta, especially in the vicinity of Lethbridge and Raymond, where he made inquiries into the various processes connected with the sugar beet industry.

In 1911, the census reported that there were 45 Doukhobors in Alberta. These were men who’d come from Saskatchewan to break prairie sod with oxen, for a British farming company near Suffield. In 1912, again about 100 workers came to work on Lake McGregor Dam near Milo.

In the summer of 1915, the first land was bought for permanent settlement, in the Cowley/Lundbreck area of south-western Alberta. Additional land was bought in the vicinity, in 1916 and 1917 and, at its peak, the CCUB in Alberta had close to 13,500 acres, with 300 members living in 13 small settlements (Bogatoi RodnikBozhiya MilostBozhiya SeloGradovaya DolinaKrasivaya DolinaSibirStupnikovo Selo, etc).  

Doukhobor Community Flour Mill, Lundbreck, Alberta c. 1916.

They soon built a large elevator in Cowley, and elevator and a flour mill in Lundbreck. They were raising over 300 head of horses, 9 of which were pedigreed mares, 7 purebred Percheron stallions, one of which was valued at $5,000. Nearly 400 head of shorthorn cattle and 5 purebred bulls. Every year, the Community threshed close to 100,000 bushels of grain.

In 1917, Peter Lordly Verigin rented for the CCUB, three sections of land from James McGregor, near Queenstown, in the Vulcan area, on a crop share basis. Since there were no grain elevators nearby, grain had to be hauled to Cluny, a distance of nearly 15 miles, where the nearest post office was located. After the tragic death of Peter Verigin in 1924, this land was then rented by Paul Planidin and sons for a short while and eventually bought by them.

In 1926, 1 3/4 sections of land was bought by Anastasia Holoboff, or Anastasia Lord’s as she was more commonly known, and her followers, near Shouldice, also in the Vulcan area. The settlement was known as the Lordly Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, and was independent of all other Doukhobor villages in western Canada. The village consisted of 26 homes constructed in keeping with the pattern used in Russia and Saskatchewan, a main street with houses on both sides. On the south side, the far end of the street, was a large Prayer Home. Nearby was a spring, which supplied water for all the village needs, and was also piped to the far north end, to a CPR water tower and railway siding, which was named “Anastasia” in honour of Anastasia Lords. Here too, close by, was the village cemetery, and on the north-west side a large horse barn and blacksmith shop. On the north-end, was the school, with grades from 1 to 8.

The village had a population of 165 members who were involved in farming. And although this was choice farm land, there was an insufficient amount of it owned by the community, and it became necessary for many members to work outside the village to supplement their income.

In the mid 1920’s, at about the same time as the communal settlement of Anastasia Lords was being established, other Doukhobor settlers, mainly from Saskatchewan, were moving into the area and setting up independent farms. In a few short years, there were as many independent Doukhobors living in the area, mainly near Shouldice, Queenstown, Mossleigh and Arrowwood, as there were in the communal village.

The census reports indicate that in 1931 there was a total of 786 Doukhobors reported for Alberta, 297 in the Cowley/Lundbreck area, 391 in the Mossleigh/Shouldice area, and 98 in other parts of the province.

In 1938, because of a debt of less than 4% of the total value of the CCUB in the three western provinces, the mortgage companies foreclosed, and the communal enterprise of the Doukhobors came to an end. The Shouldice colony too, with shortage of land and several poor crop years, came to an end in the mid 1940’s. Those who remained, and did not move away, bought farms individually in the area.

Anastasia’s village, Shouldice district, Alberta, 1938.  Glenbow Archives PA-3563-3.

In 1953, the Doukhobors in the Shouldice, Mossleigh and Arrowwood locality built a Prayer Home near Mossleigh and registered their society as the United Doukhobors of Mossleigh and District. In the same year, the Doukhobors of Cowley and Lundbreck also began building a new Prayer Home at Lundbreck, which they registered as the United Doukhobors of Alberta, Cowley-Lundbreck.

Today, there are very few Doukhobors living in these two areas, as very few of the descendents of these original settlers remained in farming. The majority chose white collar professions and left for the cities. The greatest concentration of Doukhobors in this province is in this city, Calgary. There is also a considerable number in Edmonton and Lethbridge and, no doubt, some in practically every town in this province.

This year, the Doukhobors are commemorating 100 years since their arrival from Russia to Canada. Many Centennial celebrations will be taking place in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. This celebration here today, is the first in Alberta, and we are very pleased that so many have come to join us. Later in the year, we hope to have a commemorative gathering in the Shouldice-Arrowwood area and at Cowley-Lundbreck.

Brothers and Sister, Boys and Girls: In this very historical year for our Doukhobors people, let us all try our very best to create more unity amongst ourselves, let us forget our petty differences, if we have any, and by applying the Golden Rule in our everyday life, of loving thy neighbour and Toil and Peaceful Life, with God’s help, we will make this 1999 Centennial year, a year that we, our neighbours, our children and grandchildren will be proud to remember in the years to come.

Michael M. Verigin
Calgary, Alberta
April 3, 1999 

United Doukhobors of Alberta Cemetery – Lundbreck District, Alberta

The following is a transcription of the United Doukhobors of Alberta Cemetery located 1/2 mile south of Lundbreck, Alberta. Pincher Creek Municipal District No. 9. Land location: NW 24-7-2 West of Fifth. Latitude: 49°34.930. Longitude: 114°08.880. Transcribed on July 10, 2006 by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff and Michael M. Verigin. Additional information by Shelley Maloff.

View of the cemetery from the south facing north.

Historical Background

This cemetery was established in 1915 by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (“CCUB”) to serve the Cowley-Lundbreck settlement area. After the demise of the CCUB in 1937-1939, the cemetery continued to be used by the United Doukhobors of Alberta. It is still in active use today. It is privately owned and maintained by a cemetery committee. The cemetery is in very good condition.

Layout

The cemetery is two acres in size and is enclosed by a wire fence with a single iron gate. The cemetery contains approximately 144 interments in a single section comprised of four rows facing east-west. Eighty-four (84) of the graves have no marker, however, many of the mounds are still clearly visible.  With respect to graves with markers, the markers are typically plain slate or marble upright headstones or flat markers set flush to the ground. Click here for an online cemetery map.

Driving Directions

To access the cemetery from Lundbreck, travel south on Breckenridge Avenue.  Turn east on Lundbreck Road and continue for .6 miles (1.1 km).  Then turn south on the gravel road which ends in front of the cemetery entrance.  To access the cemetery from Cowley, travel west on Highway No. 3 for 2.5 miles (4 km).  Then turn south and continue on Range Road No. 1-5 and continue west on Lundbreck Road for 1.5 miles (2.4 km).  Turn south on the gravel road which ends in front of the cemetery entrance. This cemetery is on private property and permission to access should be obtained by the owners.

Transcription

Surname Name Birth Date Death Date Comments
Babakioff Alex 1935 No Marker
Barabanoff Lucy Jan. 10, 1945 No Marker
Barisenkoff Anne abt. 1930 Nee Makaroff – No Marker
Barisenkoff Helen No Marker
Berekoff Mike N. 1917 Nov. 27, 1962 No Marker
Berekoff Olive M. 1940 Sep. 2, 1956  
Cheveldaoff Dora M. 1903 Nee Maloff – No Marker
Cheveldaoff Malania 1900 1916 Nee Barabanoff – No Marker
Davidoff (child) 1918 Jun. 1921 Son of William – No Marker
Davidoff (child) 1916 Jun. 1921 Son of William – No Marker
Davidoff Anastasia Jan. 3, 1948 Nee Tomilin – No Marker
Davidoff Fenya Nov. 16, 1949 Nee Markin – No Marker
Davidoff George H. No Marker
Davidoff Helen J. Jun. 3, 1945 No Marker
Davidoff Malasha G. No Marker
Davidoff Marisha 1937 Nee Chernoff – Wife of John – No Marker
Davidoff Masha S. 1935 Wife of Nick – No Marker
Davidoff Matt N. 1890 Jan. 10, 1955 No Marker
Davidoff Mike F. Jul. 1936 No Marker
Davidoff Nick N. Sep. 6, 1949 No Marker
Deakoff George M. Jan. 27, 1929 Mar. 19, 2005 No Marker
Deakoff Lawrence G. Dec. 17, 1953 Dec. 18, 1953 Infant
Deakoff Mike M. Oct. 6, 1904 Aug. 16, 1985  
Deakoff Pearl S. Jan. 15, 1901 Jul. 23, 1971 Nee Kalmakoff – Wife of Mike
Demoskoff Helen F. 1894 Nee Ozeroff – Wife of Mikita
Demoskoff Mikita Apr. 3, 1942 No Marker
Evin Maria K. 1844 1925 Nee Kolesnikoff – No Marker
Ewashen (child) Mar. 1953 Mar. 1953 Son of John – No Marker
Ewashen Abbe A. Nov. 11, 1943 Feb. 28, 2002  
Ewashen Alex J. Feb. 3, 1907 Jun. 24, 1998  
Ewashen Anastasia S. Sep. 7, 1857 May 28, 1951 Nee Kooznetsoff – No Marker
Ewashen George G. 1945 Apr. 28, 1946 No Marker
Ewashen George J. Oct. 28, 1912 Jun. 8, 1988  
Ewashen Jacob J. 1856 1918 No Marker
Ewashen John J. Mar. 16, 1886 Jun. 25, 1972 No Marker
Ewashen Mary P. Oct. 16, 1910 Jul. 2, 1955 Nee Verigin
Ewashen Paula G. 1887 Sep. 1, 1967 Nee Ivin – No Marker
Faminoff Fred P. Nov. 27, 1904 Jan. 20, 1989 No Marker
Faminoff Helen J. Mar. 28, 1908 Aug. 3, 1985  
Faminoff Joseph P. Aug. 15, 1888 Jun. 13, 1980  
Faminoff Mable E. Nov. 29, 1904 Sep. 26, 1997 Nee Voykin
Faminoff Martha F. 1891 Aug. 15, 1936 Nee Dergousoff
Faminow Malasha T. 1868 1940 Nee Chernoff – Wife of Paul
Faminow Paul N. 1869 Apr. 1948  
Filimek Mabel P. Jan. 27, 1904 Nov. 30, 1988 Nee Potapoff – No Marker
Hakze Anne M. Sep. 29, 1933  Apr. 10, 1998 Nee Deakoff
Hakze Henry Feb. 7, 1930 Jan. 29, 1998  
Holoboff Fenya E. 1874 1940 Nee Kazakoff
Hoobanoff Dora M. 1907 Feb. 14, 1993 Nee Perehoodoff – No Marker
Hoobanoff Peter E. 1907 Nov. 12, 1965 No Marker
Hrushkin Nastia 1932 No Marker
Hrushkin William 1931 No Marker
Kabatoff (old lady) 1918 No Marker
Kabatoff Dora Dec. 1955 Nee Popoff – No Marker
Kabatoff Elizabeth N. Aug. 18, 1908 Feb. 19, 1951 Nee Davidoff – No Marker
Kabatoff Mike P. 1893 Jul. 29, 1960 No Marker
Kabatoff Peter G. Mar. 14, 1945 No Marker
Kabatoff William S. Feb. 25, 1916 Nov. 29, 2001  
Kalmakoff Anna W. Nov. 8, 1873 Oct. 29, 1953 Nee Fofonoff
Kalmakoff Steve S. Mar. 18, 1949 No Marker
Konkin Anna 1856 1935 Nee Bludoff – No Marker
Konkin Harry E. 1874 Sep. 5, 1926 No Marker
Konkin Harry H. Dec. 15, 1912 Jan. 24, 1937
Konkin Mabel G. 1876 May 24, 1954 Nee Ivin
Kooznetsoff Dora 1918 No Marker
Kooznetsoff Helen Apr. 28, 1950 No Marker
Larin Igor abt. 1920 No Marker
Larin Mary Oct. 19, 1941 No Marker
Larin Trusha May 6, 1950 No Marker
Makortoff Irene Wife of Trofim – No Marker
Makortoff Trofim 1925 No Marker
Maloff Anastasia P. Aug. 25, 1910 Apr. 20, 1991 Nee Horkoff
Maloff Cecil N. Mar., 1879 Jan. 29, 1942 No Marker
Maloff Dora C. 1895 Jan. 3, 1935 Nee Kasahoff
Maloff Dora M. Mar. 1, 1879 Apr. 1, 1967 Nee Slepoff – No Marker
Maloff Dunya Nee Hrushkin – No Marker
Maloff George G. May 18, 1895 Jan. 14, 1990
Maloff George N. Nov. 1942 No Marker
Maloff John G. Nov. 21, 1914 Mar. 27, 2003  
Maloff Mary M. Mar. 1946 Nee Popoff – No Marker
Maloff Mikisha 1936 No Marker
Maloff Peter C. Mar. 21, 1924 Dec. 21, 1991
Maloff Vera K. Nov. 24, 1915 Aug. 27, 2005 Wife of John – Nee Tamilin
McCabe Donald J. Jul. 3, 1981 Oct. 23, 1982  
Mushta Anton W. Aug. 15, 1894 Jun. 22, 1982
Mushta Emma H. Aug. 30, 1906 Feb. 24, 1976 Wife of Anton – Nee Konkin
Nickel Elena W. Sep. 11, 1942 Dec. 29, 2005 Nee Stoochnoff
Osachoff James P. Aug. 5, 1929 Dec. 30, 1986  
Osachoff Laura W. May 5, 1924 Jun. 21, 1981 Nee Fedosoff
Parakin Helen J. 1941 Nee Semenoff – No Marker
Parakin Helen P. 1932 Dec. 26, 1956 No Marker
Parakin Peter J. 1941 No Marker
Potapoff Alex J. Mar. 21, 1913 Feb. 28, 1999  
Potapoff Irene F. Mar. 23, 1887 Jan. 8, 1976 Nee Berekoff
Potapoff Paul N. 1885 Aug. 6, 1958
Pudmaroff Peter G. Aug. 1935 Nov. 1936  
Ribalkin Mary 1866 Feb. 6, 1945 Nee Horkoff – No Marker
Ribalkin William E. 1856 Jan. 19, 1926  
Ribalkin William W. 1887 Feb. 18, 1941  
Salekin Aksinia L. 1885 Aug. 5, 1959 Nee Planidin – No Marker
Salekin Alex M. 1885 Jun. 3, 1957 No Marker
Salekin Anne Nee Samorodin – No Marker
Salekin Helen J. Jun. 1, 1944 No Marker
Salekin Jack Dec. 10, 1951 No Marker
Salekin Mike Dec. 9, 1935 No Marker
Semenoff Anastasia J. Apr. 21, 1939 Nee Shukin – No Marker
Semenoff Fred W. Jun. 1939 No Marker
Semenoff Helen J. Oct. 27, 1904 May 17, 1997 Wife of Joseph – Nee Ewashen
Semenoff Mable J. Apr. 12, 1933 Apr. 21, 1939  
Semenoff Jacob J. Jul. 6, 1929 Jul. 15, 2003  
Semenoff Joseph J. Jul. 21, 1904 May 31, 1990
Shkuratoff Anastasia J. Jun. 29, 1900 May 19, 1986 Nee Kooznetsoff – Wife of Michael
Shkuratoff Malasha Nee Maloff – No Marker
Shkuratoff Michael W. Sep. 18, 1899 Sep. 8, 1963  
Sookaroff (child) Son of Dora – No Marker
Sookaroff Dora M. No Marker
Sookerukoff Margaret 1874 Jul. 21, 1958 No Marker
Sookochoff Tania H. 1935 Nee Samorodin – No Marker
Stoochinoff Willie W. 1947 1957
Stoochnoff William P. May 9, 1922 Feb. 18, 2006  
Stoopnikoff Mary Jun. 20, 1942 No Marker
Verigin Anastasia G. Nee Kabatoff
Verigin Anastasia H. 1866 Jun. 13, 1951 Nee Samorodin
Verigin Annie H. May 12, 1903 Mar. 25, 1987 Nee Konkin
Verigin Christina M. Dec. 15, 1959 May 9, 1981
Verigin John J. Nov. 30, 1918 No Marker
Verigin John W. Feb. 28, 1921 Dec. 13, 1944  
Verigin Mary S. Nov. 8, 1895 Apr. 2, 1964 Nee Kalmakoff
Verigin Mike S. Oct. 5, 1905 Sep. 18, 1983
Verigin Nick J. 1945 No Marker
Verigin Nicholay S. Nov. 25, 1918 No Marker
Verigin Paul H.M. Jan. 9, 1950 Apr. 30, 2000  
Verigin Phillip M. Dec. 4, 1944 Sep. 28, 1957  
Verigin Semeon J. Apr. 10, 1929 No Marker
Verigin William S. Dec. 12, 1890 Nov. 6, 1981  
Vishloff Alex F. Sep. 22, 1892 Dec. 12, 1974  
Vishloff Anna F. Apr. 17, 1866 Apr. 13, 1967 Nee Fedosoff
Vishloff John 1918 No Marker
Vishloff John F. 1936 No Marker
Vishloff Mary H. Oct. 12, 1892 Jan. 24, 1972 Nee Konkin
Vishloff William A. Aug. 21, 1940 No Marker
Voykin (child) Son of Doris – No Marker
Voykin Doris Nee Osachoff – No Marker
Zmaeff Laura S. Apr. 25, 1909 Jul. 16, 1998 Nee Gritchin
Zumik Shirley Ann 1942 1944

 

View of the cemetery from the east facing west.

Another view of the cemetery from the east facing west.

View of the plaque near the cemetery gate.

Notes

Various sources of data have been used in compiling this information, including: marker transcriptions, cemetery records and oral tradition. This is a work in progress. If readers have any comments, corrections or additions with respect to the United Doukhobors of Alberta Cemetery, please contact Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Krasivaya Dolina Cemetery Site – Queenstown District, Alberta

The following is an overview of the Krasivaya Dolina Doukhobor Cemetery site located 3 1/2 miles south of Queenstown, Alberta. Vulcan County No. 2. Land location: NW 11-19-22 West of Fourth. Latitude: 50°35.850. Longitude: 112°57.232. Compiled April 6, 2008 by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

View of the cemetery site is facing south. The cemetery site is approximately mid-photo, below the farmyard in the distance.

Historical Background

Krasivaya Dolina Cemetery was established in 1918 by the Doukhobors of Krasivaya Dolina village near Queenstown.  After the village was abandoned in 1924, the cemetery ceased to be actively used.  In the 1960’s, the cemetery site was destroyed.  It is privately owned.

Layout

According to tradition, the cemetery was approximately a tenth of an acre in size. It contained two unmarked graves.  For decades, the cemetery was fenced and maintained.  When the site was cleared in the 1960’s, all traces of the cemetery were removed. It is now under cultivation.

Driving Directions

To access the cemetery from Cluny, travel south on Highway No. 842 for 23 miles (37.4 km). Turn west on Highway No. 542, past Milo, for 1 mile (1.6 km).  Then turn north on Range Road 222 and continue for 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km).  There is a farmyard approximately 1/4 mile (.4 km) east of the grid road. The cemetery site is located approximately 1/4 mile north of the farmyard.  This cemetery is on private property and permission to access should be obtained by the owners.

Burials

Surname Name Birth Date Death Date Comments
Koochin Arkhip G. 1894 Jan. 17, 1919 No Marker
Koochin Malanya Jan. 14, 1919 Wife of Arkhip – No Marker

Notes

Various sources of data have been used in compiling this information including oral tradition. Special thanks to Nora and James Verigin for assisting in identifying the interments. This is a work in progress. If readers have any comments, corrections or additions with respect to the Krasivaya Dolina Cemetery site, please contact Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Cemetery – Arrowwood District, Alberta

The following is a transcription of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (Doukhobor) Cemetery located 5 miles east of Arrowwood, Alberta. Vulcan County No. 2. Land location: SE 30-20-22 West of Fourth. Latitude: 50°43.665. Longitude: 113°01.733. Transcribed by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff on November 8, 2004.  Updated on April 1, 2007.

View of the cemetery gate from the road facing west.

Historical Background

The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Cemetery was established in 1926 by the Doukhobors of the Lordly Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood colony near Arrowwood. After the colony was abandoned in 1945, the cemetery continued to be used by local Doukhobors and is still in active use today. It is privately owned and is well maintained. 

Layout

The cemetery is two acres in size and is enclosed by a wire fence with a single iron gate. The cemetery contains 174 interments in a single section comprised of eight rows facing east-west. Over half the graves (111) have no marker, however, many of the mounds are still clearly visible. These remain unidentified. With respect to graves with markers, the markers are typically plain slate or marble upright headstones or flat markers set flush to the ground. Click here for an online cemetery map.

Driving Directions

To access the cemetery, travel east from Arrowwood on Township Road No. 205 for 5 miles (8 km). Then turn south and continue on Range Road No. 225 for .3 miles (.5 km). The cemetery is on the west side of the road allowance. This cemetery is on private property and permission to access should be obtained by the owners.

Transcription

Surname Name Birth Date Death Date Comments
Androsoff Anna 1873 1961
Androsoff Edna Jul. 29, 1904 Dec. 28, 1992  
Androsoff John W. Mar. 22, 1904 Sep. 16, 1972  
Androsoff Mabel W. Aug. 25, 1891 Mar. 12, 1946  
Androsoff William M. 1873 1953
Androsoff W.W. Aug. 25, 1882 Apr. 24, 1959
Anutooshkin Andrei 1873 1939 aka Simenoff
Anutooshkin John J. 1889 1932  
Candrashowa Tanya E. 1877 1935  
Chernenkoff Nastasia 1869 1946
Currey Mary A. Apr. 27, 1922 Dec. 7, 1948 nee Markin
Golooboff Maria I. 1860 Feb. 1934 Died – age 74 years
Hlookoff Mary 1885 May 17, 1928 Died – age 43 years
Holoboff Anna Mar. 12, 1895 Aug. 8, 1973
Holoboff Anne Mar. 16, 1927 Dec. 31, 1996 Wife of Joseph
Holoboff Eli P. Aug. 8, 1894 Jun. 12, 1978  
Holoboff Peter M. 1865 1959  
Holoboff Thomas J. Aug. 10, 1949 Aug. 7, 1990 Born in Bassano
Holoboff Winnie 1868 1962  
Horkoff David W. Apr. 20, 1952 Dec. 30, 1953  
Horkoff Nicholas P. Dec. 20, 1925 May 22, 2003
Horkoff Pauline Feb. 5, 1927 Jan. 8, 1999
Lords Anastasia Apr. 21, 1885 Nov. 24, 1965 aka Holoboff
Makortoff Mabel Feb. 10, 1925 Oct. 15, 1966  
Makortoff Mike 1886 1958  
Malakoff John A. 1884 1941
Malloff Dora 1854 1941
Malloff John 1885 1941
Markin Mabel May 4, 1927 Mar. 2, 1946
Pereverzoff Helen W. 1901 1967 Wife of Joseph
Pereverzoff Joseph A. 1903 1978  
Planidin Fanny Oct. 22, 1886 Apr. 1, 1967  
Planidin Helen 1834 1930  
Planidin Paul 1859 1945  
Planidin Paul P. 1885 1929  
Planidin Polly 1858 1935  
Plotnikoff George W. May 28, 1913 May 27, 1951  
Popoff Fred Mar. 10, 1905 Jun. 29, 1974
Popoff Mary Aug. 7, 1906 Wife of Fred
Samaroden Dunya  
Samaroden John  
Sherbackoff Harry 1869 1951  
Sherbackoff Mabel 1869 1954  
Shkuratoff Polly Mar. 1, 1905 Jun. 16, 1953
Shkuratoff William Sep. 4, 1902 Sep. 20, 1958
Verigin Avdotia F. 1881 Mar. 7, 1929
Verigin Fedosia L. Aug. 18, 1887 Oct. 26, 1981
Verigin George J. 1895 1961
Verigin Grigory V. 1862 Brother of Peter “Lordly” Verigin – No Marker
Verigin Mabel 1895 1958
Verigin Mavra I. 1876 1932  
Verigin Vasily V. 1856 Brother of Peter “Lordly” Verigin – No Marker
Wieshlow Anne 1887 1959
Wieshlow Fred W. 1932 1943
Wieshlow Mary 1905 1976
Wieshlow W.E. 1878 1953  
Zarchikova Wasilisa 1886 1942  
Zaytsoff Fred 1939 1998
Zaytsoff Peter W. 1905 1958  
Zaytsoff Polly 1911 1994  
Zaytsoff William 1908 1961  
Zaytsoff * William S. Jun. 1886 Sep. 1967  
Zaytsoff Willie 1930 1943  
Zbitnoff Nastia 1870 1954  

    

*Translated from Russian.

View of the plaque near the cemetery gate.

Grave of Anastasia (Lords) Holoboff, companion of Peter “Lordly” Verigin and leader of the colony.

View of the cemetery from the north-east facing south-west.

Notes

Various sources of data have been used in compiling this information, including: marker transcriptions and oral tradition. I have photos of the headstones and would be happy to share them. Special thanks to Nora and James Veregen for assisting in identifying additional interments. This is a work in progress. If readers have any comments, corrections or additions with respect to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Cemetery, please contact Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.