Q71: Lost Doukhobor Land?

Question 71: What happened to the land lost by the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan in 1907?

by Corinne Postnikoff, Castlegar, British Columbia, June 11, 2014:

My youngest daughter, Christina, is in her second summer of working at the Doukhobor Discovery Center in Castlegar. Several times guests asked her

• What became of the Doukhobor lands?
• Were villages destroyed?
• Was the land used by other immigrants?

Doukhobor lands in Canada, 1899-1939, a composite of 4 maps
from Doukhobor Google Maps, by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Short Answers

• What became of the Doukhobor lands?
          Most was taken by government and sold.
• Were villages destroyed?
          Yes.
• Was the land used by other immigrants?
          Yes, and Canadians.

There were two huge losses of Doukhobor land and/or businesses (jam factories, sawmills, orchards, brick factories)

Time, Province	1907 Saskatchewan	1939 British Columbia
Owners	All Doukhobors	CCUB Ltd.
Land Total	773,400 acres (1209 sq.mi.)	19,027 acres (30 sq.mi.)
Land Kept Total	160,640 acres (251 sq.mi.)*	All. Rented up to 1961
Land Lost	612,760 acres (958 sq.mi.)**	--
Land Lost %	79%	0%. Rented, then  purchases began in 1961
Loss Estimate $	$11.4 million	$6 million
Reason	Forced-assimilation	Loan foreclosure

* Community Doukhobors kept 76%, 122,560 acres (192 sq.mi.); and
Independent Doukhobors purchased 24%, 38,080 acres (59.5 sq.mi.) by 1907.

** 258, 880 acres were reported by Jonathan Kalmakoff, 

Doukhobor Historical Maps: Saskatchewan, Doukhobor Heritage.  

1907 Comparisons	Population	Land Kept
Community Doukhobors	~90%	76%
Independent Doukhobors	~10%	24%

Though Independent Doukhobors acquired on the average more than twice as much land per person as Community Doukhobors, all Doukhobors were cheated by government and discriminated by society, similar to Aboriginal Canadians. 79% of the original Doukhobor lands in Saskatchewan were seized by the government and sold.

Long Answers

Each land loss requires more study to fully understand a series of many related events in the Canadian economy, society and government; and in the Doukhobor communities. Much is online.

• Doukhobor land rush (photo), Yorkton, Saskatchewan, 14 June 1907, Accession #1968-048 NPC, ID #3367665, Canada. Dept. of the Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-022244 — Photo of large crowd in Yorkton wanting abandoned Doukhobor land.  
• '"Breach of Faith'" Land Loss in Saskatchewan in 1907', August 7, 2012. — See References.
• The Decline of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Ltd. in 1938, Sheaf, June 1998.
• The Land Loss Story in Saskatchewan, Doukhobor-Homepage, March 17, 1998 (Retrieved from Archive.org)  — Error: 'oath of allegiance to the Crown' was not required. An 'affirmation' is acceptable.
• Aldeman, Jeremy. 'Early Doukhobor Experience on the Canadian Prairies', Journal of Canadian Studies, v.25, n.4, Winter 1990-1991, pages 111-128 — Doukhobor Genealogy Website.   
• Ewashen, Larry. Doukhobor Land Seizure : Canada at Last!, 2018.
• Hawthorn, Harry B. (editor). The Doukhobors of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia and J.M. Dent & Sons (Canada) Limited, 1955.
• Kalmakoff, Jonathan. Doukhobor Historical Maps: Saskatchewan, Doukhobor Heritage
• McLaren, John. “`Not to be Bought, Sold or Bartered With:’ Religious Communalists in a Fee Simple World – The Canadian Doukhobors and the Land Question, 1899-1999” presentation to the “Land and Freedom” Conference of  the Australian and New Zealand Legal History Society, Friday, July 9th, 1999, University of Newcastle, New South Wales.
• McLaren,John. (2005) Chapter 11: "The Failed Experiments: The Demise of Doukhobor Systems of Communal Property Landholding in Saskatchewan and British Columbia", in J. McLaren, A.R. Buck, and N.E. Wright (Eds.), Despotic Dominion: Property Rights in British Settler Societies, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005, pages 222-247.(Internet Archive) 
• Mealing, F. M.  Afterword,  Our people's way : a study in Doukhobor hymnody and folklife. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1972, pages 704-708.
• Szalasznyj, Kathy R.M. The Doukhobor Homestead Crisis 1898-1907. MA thesis, Dept. of History, University of Saskatchewan, 1977, 271 pages. — Most extensive history.

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Q67: P. V. Verigin against Independent Doukhobors?

From: Kim Kanigan, Australia, January 26, 2016:

I read in numerous accounts that in 1914 Peter V. Verigin told the Canadian government that Independent Doukhobors, who leave his commune, do not deserve military exemption.

• What is the source of this statement?
• Is there a document to proof this?
• Where can I see this evidence?

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Answer

This occurred in 1917, not 1914.

In 1899, about 7,500 (1/3) of all Doukhobors had arrived in western Canada. Most but not all were followers of Peter V. Verigin as successor leader to Lukeria Kalmykova in Russia. The majority of those who remained in Russia were not followers of Verigin who was arrested and exiled.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) in London, Canada and USA together with Tolstoyans coordinated their migration, donated food, supplies and volunteers for education and medical care. Thanks to their help, many Doukhobors went to school and quickly adapted to their new home and independent freedom.

In December 1902, more than three years later, P.V. Verigin arrived in Canada to nearly 8,000 Doukhobors already divided. The majority were harassed by a small protesting group, and a minority were not his loyal subjects.

Rather than dealing with the situation in Saskatchewan and accepting homestead land, Verigin evicted his opposition and isolated his followers. In 1906 he returned to Russia (just months before the Canadian Government on June 1, 1907 began to cancel Community lands) claiming all would move back, probably a bluff to pacify zealots. In 1908 he got bank loans to buy land in the interior of British Columbia where he resettled two-thirds of his followers by 1913. He forbid contact with Independents under penalty of expulsion from his Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB).

In 1916 the ‘Society of Independent Doukhobors’ was formed largely to have a voice in preserving their central core values involving military exemption status.

….The organization was made necessary when the Government demanded that the Doukhobors sign National Service cards, as an acknowledgement of their exemption status. Naturally, this demand brought some uneasiness. In January 1917, Peter G. Makaroff, a young Doukhobor lawyer, led an Independent delegation of five men to Ottawa. They stated that they were quite willing to sign the cards provided their religious beliefs were respected. As an offset to military service, they offered to pay a double measure of taxation if necessary. Moreover, the delegates pointed out that the Doukhobors in Western Canada had been giving active support to the greater production campaign and had placed as much of their land as possible under crop. Before leaving Ottawa, the Honourable Arthur Meighen explained to the delegation the National Service Act and assured them that ‘no interference with the privileges enjoyed by the Doukhobors was intended.’ Upon returning home, the delegates presented a full report at a large one-day conference of Doukhobors in Verigin, Saskatchewan…. (‘No Interference with Doukhobors,’ The Citizen (Ottawa), January 15 1917, cited in Tarasoff, Koozma J. ‘In Search of Brotherhood: The History of the Doukhobors,’ 3 volumes, unpublished, 1963, pages 496-497.)

During the Conscription Crisis of 1917, Verigin petitioned the Government of Canada to not exempt Independent Doukhobors from military service. In October 1917, he wrote to the Minister of Justice:

At the present time, I, Peter Verigin, the representative of Doukhobor community, do not recognize the second party as Doukhobors and consider that these people must be liable to be conscripted for military service on the same basis as other citizens of Canada, because the members of this party have free homesteads of the Dominion land and became British subjects for this particular land, and have firearms in their homes, and, therefore, they have to defend the crown of the British empire the same as all other citizens of Canada. (Petition by Peter V. Verigin to Chas.J. Doherty, Minister of Justice. PAC Photostat, OIP-DLB, R.C. 15, B.1, vol. 494,483 (14); ‘Doukhobors Are Divided in Opinions’, Regina Post, October 12, 1917.)

Ironically, while striving to build a ‘universal brotherhood’ he attempted to persecute his banished brethren with the aid of secular agencies. His petition was denied. To the wisdom of the government, it confirmed the law that all Doukhobors of conscience remain exempt from military service in Canada, free to perform alternative service or, if absolutist, given jail time.

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Bushies and Barons: Kuranda Kisses, Blues magazine, September 2010, is an article about Kim and Lesle Kanigan in Kuranda, Queensland, Australia.

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