By Jonathan J. Kalmakoff
The following article provides a brief history of Voskreseniye, one of 55 communal villages established by the Doukhobors upon their arrival in the Northwest Territories (Saskatchewan) in 1899.
In May 1899, 120 Doukhobor immigrant settlers established a village on a bend of the Assiniboine River, 4 miles south of present-day Kamsack, SK. Sick, weary and destitute after a failed settlement on the Island of Cyprus, all they were able to construct for shelters were 16 sod dugouts.[1]
They named their village Voskreseniye (Воскресение) or Voskresenovka (Воскресеновка), meaning ‘Resurrection’ in Russian – a reference to the Doukhobor belief that Christ is resurrected spiritually in the hearts of his righteous followers.[2]
Initially the villagers possessed little material wealth, having only 50 sacks of flour, 30 bushels of potatoes, 2 horses, 2 oxen, 1 cow and 1 wagon to share between them during their first year.
However, despite severe hardship and deprivation, the settlers persevered, and through the adoption of a communal way of life, pooling all land, livestock, grain and outside earnings, attained agricultural self-sufficiency within a few short years.
In 1902, the village was relocated one mile to the Northwest Quarter of Section 12, Township 29, Range 32, West of the First Meridian, on a level flat beside Dead Horse (Kamsack) Creek, where they constructed twenty 14 by 25-foot mud-plastered log homes with thatched roofs.[3]
By 1905, Voskreseniye had a population of 175 Doukhobors, and the village layout had expanded to include three large 14 by 30-foot communal stables, as well as granaries, a blacksmith shop, bakery, carpenter’s shop and a 22 by 56-foot brick meeting house used to conduct moleniye (prayer meetings) and sobraniya (social gatherings).[4]
By this time, the villagers had acquired 16 horses, 53 cattle and 36 sheep.[5] Using 6 horse-drawn ploughs, they were cultivating 472 acres out of the 58 quarter-sections of land reserved for the village into grain and forage crops.[6] Their cultivated acreage continued to increase in the years that followed, even as their total reserved acreage was significantly reduced by the federal Department of Interior in 1907.
The surnames of the Voskreseniye Doukhobors were: Cheveldayoff, Dubasoff, Hancheroff, Kazakoff, Kinakin, Konkin, Makasayoff, Medvedoff, Nechvolodoff, Novokshonoff, Parakin, Popoff, Rezansoff, Shekinoff, Stuchnoff, Tikonoff, Varabioff and Wishloff.
The villagers were renowned singers, and according to oral tradition, their acapella singing of Doukhobor hymns was often heard for miles up and down the Assiniboine valley.[7]
The Voskreseniye Doukhobors remained staunch supporters of their leader Peter Vasil’evich Verigin and the communal way of life he espoused. Indeed, despite being a village of moderate wealth, Voskreseniye annually remitted earnings to the central treasury of the Doukhobor Society in excess of those sent by much richer villages. For example, in 1905, the village sent $3,082.85 in earnings to Verigin when the average remittance of 44 villages was $2,568.21.[8]
Between 1908 and 1913, 120 persons relocated from the village to communal settlements in British Columbia (primarily Ootischenia and Glade), leaving a remaining population of 52 persons by the fall of 1913.[9] This rump population remained consistent over the next five years.[10]
Voskreseniye Village Population and Homestead Reserve, 1899-1917
| Year | Communalists | Independents | Wanderers | Total | Village Reserve (Acres) |
| 1899 | 119 | – | – | 119 | – |
| 1905 | 174 | – | – | 174 | 3840 |
| 1907 | 160 | – | – | 160 | 2400 |
| 1909 | 127 | 2 | 1 | 130 | 2400 |
| 1910 | 106 | 2 | – | 108 | 2080 |
| 1911 | 103 | 9 | – | 112 | 2080 |
| 1912 | 103 | 9 | – | 112 | 2080 |
| 1913 | 52 | – | – | 52 | 1280 |
| 1915 | 52 | – | – | 52 | 1120 |
| 1917 | 52 | – | – | 52 | 1118 |
In 1918, the village and its 1,118-acre homestead reserve was disbanded by the federal Department of Interior and the remaining population either relocated to communal settlements elsewhere, or else settled on adjacent homesteads as Independent Doukhobors.[11] The village structures were dismantled and the logs and lumber were salvaged as building material used on individual homesteads.
By 1920, only the brick meeting house of the village remained, which was used by the Kamsack branch of the Society of Independent Doukhobors for prayer meetings and gatherings over the next three decades.[12] The meeting house continued to stand beside Highway 8, a silent marker to the once-thriving village, until its eventual collapse in a 2019 storm.
In October 2021, the Kamsack Doukhobor Society received funding through the C.C.U.B. Trust Fund to erect a cairn and steel sign at the village site.[13] Completed in 2023, the 7-foot-high iron sign will have a mounted 24 by 32-inch plaque commemorating the Doukhobors of Voskreseniye village.[14] It will be installed at the village site in the spring of 2024.
End Notes
[1] Doukhobor village statistics, compiled by William B. Harvey, Quaker, in November 1899. Library and Archives Canada, Immigration Branch Records, Record Group 76, Vol. 184, File 65101, Part 6.
[2] Doukhobors believe that Christ suffered and died on the cross, and that on the third day after his crucifixion, he was resurrected. However, unlike other Christian groups, Doukhobors reject the idea that his resurrection was literal and physical, believing instead that Christ’s resurrection was wholly spiritual: that rose again spiritually in the hearts of righteous people and continues to be resurrected to this day in those who follow his teachings: V. Bonch-Bruevich, Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev (Winnipeg: Regehr’s Printing, 1954): Psalms 8 (Q/A 11), 14 (Q/A 6), 80, 112, 132, 189, 217, 312, 339, 349, 352, 361, 362, 367, 383 and 410.
[3] Library and Archives Canada, Voskreseniye Village File, Record Group 15, Vol. 1167, File 5412469; C.J. Tracie, “Toil and Peaceful Life, Doukhobor Village Settlement in Saskatchewan, 1899-1918 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 1996) at 117.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] John Moriarty, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, September 24, 2005.
[8] “Report of the General Meeting of the Doukhobor Community held in Nadezhda Village, February 15, 1906” in Manitoba Morning Free Press, April 25, 1906.
[9] Library and Archives Canada, Doukhobor Village Reserves Register, Record Group 15, Vol. 0, File 1113.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Voskreseniye Village File, supra, note 3; Tracie, supra, note 3 at 205.
[13] The Doukhobors of Canada CCUB Trust Fund Annual Report, 2021-2022 (Veregin: CCUB Trust Fund Board, 2022) at 11.
[14] Tannis Negrave, correspondence with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, December 6, 2023.
