bricks Archives | Doukhobor Heritage

By Jonathan J. Kalmakoff

While Doukhobor brickmaking in Grand Forks is historically well known, few today would associate this enterprise with Ootischenia, BC. Yet for a fleeting period, the Doukhobor Society established a communal brickyard at the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. This article pieces together the little-known and largely-forgotten story of the Doukhobor brickyard at Ootischenia.

A Promising Site

In 1910 or early 1911, while communally clearing the heavily-forested north end of Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia) along the Kootenay River for orchard-planting, members of the Doukhobor Society laid bare what was reported in the March 30, 1912 Vancouver Sun to be an “extensive” clay deposit.[1]

According to oral tradition, the clay pit was located some several hundred yards southwest of where the Doukhobors planned to build their suspension bridge across the river in 1912-13.[2] Evidently, it was a promising site for the development of a brickyard similar to those established by the Doukhobor Society elsewhere at Thunderhill in 1903, at Veregin in 1904, at Yorkton, SK in 1907, and at Grand Forks in 1909.

The north end of Ootischenia on the Kootenay River, September 1912. Known in Russian as Kamennoye (‘stoney place’), it was the site of numerous Doukhobor communal enterprises. The brickyard was located several hundred yards southwest (right) of this image. BC Archives, GR-0793.5.

First, it appeared to have had a sufficient quantity of clay, easily accessible with horse and scraper, to last many years. Second, it was located close to a fuel source for running the machinery and firing the bricks; namely, wood from the main and upper benches of Dolina Utesheniya. Third, for distribution purposes, it was located a short distance from the CPR Slocan-Robson branch; albeit across the river. This would be mitigated by the planned suspension bridge.

The main stated objective of the Doukhobor Society in developing the clay pit, as reported in The Province in March 16, 1912, was to produce brick for veneering their doms (‘homes’) in Dolina Utesheniya and neighbouring settlements.[3] In addition to brick manufacture, the Society intended, according to the March 30, 1912 Vancouver Sun, to develop a large plant for the production of clay drain and tile for drainage and plumbing systems.[4]

Interestingly, the Doukhobors had already developed several other communal enterprises along that river shore which they called Kamennoye (‘Stoney Place’). These included a sawmill in 1911, planer mill in 1912 and an irrigation pumping plant in 1912. Other planned enterprises included a grist mill and linseed oil plant (established 1914) and a wood-stave pipe factory (established 1915).

Development of Brickyard

According to 1912 Doukhobor Society financial records, in the fall of 1911, the Society purchased a brick-making machine and had it shipped to Brilliant at a cost of $1,283.00.[5] It was almost certainly a ‘Martin’ model brick machine, manufactured by the Henry Martin Brick Machine Manufacturing Company at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Powered by steam and having a production capacity of 50,000 bricks a day, this was the same machine used by the Doukhobors at all their other brickyards.

Advertisement for the Style “A” Martin Brick Machine used by the Doukhobor Community. The Clay-Worker, Vol. 51, No. 3, March 1909.

Accordingly, over the next six months, from the fall of 1911 to spring of 1912, the Doukhobors at Dolina Utesheniya developed a brickyard adjacent to the clay pit. This would have included: an engine house in which a steam engine provided motive power for the machinery; a brick plant housing the brick-making machine; a large, open-sided drying shed; and a conveyor system between the brick plant and drying shed.

On March 16, 1912, The Province reported the brickyard to be “recently started” and either producing, or ready to produce, brick.[6]

Brick-Making Process

Brick manufacture at Dolina Utesheniya would have followed substantially the same process as at other Doukhobor brickyards.

Using horses and scrapers, Doukhobor workmen excavated clay from the pit, then transferred it into dumpcarts. The loaded dumpcarts were then drawn by horses up an elevated ramp and the clay dumped into a large hopper bin. Proportionate loads of sand were also dumped in the hopper. In the hopper, the clay-sand mixture was automatically mixed up, an automatic sprinkler supplying the water. The slurry mixture was then pressed by the Martin brick-making machine into moulds, six bricks at a time.

The ‘wet’ bricks were then placed on palettes and these were placed on a wire cable conveyor and carried into the large drying shed, where men were stationed at different points to lift them onto wheelbarrows, and wheel them to racks where they were placed to dry for up to ten days.

When the bricks became sufficiently dry, the men removed them from the drying racks and placed them again upon the cable conveyor, where they were taken out through the end of the shed. There, they were stacked into scove kilns, consisting of up to 200,000 bricks each, with wood ovens built into the stacks, and fired steadily for ten days. After firing, the bricks were ready for use.

It would seem, however, that the Doukhobors never fired more than their first or second kiln of bricks at their new yard.

Closure

According to oral tradition, for reasons no longer remembered, the brickyard at Dolina Utesheniya abruptly closed soon after opening.[7] Indeed, no mention of it is made in any newspaper or book subsequent to March 1912. Even William Blakemore’s Report of Royal Commission on Doukhobors, where a thorough report of the Doukhobor Society’s industrial enterprises (as of September 1912) at Dolina Utesheniya is presented, is silent about any brickyard save for that at Grand Forks.[8]

In all probability, the reason was that the clay proved unsuitable for brick-making. This might have been because it had a low plasticity (malleability), it contained other rock types (siltstone, sandstone) or impurities (gypsum, carbon), or it did not vitrify (fuse into hard, non-permeable material) at a low temperature. The end result, in any case, was that the brick cracked or bloated when fired in the kilns, making them unusable. This deficiency would have been evident to the Doukhobors upon their first firings.

Consequently, despite much effort and promise, the brickyard at Dolina Utesheniya appears to have been abandoned shortly after March 1912, almost as soon as it began.

Redeployment of Machinery

So what became of the Martin machine and other specialized brick-making equipment after the brickyard was abandoned? It was almost certainly redeployed rather than salvaged or sold. What is more, we have a very good idea where it likely went.

In the summer of 1912, the Doukhobor Society purchased the 150-acre Blaney Ranch in the Slocan Valley near Winlaw.[9] The ranch contained a clay quarry, and by September 1913, the Society was developing it as another brickyard.[10] Over the next several years, brick was manufactured there by the Doukhobors, using a Martin brick-making machine.

Doukhobors pose in front of a Martin Brick Machine at their Slocan Valley brickyard, 1914. BC Archives Item E-00716.

Evidently, within months of the abandonment of the brickyard at Dolina Utesheniya, the brick-making equipment was shipped by rail up the Slocan Valley to the new brickyard where it redeployed and reused.

Conclusion

While short-lived, the brickyard at Dolina Utesheniya underscored the Doukhobors’ communal and enterprising spirit and their determination to utilize their landholdings to its greatest potential. The Doukhobor Society (after 1917, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood) continued to manufacture brick for domestic use and commercial sale at several locations until the mid-1930s.

After Word

Special thanks to Ellie and Michael Davidoff, Marion Demosky, Tim Harshenin, Sam Wishloff, Bill Maloff, Ev and Lawrence Voykin, Frances and Mike Kanigan, Wendy Voykin, Mike Semenoff, Elsie Nevakshonoff.

This article was originally published in the following newspapers and periodicals:

ISKRA No. 2193, December 2023 (Grand Forks: Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ); and
Castlegar News, January 29, 2024.

End Notes

[1] Vancouver Sun, March 30, 1912. The newspaper refers to the clay deposit as being in “Brilliant”. At this time, Dolina Utesheniya was considered part of “Brilliant” and the Brilliant Flats were not yet purchased by the Doukhobor Society.

[2] According to oral tradition, the brickyard was located at Kamennoye, an area at the north end of Ootischenia along the Kootenay River, directly across from Brilliant: Ellie and Michael Davidoff, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 15, 2023; Marion Demosky, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 16, 2023; Ev and Lawrence Voykin, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 17, 2023; Frances and Mike Kanigan, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 20, 2023. Elsie Nevakshonoff, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, November 25, 2023.

[3] The Province, March 16, 1912. The newspaper also refers to the brickworks as being in “Brilliant”. See comments under Note 1.

[4] Vancouver Sun, March 30, 1912.

[5] Report about incomes and expenditures for relocation to Columbia and payment in part for lands for 1911 year and for the period from the beginning of 1912 up to August 10, 1912, Simon Fraser University, Doukhobor Collection, Item No. MSC121-DB-052-006. Note that the Doukhobor Society had already previously shipped a brick-making machine to Fruktovoye in Grand Forks in 1909: Grand Forks Gazette, March 18, 1909.

[6] The Province, March 16, 1912.

[7] Supra, note 2.

[8] W. Blakemore, Report of Royal Commission on Matters Relating to the Sect of Doukhobors in the Province of British Columbia, 1912 (Victoria: Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, 1913) at 62.

[9] Nelson Daily News, June 22, 1912, May 6, 1953.

[10] By September 1913, the Doukhobor Society successfully applied to the CPR to extend a rail spur from its Slocan Lake Branch onto the Blaney Ranch, which the Doukhobors renamed Kirpichnoye (of ‘brick’): The Canadian Engineer, September 18, 1913.

By Myler Wilkinson

In 1979, future Selkirk College English Professor Myler Wilkinson (1953-2020), then a young reporter at the Grand Forks Gazette, interviewed retired sawmill worker Nick D. Arishenkoff (1901-1982) about his experience as a young man working at the brick factory of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood west of the city. In the following article, reproduced from the Grand Forks Gazette May 2, 1979, Arishenkoff recalls the operations of the once-thriving communal industrial enterprise. Accompanying the article are incredible photos of the brick factory site as it stood in October 1974, taken by former Grand Forks resident, Walt Astofooroff, and reproduced here by permission.

While some aspects of Doukhobor life here in the Kootenay-Boundary area continues to make front page headlines, others fade quietly, further and further into the past, remembered only by a declining number of the older generation.

The CCUB brick factory site as it appeared in 1974. In the foreground is the clay mixer. Behind it, the steam engine, brick-making machine and building. Further behind is the former CCUB blacksmith shop and in the far background, Fruitova School and Gretchin Village.

In a vacant field not far from Caron Corners, near the old Fruitova school, there are some serious reminders of that past: the rotting wood scaffolding of an old building, a steam engine tractor of the type used at the turn of the century, the remains of an open pit the size of three football fields, and strewn everywhere, pieces of red brick.

If a person had come upon the scene prior to 1938 he would have seen a brick factory which turned out some 22,000 bricks each day throughout the spring and summer. Close by would have been a blacksmith’s building and a woodworking shop. No evidence of these buildings remains today.

Remains of the Henry Martin Brick Machine used at the CCUB brick factory, 1974.

Nick Arishenkoff who now lives just across the road remembers working in the brick plant as a young man soon after he came to Grand Forks in 1911.

From his front steps he points to the clay pit where four men at a time once shoveled hard-pan clay and sand into a dumper car which was then hauled by two work horses to the mixing plant. The wood scaffolding, the steam engine and some broken machinery in the middle of the field are the remains of that plant, he says.

Piles of broken red brick stand in the clay quarry pits south of the factory site.

Steam Engine

He remembers how the horses pulled the car up a ramp to the top of the platform which still remains and then dumped the mixture down a chute to be mixed. At that time the huge gears of a 22-horsepower steam engine powered the mixer and the cable ramp, which moved the bricks through the stages of drying.

After the clay, sand and water mixture was pressed into molds, six at a time, the wet bricks were placed on the platform of the moving cable and transported to the first drying area.

This steam traction engine once provided the motive power for the brick factory, 1974.

Here thousands of bricks each day were placed on racks in the open sheds which extended a few hundred yards on either side of the moving cable.

It was Arishenkoff’s job to turn the bricks on their sides to make sure they were dry all the way through.

The final stage of brick-making was the fire kiln drying process. As many as 300,000 bricks might be stacked in a pile 14 feet high by 12 feet wide, Arishenkoff says. Small corridors were left at the base of the pile where wood fires were maintained to give the final hardening to the bricks. Gradually the fires were made hotter until approximately five days later the process was finished.

Steam engine boiler door. Inside, coal was combusted to convert water into steam, which in turn, was converted into mechanical energy, turning the flywheel which (via long belts) powered the brick factory equipment.

You knew the bricks were ready, Arishenkoff says, when they were red into the very middle of the pile.

The single major purchaser of the bricks was the Trail Smelter but many of them also went to help build the towns of Nelson, Castlegar, Trail and Grand Forks, he says.

In the early years Arishenkoff says there were no real wages paid to the men. A budget was made in the spring, he says, with so much set aside to pay the companies which held the mortgages on the operations and the land. At the end of the year a sum of money was allotted to each person ($150-$450) according to their needs and the work they did. At the same time necessary provisions, shelter and clothing were provided by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, the forerunner of the present USCC.

Although unconfirmed, the steam engine was very likely a 1909 Case 20 HP steam traction engine.

The CCUB was the nominal owner of all communal operations with first Peter P. Verigin at its head and then in 1927 his son Peter V. Verigin.

Foreclosure

Although the mid-1920’s and 1930’s brought some change to this social organization it was the year 1938 which dealt an irrevocable blow to the communal organization of the Doukhobors.

It is a year Arishenkoff still remembers with some emotion.

After several depression years the National Trust Company and Sun Life decided to foreclose the mortgages owed by the Doukhobor community totaling approximately $300,000.

Massive gear mechanisms that once moved with ease, now frozen in time, 1974.

The CCUB Doukhobor operations and holdings went into receivership. The B.C. government of the time purchased all communal holdings for amounts far below their estimated worth and then paid all amounts due on outstanding mortgages. A surplus of $142,000 was realized on CCUB holdings which at their peak had an estimated value of $6 million.

The brick plant was closed down in that year and never re-opened. One half-million bricks were on hand at the time of foreclosure.

All movable equipment and materials were sold for scrap, Arishenkoff says. “Only the heavy things that could not be taken were left,” he says.

Forty-one years later anyone who is interested can see what remains of this equipment as it rusts and rots away in the middle of a field surrounded by bricks, at the junction of Canning and Reservoir Roads.

Special thanks to Sue Adrain, Archivist, Boundary Community Archives, for submitting this article.