Review: Our Backs Warmed by the Sun

Book: Vera Maloff. Our Backs Warmed by the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life (Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2020), 263 pp. ISBN 9781773860398.

Peter N. Maloff, 1939; and book cover.

The main hero, Peter Nikolaevich Maloff (1900-1971), was a Canadian Independent Doukhobor, a free thinker, an enthralling emotional speaker, a devout vegetarian, and one who was deeply concerned with humanity’s problems of exploitation, militarism and wars. He shared the Doukhobor historic mission of stopping wars and working to create a good society.

The author Vera Maloff (left) of Shoreacres, British Columbia, Canada, is Peter’s granddaughter. After retiring from a career in teaching, Vera began to record family stories passed down from generation to generation. Through Peter’s self-published book, interviews with her mother Elizabeth (daughter of Peter), historic photos, and news clippings, Vera recreates some of the life of her grandfather Peter whom she adores.

Peter Maloff was born in Saskatchewan to parents who witnessed the 1895 Arms Burning event in Tsarist Russia, which marked the Doukhobor community for life as a group that proclaimed to the world that humanity needs to get rid of militarism and wars once and for all.

In 1913, young Peter moved with his parents to establish the communal koloniya svobody (sovereign, or freedom colony) near Peoria, Oregon,* USA for three years. (Kolony svobody,* The Doukhboor Gazetteer). There he entered high school and developed a keen interest in working towards a war-less world where equality reigns, behaviour would be nonviolent, and caring for neighbours would be the Golden Rule that was taught by Jesus Christ and other religious figures in history.

The commune dissolved in 3 years and the Maloff family went to San Francisco, California, for 9 months where they mingled with Molokane and other sectarians from Russia. Peter learned journalism and Russian grammar by assisting Russian publisher Anton P. Cherbak (Щербаков), and meeting many educated Orthodox Russian immigrants in the city.

In 1919 Maloff returned to Canada and settled among like-minded pacifist relatives in the Thrums area of British Columbia along the Kootenay River north of Castlegar. The community was independent in thinking with a few zealot Freedomite families living nearby that did not easily fit into the orthodoxy of the Community Doukhobors, who were known up to 1938 as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (C.C.U.B.).

The book title describes their field work in the hot sun tending to their vegetables and fruit trees. They sold their produce at markets in Nelson and Trail. They also had a horse or two, a cow, a goat and chickens. Most were vegetarians.

In the 1920s Peter became very sympathetic to the zealot cause of striving for equality, in being against private property and some public education. He joined the cause and was arrested in 1929, 1932 and 1937. However, when the zealots began to burn and bomb homes and public property and used nudity as a way to gain public attention, Peter opposed this terrorism. His own home was threatened with arson and some of his books were burnt. By 1940 he abandoned the zealot movement. [Paragraph edited July 27, 2023.]

The biggest impact on Peter’s life as well as on the livelihood of the Doukhobor community was during World War II when Peter spoke out against militarism and wars. He refused to register for the Draft and was arrested, jailed, tortured, and threatened to be sent to a mental asylum and exiled in Canada in the early 1940s to an isolated two-room primitive isolated cottage near Blewett, about 23 km northeast of Thrums. His health was broken and it took several years to regain his strength.

In 1948, Peter published a collection of Russian articles some he wrote, many he collected that he thought would be of interest to Doukhobors. The 600+ page book, often cited in literature about Doukhobors, was never published in English, except for three articles listed below, bottom.

Author Vera wrote about this neglected eyesore in Canadian history through the voice of Peter’s daughter Elizabeth (Vera's mother) who was given the task of periodically visiting her father in exile bringing him essential food for his survival. The book reads well. Vera acknowledges the professional help of editor Anne DeGrace, who generously and skillfully prepared the manuscript for the final publishing form. Teamwork worked!

The book provides a good view of life among a close community group of pacifists with perspectives on values for survival, a passion for truth and justice, peace activism, conscientious objections, upbringing in the family, marriage traditions, land ownership, market gardening, visits to Dr. Bernard Jensen’s ranch in Escondido, California, and more. Vera’s mother Elizabeth (or Leeza) is a centenarian who with probing by Vera reveals the many facets of life of a struggling family showing what it means to be an active Doukhobor in the 20th century and beyond.

I was annoyed by the folksy English spelling of several Russian words, two of which were repeated by book reviewer Ron Verzuh. In my opinion these Russian words should have been properly transliterated according to the Library of Congress, or Oxford University Press standards — borshch (soup : not borsh, or borscht), pirogi (pierogi, filled tarts, turnovers, knish : not peerahee), and lekharka (female healer : not lyeekarka). (See more examples in: New Doukhobor Song Book, with CDs, May 28, 2013.)

Overall, this is a good read on the Doukhobors illustrated by excellent historic images, with special attention to Peter N. Maloff, the brave soul who has suffered for the cause of humanity. His truth was welcomed, but long overlooked by the general public. His granddaughter Vera has done a good turn by giving a voice to a nonkilling hero. Bolshoe spasibo, Vera. Many thanks!

If Peter Maloff was alive today, he would no doubt extend his anti-militarism call to include climate change, universal health care and drug programs for all, as well as urging all of us to make war a crime against humanity. Bolshoe spasibo (A big thank you), Peter! You were a visionary.

Fun fact: Maloff Spring*, Thrums, B.C. was named after Peter N. Malloff who first filed for a permit to use the water in 1956.

* 3 links to the Doukhobor Heritage website by Jonathan Kalmakoff.

More

• Vera Maloff, Facebook.
• The Price of Freedom: A Book Review, by Sean Arthur Joyce, chameleonfire1 blog, November 18, 2021 
• Voykin, Wendy, Facebook-Doukhbors in Canada, April 17, 2021. — Photo: 'We were fortunate to have Vera Maloff, join us for a reading from her recent publication ‘Our Backs Warmed by the Sun. Regulations in Castlegar allowed only 10, but the discussion was lively. If you’ve not yet read this historical account, get your hands on a copy of the book: a great read.'
• Vera Maloff provides glimpse into Doukhobor history as one of two authors sharing local memoirs, The Castlegar Source, February 19, 2021.
• Verzuh, Ron. 1036 Kootenay Doukhobor family saga, February 18, 2021 — Review: Our Backs Warmed By the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life, by Vera Maloff. 'Doukhobor Diaspora: A family oral history offers an antidote to past misunderstandings about the Russian sect'. Recommended read. Shows 4 vintage photos used in book. Fails to specify and correct 'some factual errors (a wrong date, some confusion over locations)'. See his lengthy 2014 article below about Peter Maloff in Oregon.
• The tales of two women, BC Booklook, February 11, 2021; also at Kootenay Scoop, Facebook — Oxygen Art Centre author readings in Nelson. ‘Vera Maloff was born in Nelson, and taught in the Kootenay Lake and Kootenay Columbia school districts for more than 30 years. She has remained active in the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ [U.S.C.C., Community Doukhobor] functions, and has taught after-school Russian classes. One chapter in Our Backs Warmed by the Sun won first prize in the non-fiction category of the Kootenay Literary Competition.’
• An Interview with Vera Maloff, (22 minutes) Podcast by Craig Baird, Canadian History Ehx, January 2021.
• Author Q&A: “Our Backs Warmed by the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life”, December 13, 2020, British Columbia Historical Federation. — Monica Miller of Caitlin Press interviewed Vera Maloff whose essays have been published in the USCC Doukhobor magazine Iskra, in the West Kootenay Journal and in The New Orphic Review (below).
• Book Launch • Vera Maloff & Memories of a Doukhobor Life, November 8, 2020. — Organized by Caitlin Press and Elephant Mountain Literary Festival for the launch of Vera Maloff's memoir. In a conversation with Anne DeGrace, Vera read from the collection and answered questions from the audience. Video is archived on YouTube (57 min, Vera starts at min. 4.)
• Retyunskikh, Albina. The granddaughter of a Doukhobor peace activist traces her family’s history of protest, Broadview, October 21, 2020.
• Catlin Press announcement: Our Backs Warmed by the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life, by Vera Maloff, with links to order the book. Caitlin Press received financial support from the Government of Canada and the British Columbia Arts Council.
• Maloff, Vera. Let Them Go Their Way, The New Orphic Review, Volume 20 Number 2, Fall 2017, pages 61-67. — She won the Kootenay Literary Competition for her creative non fiction story, 'Porto Rico' (Doukhobor Heritage website), about her family’s internment in the mountains of British Columbia in 1929. In this article "fellow Doukhobors" means "fellow Sons of Freedom."
• Schie, Sam Van. Kootenay Literary Competition award winners: This year's theme for the writing competition was "revolution" and the contest was open to writers across the East and West Kootenays. Nelson Star, January 23, 2013. — Vera Maloff – first place adult creative non-fiction (from Castlegar) for a chapter in Our Backs Warmed by the Sun.
• Literature’s Big Night, Nelson Star, January 23, 2013, page 2. — Vera Maloff – first place adult creative non-fiction (from Castlegar) for a chapter in Our Backs Warmed by the Sun.
• Memoirs by Women-inTrades’ Kate Braid and The West Kootenay’s Vera Maloff featured at Zoom Author Reading Feb. 24 for Nelson, B.C.’s Oxygen Art Centre, Kootenay Arts E-Bulletin, February 11, 2021.
• Verzuh, Ron. Oregon’s Doukhobors: The Hidden History of a Russian Religious Sect’s Attempts to Found Colonies in the Beaver State, BC Studies, no. 180, Winter 2013-2014, pages 43-81 — Posted on the Doukhobor Heritage website.
• ‘An Animated Wrestler With Words and Deeds.’ In Koozma J. Tarasoff. Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers’ Strategies for Living (Ottawa: Legas and Spirit Wrestlers Publishing, 2002), pp. 45-49. — Concise biography of Peter N. Maloff. See also Errata updates online.
• Popoff, John A. History of the Anton S. and John A. Popoff Family, reproduced from 'Abbreviated History of the Canadian Doukhobors and the Role of it of the Anton Popoff Family', Saskatchewan Archives Board, John A. Popoff Collection, A562, on the Doukhobor Heritage website. — Shows photo of 4 boys at the 'Freedom Colony', Oregon, 1915.
• Vera Maloff’s main sources for her book were:
• Peter N. Maloff’s self-published Dukhobortsy, ikh istoria, zhizn’ i bor’ba (Thums, BC: 1948, 607 pp). Translated as Doukhobors, Their History, Life and Struggle. See 3 excerpts below.
• Interviews with Vera’s 100-year-old mother Elizabeth (Leeza) Hoodicoff, daughter of Peter N. Maloff (married Lusha Hoodicoff in 1919).
• 60 historic photos illustrating the life of the Doukhobor communities in Canada, which liberally appear throughout the book.
• Translations from Maloff, Peter N. Dukhobortsyikh istoria, zhizn’ i bor’ba (Thrums: 1948), on the Doukhobor Heritage website.
• New Materials from the Earliest History of the Doukhobor Sect, by Nikolai Gavrilovich Vysotsky
• Tambov Doukhobors on Trial in 1803, by I. Dubasov.
• More About the History of the Dukhobortsy of Kharkov Province, by Vladimir Ivanovich Savva.

'Wake up' — Let's Prevent Nuclear War

Why is the threat of WW3 at an all time high?

The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947, shows the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. During the past 3 decades it has steadily moved to an all time danger. Why? What can we do?

August 6 will be the 74th anniversary of the bloody 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. By educating ourselves about the global politics and propaganda of war, I hope we will prevent WW3 and a nuclear holocaust, by protesting war industries, writing our governments, alerting our family and friends — anything to protect future generations.

The chart (click to enlarge) shows minutes to doom. The lower, the worse. It got worse from the end of WW2 (1945) through the Korean Conflict (1951-1953), then relaxed after the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and remained fairly steady during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) decade (1969-1979). Again it got worse, until President Reagan (1981-1989) and Secretary/President Gorbachev of Russia (1985-1991) began peace negotiations, which ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union (1991). Since then, for nearly 3 decades, threats have steadily escalated to an all time closeness to doomsday.

How did this nearly 30-year decline happen? Evidence points to the expansion of NATO and the USA foreign policy of perpetuating wars.

I believe that Russia is not our enemy, we are. To explain, I recommend three videos online. The first is in English, and two are in Russian on YouTube.

1. The Putin Interviews : Vladimir Putin & Oliver Stone Discuss NATO, by Oliver Stone, Information Clearing House, July 22, 2019 — Many short videos with English subtitles, and text.

2. В Борьбе за Украину. Нерассказанnая История Украины;(2019) [The Struggle for Ukraine. (or) The Untold Story of Ukraine]. (Russian: 83 minutes), by Oliver Stone. (Wikipedia Russian) — The film shows how the USA and the West were directly involved in the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine. Snipers killed 100+ people to entice Ukraine and Western countries to blame Russia and President Putin. A tragic flop! Due to NATO circling Russia, the film concludes a higher probability of a nuclear war. Putin and his Ukrainian associate Viktor Medvedchuk are interviewed, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa, Ivan Kachanovsky, who for five years has been investigating this story.

3. Голливуд как источник мужество [Hollywood as source of manhood], Бесогон ТВ (Besogon TV), Channel 24. (Russian, 55 minutes). — Explains how Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin sold out the USSR to the West on the promise that the West was ready to help the Russians, instead the USA wanted to destroy Russia. While the USSR disarmed and became ‘pacifist’, USA did not. USA propaganda claimed to spread ‘freedom and democracy’ but murdered tens of thousands, fooling most Americans to believe they were ‘victims’ of the uncivilized ‘them’ — like heroes in a Hollywood movie. On March 1st, 2018, Putin was reelected President of the Russian Federation, with a majority 77% of the votes. Due to the broken promise, on that day Putin announced the development of superior atomic weapons, so as to wake the sleeping world up to what is happening today. Narrator Nikita Mikhalkov shows that Hollywood created fictional heroes who defeat 'Chinese, Russians, animals', and others in the interests of the American Empire. War is shown, not 'democracy'. In contrast, Putin says the real heroes were those who lost their lives defending their motherland.

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More

• Stephanie Savell and 5W Infographics. 'This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is Combatting Terrorism', Smithsonian Magazine, January 2019. — The infographic reveals for the first time that the USA is now operating in 40 percent of the world’s nations.
• Elaine Scarry and Rachel Ablow. 'Sleeping Through the Alarm'. Boston Review, 24 July 2019. 'With virtually no democratic oversight and over 6,500 missiles in the United States alone, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable. So why is it so hard to think about nuclear war?'
• Paul Craig Roberts. 'America's Collapse: An Economy Based on Plunder', Information Clearing House, August 1, 2019. The long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end.
• Fred Weir. 'Trust deficit: The roots of Russia's standoff with the West', Christian Science Monitor, April 29, 2020.
• I have written many times about the threat of war and how to achieve nonkilling world peace, and will continue to write.

Q83: What is the Origin of ‘borshch’?

During Orthodox Easter dinner on April 9th here in Ottawa, I served my traditional Doukhobor vegetable soup — borshch — which I cooked using my mother’s recipe.

My guests asked a question that never occurred to me:
'What is the Origin of borshch'?

Photo by William (Uncle Bill) Anatooskin

Answer

In the past I was more concerned about the English transliteration of the Russian spelling which does not have a ‘t’ at the end. Q76: Correct Spelling of borshch?

Historically this was a staple Slavic poor peoples’ peasant soup, made year-round with local ingredients.

A Google search for ‘origins of borshch, borshcht, borsch, borscht’ returns what appear to be well researched histories with similar information. Russian and English Wikipedia histories differ. Here is a summary with 'Sources Online' listed below:

• The origin of borsch is unknown, most likely, it appeared on the territory formerly occupied by Kievan Rus. Apparently, the widespread opinion that "borsch" [brshch] is an Old [East] Slavic name for beets, should be attributed to folk etymology .. [the word] ... is not … in dictionaries of ancient Slavic dialects, ....(2) (Russian Wikipedia)
• ... [a soup like] borshch used to be the national food in Ancient Rome (8th century BC), where cabbages and beets were specifically cultivated for that purpose. … the modern version of borshch appeared around the 15th century. … the name came ... from the plant borshchevik (hogweed, cow parsnip) – one of the key ingredients … [and] or, from the word brshch, which meant beet in Old Slavonic. (1,4,5)
• In the beginning, borscht was made with brsh root [Old East Slavonic term], not red beet root. Brsh, common hogweed ... was ... fed to swine ... also human food ... in the spring peasant would gather tender brsh leaves to cook as green and store the ... roots for winter soup. ... borshch ... originated in Ukraine. (page 5) (1)
• Variations are widely distributed by migrating Slavs and peoples who carried and modified their borshch recipes around the world, including China. (3)
• Variations are dictated by the land, weather, and local traditions, but also by circumstance: people from different cultures intermarry; families are both willingly and forcibly moved. (6)
• Part of the family of sour soups, borscht is originally Ukrainian, … the beetroot-centered crimson version being the best-known. … white borscht, also called sour rye soup ... green borscht, packed with sorrel leaves [Щавель кислый, sour shavel’ ]. The consistent theme is that the soup has a sour taste, and that is can be eaten warm or cold (8)
• “There are literally hundreds of recipes,” explained Halyna Klid, of the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. “In Chernihiv province, a handful of buckwheat is added. In Lviv province, people use hunter's sausage.” …. There is also such a thing as bad borscht. (5)
• … borsch, borscht, … was not originally cooked with beets … the first experiment in transmitting the human voice from orbital flight involved the broadcasting of a borsch recipe ? (Burlakoff 1)
• With nearly 200 fasting days per year, the Christian Orthodox Church had a profound influence on dietary habits of the faithful ... the most important of the prolonged fasts were the weeks before Christmas and Easter. Without meat, borscht got it's flavor from vegetables, ... (page 8) ... even a watermelon soup, ... in Paraguay, is called borscht. (page 9) (1)
• Borscht belt is a "region of predominantly Jewish resorts in and around the Catskill Mountains of New York" (9)

Sources Online

1. Gueldner, Rose Marie. A Taste of Tradition: Borscht, Glückstal Colonies Research Association Newsletter, November 2016, pages 5-9.
2. Борщ, Wikipedia (Russian).
3. Borscht, Wikipedia (English).
4. Skorchenko, Evgenia. Of Russian origin: Borshch, RT Russiapedia.
5. Schaap, Rosie. How borscht crosses the border between Ukraine and Russia: Can a pot of soup contain clues to the character of a country and its crisis?, Al Jazeera America, April 10, 2014.
6. Hercules, Olia. Let Me Count the Ways of Making Borscht, The New Yorker, December 7, 2017.
7. Meek, James. The story of borshch, The Guardian, March 15, 2008.
8. Charney, Noah. Cooking the Classics: Borscht, Fine Dining Lovers, July 11, 2017.
9. borscht (n.), Online Etymology Dictionary.

Books by Burlakoff

1. Burlakoff, Nikolai. The World of Russian Borsch, Aelita Press, 2013, 240 pages.
2. Burlakoff, Nikolai. Erol Beet and the Borsch Angel: How the Borsch Angel Got Her Name, Aelita Press, June 28, 2012. 32 pages.

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• Q76: Correct Spelling of borshch?, 30 Nov 2016
• What borshch means to me, Apr 12, 2018

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See all Questions and Answers.

Peace Networking with Professor Beissel

How I happened to network with another amazing pacifist in Ottawa.

For years peace activists in Canada had planned a Vimy Ridge Anti-war Project, a simultaneous cross-Canada protest to educate the public that ‘the spectacle of war… where more than 10,000 were killed or wounded in 4 days’ in France in April 1919 is being glorified as the 'Birth of Our Nation'.

On November 11, 2016, I volunteered to assist an Anti-War Pop Up (#1) event about our national 100th Anniversary of the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge, hosted by the War Resisters Support Campaign. This was an educational meeting at a bookstore to organize a larger event at the Ottawa Public Library on April 9, 2017: Anti-War Pop Up 2 : Public Readings of Plays by David Fennario.

Our library event strategically preceded the April 10, 2017, lecture in the same Auditorium about the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at the Vimy Visitor Education Centre 175 km north of Paris, France.

Henry Beissel

On April 9, I choose a good seat up front to take photos, and a late comer took an empty seat next to me. Four performers read from 2 recent plays by David Fennario: ‘Bolsheviki’ and ‘Motherhouse’. (See photo album.)

Afterward, during the question and answer session, the man next to me (photo right) stood up and made one of the most brilliant statements about pacifism I have ever heard. I really wanted to know who this man was, so before he departed I invited him for coffee. I immediately bonded with Henry Beissel as we shared our life stories, and exchanged emails.

Later by email I again thanked him, and he replied:

I don't wish to denigrate the presentation organized by the peace group, but I suspect what we heard was nothing new to any of us. The brutalities and idiocies of war have been written about, filmed and presented graphically time and time again, yet we're still carrying on with wars. What I want to know is what concretely can we do to end this vicious suicidal cycle.

That means trying to identify the root causes and proposing how to deal with them. I think I can make some contribution to research in this area, but I don't have the answers either. However, unless we zero in on an honest diagnosis we will never be able to find a cure. Of course, there may be no cure. In which case homo sapiens is doomed. I prefer to think that there is enough intelligence between the best humans to get us beyond aggression and violence.

In short, Beissel is disappointed that no solutions for world peace were discussed, nor were presented at later ‘peace’ events to which I invited him. See his comments on November 13, 2017 (Remembrance Day), and September 2, 2017 (film at Ottawa Peace Festival).

I agree that we are spending lots of time talking about promoting peace, but not actually doing it. How can it be done? Is peace possible to achieve?

I invited him to participate in our book project: 150 Canadian Stories of Peace. And he contributed 2 poems (below). I gave him a copy of the book, and asked him to send a comment in which he again raised the issue of human survival, analyzing arguments over emotion and instinct, cooperation vs. aggressiveness, concluding with the hope that the arts can save us from annihilation.

Henry Beissel is a retired professor of English literature, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and editor who lives in Ottawa. He was raised Catholic in Germany, and after WWII moved to Canada where he became a secular humanist. His wife Arlette Franciere is a translator of French and Russian and is an accomplished painter. We recently had dinner together so our wives could meet.

At one of our lunches together, Beissel told me about a book that inspired him and gave him the technology to recover from cancer some 20 years ago (Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. Random House, 1975). I got a copy and read it.

Beissel says that cancer is not a disease but a dysfunction of our immune system. He used visualization to shrink cancer to zero when he went through the treatment chamber and visualized the malignant cancer cells dying. He regularly uses visualization in his work.

We found that we share similar journeys:

• In the 1950s I published The Inquirer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with ‘an inquiring approach to social problems’. Then in the 1960s, for two years, Henry was professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he published eight issues of Edge, an independent periodical that addressed controversial topics.
• Henry moved to Trinidad and Tobago for two years as a Canadian Aid Professor and returned to Concordia University in Montreal as a Distinguished Emeritus Professor. He and his wife settled in Glengarry County (a rural area between Ottawa and Montreal near Maxville) on 100 acres of undeveloped bush where they built their own house with a study for Henry and a studio for Arlette. They lived there for 35 years while Henry commuted to Montreal (150 km to office each way). Their neighbour Gary Geddes was editor/ publisher of Cormorant Press whom I visited to publish my books about Doukhobors.
• We both knew Canadian poet Al Purdy. I never met him personally, but corresponded with him in the 1950s and received his newsletter.
• We are close in age. Henry is 88 (turning 89 on April 12, 2018), while I am 86. Both of us strive to maintain our good health and fitness. We both have set the bar high, striving to reach at least 110. ‘Who will be first?’

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More

• Beissel’s 2 poems in 150 Canadian Stories of Peace
     — Peace has Broken Out
     — Manifesto in Times of War
• Henry Beissel, Wikipedia
• Henry Beissel, website and biography (Internet Archive)
• Beissel's comment about 150 Canadian Stories of Peace
• 150 Canadian Stories of Peace — the book, Spirit-Wrestlers Blog, 13 December 2017.
• Interview with Henry Beissel, (25 min.) Youtube, by Anna Schneider, Marburg University, 4 June 2013.
• Remember peace and nuclear disarmament on ‘Remembrance Day’, Spirit-Wrestlers Blog, 13 November 2017 — Beissel spoke.
• Critical comment by Beissel about ‘Origins — ‘Our Roots. Our Planet. Our Future’, Film Festival #1, Ottawa Peace Festival 2017, September 2, 2017.
• Congratulations to Doukhobors’ Heritage Day – 2017 Celebration, Veregin, Saskatchewan.

Added

• Talking to Youth at Global Climate Strike, By Henry Beissel, October 3, 2019.
• Obituary: Poet Henry Beissel wrestled with his childhood in Nazi Germany. by Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen, February 28, 2025.
• Peace Day 2025 — A Doukhobor Manifesto, By Koozma J. Tarasoff, and Dr. Henry Beissel. May 1, 2025.

Update: April 7, 2018
This article is republished in The Shift Catalyst, Issue 7: Peace, April 8, 2018, a bi-weekly e-zine with 420,000 subscribers.

CANSEC Ottawa Reports Since 2009

Since 2009 I have been reporting about protests against the largest military-industrial complex convention and show in North America, held annually in Ottawa called CANSEC, short for the CANadian defence and SECurity trade show.

"Canada's premier defence trade show" is hosted by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI), and held annually at the EY Centre, 4899 Uplands Drive in Ottawa, Ontario, one kilometer northeast of the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport.

Don't confuse it with:

• CANSec — the USA Central Area Networking and Security Workshop (ended in 2017, offline in 2021)
• CanSecWest, Vancouver, British Columbia, about digital and computer security
• CANSEC 2023 — Caribbean Nations Security Conference
• CANSEC, Wikipedia.

Short link to this page: bit.ly/StopCANSEC

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Updates

2025 June 6 — Protesting the 2025 CANSEC Military Show

2023 May 31 — CANSEC 2023 — Protest Photos and News — 190 photos

2022 June 7 — 100s Protest Canada Weapons Show, CANSEC 2022

2020, 2021 — CANSEC cancelled due to COVID.

2020 January — World Beyond War Global Conference, Ottawa May 26-31, 2020

2020 January — Stop wars! Stop the killings! — A Poem for Our Times

2019 June 4 — Stop CANSEC 2019 : Peace Movement Determined to Shut Down CANSEC Arms Trade Show in Canada — 106 photos 

2019 May 15 — Mobilizations against arms shows can learn from each other, by Brent Patterson, Rabble.ca — Cited: 'Ottawa-area peace activist Koozma J. Tarasoff provides an enlightening and inspiring overview of these protests dating back to 2009 in this Spirit-Wrestlers blog post.'

2018 May 30 — 'Music Against War' versus CANSEC

2017 May 31 — Anti-war, Pro-life Demonstration at Canada’s Largest Arms Show, EY Centre + 110 photos

2016 May 24-25 — Peace Protestors at CANSEC 2016, EY Centre + 132 photos — 8 protest locations in 3 days, 3 arrested

2015 May 30 — Protesting CANSEC Weapons Show as ‘Terrorism’, + 125 photos

2014 - 2012 — No CANSEC reports, rather I posted about 25 blogs against war. CANSEC moved to EY Centre near the Ottawa International Airport.

2011 June 16 — Anti-Military Show Rally in Ottawa, Lansdowne Park, June 1-2, 2011, + 142 photos

2010 June 11 — Military-Industrial Complex Show, Lansdowne Park, Ottawa, June 1-3, 2010, + 37 photos

2010 May 14 — The Arms Show CANSEC 2010: Ideology and Usefulness in the 21st Century — Letter to Editor, Ottawa Citizen

2009 June 5 — Military-Industrial Complex Show, Lansdowne Park, Ottawa May 27-28, 2009, + 25 photos

1997 May 11 — Mother of All Air Shows! The National Capital Air Show in Ottawa, Canada, held on Mothers' Day, May 11, 1997, displaying militarism, violence and war technology as family fun and entertainment. Narrated by Marion Dewar, former Mayor of Ottawa (1978-1985).

1988 — The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) was founded to expose and oppose Canada's largest Arms Exhibition — ARMX

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Also see my list of reports for the Ottawa Peace Festivals — Archive & History; and many reports about other peace events in Ottawa at Spirit-Wrestlers.com.

Nonkilling Mennonites 150 Years Ago

Article submitted by Dr. Lawrence Klippenstein regarding nonkilling global peace.

I really like the emphasis of a "nonkilling solution." For 30 years I have been researching Mennonites who, more than 150 years ago, began working on a "nonkilling" solution in Crimea. Here is my most recent article:

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-1856):

Three Eyewitness Accounts, (2012, PDF, 20 pages)

Because the first Mennonite COs and non-combatants assisted Russian soldiers who killed, they did not provide a perfect "nonkilling solution." Later they improved.

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Dr. Lawrence Klippenstein is a long-serving board member and former Historian-Archivist, Mennonite Heritage Centre; and an independent scholar, living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 1984 PhD thesis was about Mennonite pacifism. In 1998, he received the Prix Manitoba Award by the Manitoba government for his accomplishments as a writer, teacher, researcher, historian, archivist, and linguist of Mennonite culture. He was Editor of Windows to the West Reserve: A Mennonite Heritage Preservation Newsletter, from the first issue in 2002 to the last in 2008. He taught at the Elim Christian Education Centre in Altona, before it closed in 1986.

Many Publications

• WorldCat author list
• Amazon author list
• OCLC - Online Computer Library Center
• Wikipedia citations
• GAMEO - Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
• Lawrence Klippenstein, 'Mennonite Pacifism and State Service in Russia: A Case Study in Church-State Relations, 1789-1936,' PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1984.

Online Publications

Manitoba Historical Society, 6 articles

Klippenstein, Lawrence. Manitoba Settlement and the Mennonite West Reserve (1875-1876), Manitoba Pageant, Autumn 1975, Volume 21, Number 1

Klippenstein, Lawrence, and Julius G. Toews, eds. Mennonite Memories: Settling in Western Canada. Winnipeg, MB: Centennial Publications, 1977.

Bender, Harold S. and Lawrence Klippenstein. "Archives." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1990.

Klippenstein, Lawrence. Conscientious Objectors in Eastern Europe: The Quest for Free Choice and Alternative Service, in Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia: The Communist and Postcommunist Eras, edited by Sabrina P. Rame, Duke University Press, 1992, pages 276-309.

Klippenstein, Lawrence. Mennonites and Military Service in the Soviet Union to 1939, in Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945, edited by Peter Brock, Thomas Paul Socknat, University of Toronto Press, 1999, pages 3-18.

Klippenstein, Lawrence. Book Review: Wilmer A. Harms, The Odyssey of Escapes from Russia: The Saga of Anna K, Mennonite Life, V.55, N.2, June 2000.

Forestry Service among Mennonites in Tsarist Russia, by Dr. Lawrence Klippenstein, (bottom of) Annual Report of the Mennonite Church Pertaining to the Maintenance of the Forestry Service in 1908, Transcribed by Michael Penner. Published 2005.

Klippenstein, Lawrence, and Alf Redekopp, website historical consultants. Alternative Service in the Second World War: Conscientious Objectors in Canada: 1939 – 1945.

Q58: Doukhobors and Hippies?

From: Dr. Irina Gordeeva, Moscow, Russia

I am a Russian historian and my theme is a history of the radical pacifist movement in Russia in the twentieth century. I start with the tolstoyans of the beginning of the twentieth century and finish with independent peace movement of the late Soviet period.

Thank you for your site and texts very much. Could you, please, answer a question for me: Is there any information about the attitude of the pacifist doukhobors to the hippie movement?

My question refers to the problem of the different types of pacifism and their interrelations. In the archive of Olga Birukova, I found a letter by a Doukhobor who was very negative towards hippies. In the Soviet Union there were several hippie-tolstoyans. Maybe there were hippie-Doukhobors as well?

Note: Dr. Gordeeva is an expert in the field of the history of religious and social movements in Russia (history of Utopian movements, the communitarian movement, radical pacifists, "Tolstoyan" and Russian sectarianism).

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Answer

I do not know precisely what attitudes Doukhobors had in the 1960s to the immigrants and do not know of any hippie-Doukhobors, so I am asking readers to submit their stories as comments below.

In 2006, the USCC and Doukhobor Discovery Centre fully supported former "hippie / draft-dodgers" who were being attacked while trying to create a memorial and hold a conference in Nelson. See: Our Way Home Peace Event & Reunion: A review of the event and news about it.

Instead of answering Dr. Gordeeva's question, I will provide some context to this history and encourage readers to contribute.

The hippie phenomenon in the 1960s had its roots in a protest against authority, against war in Vietnam, against social injustices in society. The general response was for freedom from oppression, freedom from wars, and freedom from a variety of restrictions related to the middle class norms of sex, work, fashion, and education. The era was manifested with singing of protest songs, rallies against war, sexual freedoms, use of drugs, and by experiments in cooperative arrangements and home education.

The hippie era was democratic, but also dispersed in many directions that were responding to many needs. That dispersal made the social movement ineffective.

Joan Baez with John Kootnekoff, 1973, Mir (Issue 1:1, page 5).

The photo shows Doukhobor youth meeting a lead peace protester whose husband was 'imprisoned for 20 months, for refusing induction and organizing draft resistance against the Vietnam war' (Joan Baez, Biography). Their dress is typical for the hippie-styles of the late-1960s and early 1970s. It appeared in the magazine Mir, published by Doukhobor youth.

For Doukhobors, their historic tradition of plakun trava (going against the current) matched the hippie phenomenon of questioning the life style of the day, always looking for ways to free human beings from the restrictions of the church and state. In their dominant mir community system in Tsarist Russia, authority was shared with little or no differentiation. However, villagers feared the authority held by persons outside the local village.

The Doukhobors who moved to Canada in 1899 (about 1/3, 7500, mostly followers of Peter V. Verigin) faced a new threat to their previous comfortable community structure arrangement. The prevailing trend of the North American society was private enterprise, the free market, and capitalism. The new migrants wanted their freedoms to continue, as they negotiated before immigration. But, the agreements were soon breached. In 1905 newly elected Canadian politicians required private ownership instead of communal land ownership granted to Doukhobors. This caused Verigin in 1908 to abandoned 79% (1209 mi.2) of all land homesteaded by all Doukhobors, and order his followers (two-thirds, 5000) to move to private land he purchased in the interior of British Columbia to continue their communes for almost three decades as Community Doukhobors. The one-third who stayed behind, worked their land as individual owners, became farmers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, nurses, and other professions, as Independent Doukhobors.

Within the Doukhobor communities, there were individuals known variously as svobodniki (free people), Sons of freedom or zealots, who resisted the state in terms of land ownership, public education, and the filling out of census data. They appear to have gotten their inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his back-to-nature movement, from anarchists in opposing the state, and even from Lev N. Tolstoy who sought truth and the simple life to ensure an egalitarian society.

These zealots refused to adjust to the prevailing style of life in North America. Some of them became so vocal and extremist that they contradicted their historic roots of nonviolence and respect for ones neighbours. By going naked, releasing their 'brothers and sisters' horses and cattle in 1902, burning and bombing property (their own and others), experimenting with free marriage and sex, they essentially excluded themselves from the Doukhobor Movement. Their extremist antics were so sensational for the media and the public, that the group was condemned as a whole. A small group of warring zealots had in effect hijacked the larger peaceful group of Doukhobors.

The hippies were against war and social injustice, as have been the Doukhobors over the centuries.

The parallel to the hippie movement is closest to the extremist zealots, but there is a caveat which historians must take note. Burnings, bombings and nudity are not main-stream behaviours of Doukhobors. In fact, they are not Doukhobor in their true peaceful essence. To equate the Doukhobors as hippies is inaccurate.

What I see as the real lesson to Irena Gordeeva's question is that Doukhobors and hippies both questioned the right of the state to wage wars and instead sought an alternative society based on equality, nonkilling peace, justice and love. What attitudes the Doukhobors had in the 1960s and still have today require further study.

Read

• Koozma J. Tarasoff. Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers' Strategies for Living. 2002.
• Koozma J. Tarasoff. The "Sons of Freedom" — A Flash-Back to 1956, August 2009.
• Charles Frantz. Historical Continuities in an Immigrant Russian Sect: Doukhobor Ideology and Political Organization, in Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1961, pages 31-53.
• Svetlana A. Inikova. 'Uchenie L. N. Tolstogo i sini svobodi v Kanade' [Lev N. Tolstoy's Teachings and the Sons of Freedom in Canada]. In Religiovedenie [Religious Studies], no. 3, 2002, 37 pp.; and translated on the Doukhobor Genealogy Website.
• 'Breach of Faith’ Land Loss in Saskatchewan in 1907: James Mavor’s letters in defence of Doukhobor communal land.
• Q71: What happened to the land lost by the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan in 1907?, 24 April 2016.

More: Questions and Answers, Comments