ON-THE-SPOT REPORT FROM KRESTOVA

The Doukhobors’ own story

By BERT WHYTE

NELSON, B.C.

We were bound for Krestova, in the heart of the Sons

of Freedom country.

Turning off the main Nelson-Castlegar highway run-
ning alongside the Kootenay River, we followed the
Crescent Valley road for some miles, crossed the Slocan

River and headed up the Goose Creek road.
raining heavily for three days,

It had been
and the dirt road built many

years before by pioneering Doukhobors was slippery and

dangerous.

‘

As we wound our way carefully onward and upward,
anxious faces peered from behind window curtains in small,

unpainted Sons of Freedom farm
houses.

Perhaps we were RCMP, come
to ruthlessly seize their children
and ship them up to New Denver?
Less than a week before, three
Sons of Freedom children at Gilpin
(in the Grand Forks area) and
three at Claybrick (near Nelson)
had been torn from the arms of
their parents by police enforcing
the Protection of Children and
School Acts.

Freedomite children at Krestova
and Glade have hidden in the hills
since then, whenever roving RCMP
cars appear. For the Sons of Free-
dom sect, who oppose our educa-
tional system “because it glorifies
war,” are determined not to sub-
mit to government demands that
their children attend . school.

Nigel Morgan stopped the car
and we climbed out, turning up our
coat collars as protection against
the driving.rain, and ascended a
narrow, muddy path to the closest
dwelling. As we neared the house
a Doukhobor farmer stepped out
on his porch to meet us.

“We’re looking for Nick Evdok-
imoff,” said Morgan. “Can you tell
us where he lives?”

he man shrugged his shoulders.
“TJ don’t know,” he said.

“Tm Nigel Morgan of the Labor-
Progressive party,’ Morgan ex-
plained. “And this is Bert Whyte
of the Pacific Tribune, and Garf
Belanger of Trail.”

“Oh,” said the man, “come on in
out of the rain. Nick is up at
Krestova.”

* * ~

We entered the small, plainly-
furnished kitchen, and our host
introduced himself, and introduc-
ed us to his wife (busily cooking
dinner on an old wood range) and
his 16-year-old niece (washing
clothes in a hand-operated rocker
tub).

We hadn’t intended to stay for
dinner, but they insisted, so we sat
down at the kitchen table and did
full justice .to a meal of boiled
cabbage (the best I’ve ever eaten),
potatoes, beets, homemade bread
and homemade preserves.

“Eat. more, you don’t’ eat
enough,’ urged the housewife,
amid profuse apologies for the
condition of her kitchen because
we had caught her on “washing
day.”

After dinner we talked for an
hour, and I sounded out our host
on his attitude to education, which
proved to be that of all the Free-

domites. “I taught my niece to
read and write. It is enough,” he
said.

“Children should not be separ-
ated from their parents,” chim-
ed in-his wife. “Why does the
government do this to us? We
only want to live our simple
lives in peace. But the police
come, show no papers, shove our
people around, search our homes
—we have nothing to hide —
and steal our little ones.”

We broke away at last, and con-
tinued our journey, climbing, twist-
ing and turning, following the
trail made by the Doukhobors many
years ago when they first came to
B.C. and opened up this territory,

to wrest a hard living from the
reluctant soil.

Krestova at last, the “capital”
of the Sons of Freedom territory—
a wide, muddy main street, faced
by ramshackle wooden dwellings.
Many of the 700 inhabitants watch-
ed us curiously, for, visitors, with
the exception of prying RCMP of-
ficers, are a rarity.

x * x

We found Nick Evdokimoff
working with a crew of men saw-
ing wood. (Evdokimoff is the man
who was sentenced to 14 vears in
jail on flimsy evidence following
a’ burning; the League for. Demo-
cratic Rights took up the case and
Evdokimoff was freed at a second
trial). :

Handshakes, and_ introductions
followed, the work crew knocked
off and we all trooped into a near-
by house. A stream of men and
women trailed in after us; soon
the room was jammed with about
40 Freedomites, and the talk be-
gan.

We talked of many things.

White-haired Nick Basaroff, 74,
whose ruddy cheeks and snowy
moustache and beard make him
look like a jolly Santa Claus,
described how he had emigrated to
Canada from Batum, in Russia,
with the first shipload of Doukho-
bors. Arriving in Halifax in 1899,
he worked that first winter in
Brandon, then toiled for many
years near Kamsack, Saskatche-
wan (there was no Kamsack when
the Doukhobors went there to clear
the land and upturn the virgin
soil). Before the First World War
a group of hardy adventurers
moved further west to B.C. and
founded the village of Krestova.
Basaroff was among them.

NICK EVDOKIMOFF

Patriarch Basaroff, who has four
children and 12 grandchildren,
carries his years lightly. When I
first saw him he was working on
the woodpile, along with Evdokim-
off (who is 56) and some younger

/ men.

A dish heaped with apples was
set squarely in the middle of the
long table, and as we sat munch-
ing the juicy fruit Nick Nevok-
shonoff asked us the question in
the minds of all the Freedomites
present:

“Why did you come to see us?”

“Because,” | answered, “the
Pacific Tribune, a labor paper, is

interested in seeing that the

Sons of Freedom get a square
deal, and we don’t believe thai
the government is giving you
one. Furthermore, we know
that the daily papers give their
readers a distorted picture of the

Freedomites, and present you as
though you were not human be-
ings.

“The Pacific Tribune is willing
to print your side of the story,
whether we agree fully with your
position or not, and I would like
you to tell me how the Sons feel
about the government’s plan to
divide and sell the land formerly
owned by the Christian Community
of Universal Brotherhood Limited,
and how you intend to react to the
government’s plan to-force your
children to attend schools.”

Nevokshonoff nodded, sat think-
ing for a few moments, and then
replied:

“They say we are fanatics, but
we say we are just simple people
who want to live a simple life. We
must do what our religion tells us
to do. We were persecuted by the
Czarist authorities in Russia, and
so our people left Russia and came
here, for the Canadian government
promised us peace and freedom to
live our lives as we saw it. But
now the government persecutes us
here, too.

“Perhaps we will-have to move
again. Our spiritual leader is try-
ing to find a place for us, bat

what country wants us, after the

way the papers speak of us?”

“Surely you do not want to leave our’ children?

this land, where you have lived so
long?” I asked.

“We opened up this country, bat
if we cannot live here in~peace,
we will go elsewhere.”

“Suppose the government acied
differently,” I said. “Suppose they
allowed you to have your own
schools, with Doukhobor teachers.
Would you object to education
under those conditions?”

“We have schools,” said Nevok-
shonoff, “where we teach our. chil-
dren the Doukhobor religion. And
we teach our children to read and
write, and some simple arithmetic.
But the government won’t tolerate
such schools. They want to teach
our children history which glorifies
war, and we believe in peace and
the Brotherhood of Man: They
want to teach mathematics, and we
know it is the educated people who
make atom bombs which destroy
people.’

“I can’t agree with you that
knowledge in itself is evil,” I said.
“Knowledge can be used in the
cause of peace, as well as war.
Don’t you think-it is a question of
how man uses his knowledge?”

But Nevokshonoff and the other
Freedomites in the room would
not agree with this. “Too much
education is bad,” they said firmly,
and defended their simple, primi-
tive communal mode of living.

* x *

If the government stubbornly
insists on continuing its head-on
attack on the educational front
— raiding villages and seizing
children from their parents, and
shipping them to New Denver,
where some 32 children are forc-
ed to attend a government
school — then it is obvicus that
the Freedomites will resist what
they regard as an attack on their
religious beliefs and civil liber-
ties.

Some of the women in the room
began to ery, and one mother step-
ped forward and spoke passion-
ately to me in Russian.

“She says,” another woman in-

“We wish to live in peace and till the soil”

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terpreted, “can you help us kesh
She «says we C42’
speak each other’s language, ie
we can speak together from

heart. She appeals to all mothers:
how would they feel if the police
broke into their homes and wee
their little ones. She says we 4°
not animals, we are human beings
and we love our children, and the
government is breaking our heat .
She says every mother cries, ‘GlV

us back our children.’ She ane
your help, for you are good peoPié
who treat us as friends.”

“We will do all we can to helP
you,” answered Nigel Morgan:
“Like you, we are people who oP
pose war and want the world
live in peace. We know how you
feel about the loss of your chi
dren, for we have children too. The
issue is not whether you are Té ht
in your beliefs about the evils 0
education. We may hold a diffe!
end view from you on that ques”
tion.

“But we know that the gover?
ment is acting stupidly and wrone
ly when it takes children away
from their parents. And I promis¢
you, in the name of the Labor-Pr0-
gressive party, that we will do
in our power to force the gover®
ment to end this brutal, big-stick
policy.” j

On the government’s handling
of the land question, Nevokshon°?
had little to say, because, like
everyone else, he is not quite sure
what the government is tryins
do.

When some 6,000 Doukhobors
moved to. B.C. before the First
World War under the leadership °
Peter “The Lordly” Verigin, they
purchased 19,000 acres of vir?
land in the West Kootenays, in ¢
name of a crown chartered com
pany called the Christian Col”
munity of Universal Brotherh0°
Limited.

Hard work paid off; the zeal-
ous Doukhobors built roads, itt!
gated much of the area, planté
thousands of fruit trees, set UP

Continued on page 6
See SONS

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 26, 1954 — PAGE 2