HELEN VERIGIN INTERVIEWS MRS. HELEN ZEBEROFF
[Champion Creek]
I was born seventy-four years ago in the Red River district in Saskatchewan. When I was nine or ten years we lived near Verigin village. It wasn't hard for us then as our mother was still alive. One day mother went to milk the cows as it was her turn and my twin sister and I started supper. I was stirring the potatoes and my sister was feeding chips into the fire when her dress caught fire and she was burned alive.
We moved to B. C. in 1912. At Brilliant there was no bridge, only two ferries. One ferry below the present bridge, one ferry where Kinnaird is, and landed in Jerusalem or Waterloo as it was known as. We moved to Champion Creek right off. We took everything across on the raft about five miles lower than the Waterloo ferry. When we moved there some of the homes were already built and land was being cleared for gardens.
Women cooked communally. Each person had a white enamel bowl to eat from. Our family was the first to move to Champion. Several families moved right after Lordly Verigin picked out the families that were to move there. William and George Androsoff were in charge of the building crew.
The homes were very crowded, about fifty-seven people lived in half of the village.
In 1914 or 1915 the order came down to eat mamoligya, poor man’s poor time soup. This is our recipe for it: 2 pails pot of water, 2 tablespoons butter, 2 bowls of potatoes to cook and mash, carrots chopped fine, and onions. Then make a topping, flour and water made crumbly and put in the oven to brown. Then put it into the potato water, it thickens like stew.
The trees were obtained from a warm climate and an old man was in charge of planting. They were stacked in cellars sprinkled with water, then distributed equally among the villages, equal shares of all varieties. Once they were planted, we women had to get up early and water them from the river.
The women took turns baking bread and cooking. We had one cow for fifty people. Divided milk by tablespoons, the only way we could equalize it. Butter, salt, rice, flour, mazola, porridge, staples, were given by the community.
When the homes became too crowded Lordly asked us to build another village.The men set up a portable sawmill and logs were split into planks and building started. So it was only logical large families were in one home and several small families together in another.
After I was married we were reshuffled seven times. My children didn't have a chance to acquire a high education. Besides gardens we planted hemp and flax, millet and buckwheat. Seeds from hemp were a delicacy. Shoes were made for Champion people right there.
Helen Verigin interviews Helen Sherbinin
[Midway]
I remember when I was young I loved to visit my grandma Samsonoff. She and grandpa lived in Crescent Valley and there was a small sawmill there. A lot of the Hindus lived there. Everybody was afraid of them, they were so black and with white turbans.
Grandpa went outside one night and here somebody was sitting in his outside chair so grandpa said:'Good day.' No answer. Grandpa said again: 'Good day.' No answer. Grandpa let out a holler: 'Guard!' Everybody ran out to see what was the matter? They investigated and it was only grandpa's coat and hat on the chair.
When we were young our parents kept on and on; learn to cook, learn to sew, spin, weave, raise a garden, not necessary to go to school. You won't marry an Englishman anyway. We never even saw an Englishman. Go to church, learn to sing. The girls' hair was bobbed like the boys.
Evenings go out and play ball, by nine o’clock everybody is in bed. When we were young a bunch of us would be sent to Shoreacres to pick fruit. We stayed there all week. As a chaperon we had an old man Harashimoff. Evenings after supper he used to tell us stories about the history of the Doukhobors.
The community was like a circle. Somebody milled our flour for us, supplied oil, material for clothes. I never had a pair of shoes till I was twelve years old. Then the community sewed me a pair of heavy duty oxfords. They doled out some print material, striped, for a blouse and skirt for summer. I had to wear it for three summers. And for winter the clothes were made from material that was woven by the community and was dyed purple. Dye extracted from indelible pencils. Break the pencil, crush the lead, soak it, pure dye. I have a shirt mother sewed when I was eleven years old. Nobody wore it and nobody will. Even moths don’t attack it
When we were young we’d go a little ways past the villages and boys would play a tune on a mouth organ or a comb through tissue paper that Eaton's sends in parcels, and we would try to dance barefoot, polka, heel and toe, schotisse. We’d raise such a cloud of dust we could barely see one another. Life was happy then in its simplest way. There was no school then, no cars. Boys and girls walked everywhere, played ball, drop the handkerchief. Played football with the boys and would disjoint my toe every time.
Before I married I lived in the communities. When I married John Sherbinin we moved to the farm by Landis’ place. Sherbinins had a mill there.
I remember when my husband got his first car. It was a Chevy with a black body and a grey roof. The licence was one dollar and the garage man in Nelson taught him in one day how to drive.
After I was married I remember one Christmas very clearly. All the Sherbinins were invited to a party by Mr. Mike and Mrs. Anne Kaslo to their home. She was Luthvenka and he was a Russian. They lived between the pump and Krestova. He made beautiful violins and played on them. Then she made a chicken supper and gave us oranges. First time I tasted an orange and a chicken.
Mrs. Anne Gattinger, a non-Doukhobor but a Russian describing what hemp is and how they utilized it in Russia: Male plants are five feet tall, and ripen sooner than female. The female produces seeds, about ten inches blossom from the top. Both bloom at the same time. The male pollinates the female plant. Female produces seeds that are tiny and grey. Male plants are ready to take out the middles of July. Female plant stays and ripens the end of November or the beginning of September. Males have very little elongated leaves. Females have a lot of leaves but they fall off when seeds ripen. To harvest, cut and make bundles like wheat sheaves and stook them. When they are dry, about two weeks, then drive stakes by the shore in the water and pile the sheaves tight one against the other. Then cover with dirt or mud so they won’t float away. Let soak for two weeks or fifteen to eighteen days. Wash them in the river so all mud is washed out and dry them again and crush them till the husk becomes pliable in a hollowed out log with a wooden mallet. Then in October the same process of crushing is repeated and this time it is done in a social atmosphere. Young boys and girls got together in the evening, sang songs, told jokes, and worked the fibers Pounding until the fibers are pliable and soft and the straw falls away. They combed the fibers on wooden combs, and rolled it into loose balls. Something like angora balls, then they are ready to spin.
From the seeds, oil is extracted for frying , and the bulk and husks from the seeds is called makooha. People eat it for snacks because it cuts like loaf bread and with a very distinctive flavour. Some people feed it to cattle because there’s vitamins, minerals and proteins in it. The fibers are spun and the thread is tougher and rougher than even flax.
[Midway]
I remember when I was young I loved to visit my grandma Samsonoff. She and grandpa lived in Crescent Valley and there was a small sawmill there. A lot of the Hindus lived there. Everybody was afraid of them, they were so black and with white turbans.
Grandpa went outside one night and here somebody was sitting in his outside chair so grandpa said:'Good day.' No answer. Grandpa said again: 'Good day.' No answer. Grandpa let out a holler: 'Guard!' Everybody ran out to see what was the matter? They investigated and it was only grandpa's coat and hat on the chair.
When we were young our parents kept on and on; learn to cook, learn to sew, spin, weave, raise a garden, not necessary to go to school. You won't marry an Englishman anyway. We never even saw an Englishman. Go to church, learn to sing. The girls' hair was bobbed like the boys.
Evenings go out and play ball, by nine o’clock everybody is in bed. When we were young a bunch of us would be sent to Shoreacres to pick fruit. We stayed there all week. As a chaperon we had an old man Harashimoff. Evenings after supper he used to tell us stories about the history of the Doukhobors.
The community was like a circle. Somebody milled our flour for us, supplied oil, material for clothes. I never had a pair of shoes till I was twelve years old. Then the community sewed me a pair of heavy duty oxfords. They doled out some print material, striped, for a blouse and skirt for summer. I had to wear it for three summers. And for winter the clothes were made from material that was woven by the community and was dyed purple. Dye extracted from indelible pencils. Break the pencil, crush the lead, soak it, pure dye. I have a shirt mother sewed when I was eleven years old. Nobody wore it and nobody will. Even moths don’t attack it
When we were young we’d go a little ways past the villages and boys would play a tune on a mouth organ or a comb through tissue paper that Eaton's sends in parcels, and we would try to dance barefoot, polka, heel and toe, schotisse. We’d raise such a cloud of dust we could barely see one another. Life was happy then in its simplest way. There was no school then, no cars. Boys and girls walked everywhere, played ball, drop the handkerchief. Played football with the boys and would disjoint my toe every time.
Before I married I lived in the communities. When I married John Sherbinin we moved to the farm by Landis’ place. Sherbinins had a mill there.
I remember when my husband got his first car. It was a Chevy with a black body and a grey roof. The licence was one dollar and the garage man in Nelson taught him in one day how to drive.
After I was married I remember one Christmas very clearly. All the Sherbinins were invited to a party by Mr. Mike and Mrs. Anne Kaslo to their home. She was Luthvenka and he was a Russian. They lived between the pump and Krestova. He made beautiful violins and played on them. Then she made a chicken supper and gave us oranges. First time I tasted an orange and a chicken.
Mrs. Anne Gattinger, a non-Doukhobor but a Russian describing what hemp is and how they utilized it in Russia: Male plants are five feet tall, and ripen sooner than female. The female produces seeds, about ten inches blossom from the top. Both bloom at the same time. The male pollinates the female plant. Female produces seeds that are tiny and grey. Male plants are ready to take out the middles of July. Female plant stays and ripens the end of November or the beginning of September. Males have very little elongated leaves. Females have a lot of leaves but they fall off when seeds ripen. To harvest, cut and make bundles like wheat sheaves and stook them. When they are dry, about two weeks, then drive stakes by the shore in the water and pile the sheaves tight one against the other. Then cover with dirt or mud so they won’t float away. Let soak for two weeks or fifteen to eighteen days. Wash them in the river so all mud is washed out and dry them again and crush them till the husk becomes pliable in a hollowed out log with a wooden mallet. Then in October the same process of crushing is repeated and this time it is done in a social atmosphere. Young boys and girls got together in the evening, sang songs, told jokes, and worked the fibers Pounding until the fibers are pliable and soft and the straw falls away. They combed the fibers on wooden combs, and rolled it into loose balls. Something like angora balls, then they are ready to spin.
From the seeds, oil is extracted for frying , and the bulk and husks from the seeds is called makooha. People eat it for snacks because it cuts like loaf bread and with a very distinctive flavour. Some people feed it to cattle because there’s vitamins, minerals and proteins in it. The fibers are spun and the thread is tougher and rougher than even flax.
HELEN VERIGIN INTERVIEWS HELEN POPOFF
[Pass Creek]
I was born in Saskatchewan. Our nearest town was Buchanin. The name of our village was Mesivka. People from Rasbivita and Kerilooke moved into our village.and we were called Lemonovski, Lake People. I never saw the lake though.
We had horses, cattle, and chickens in our village. Our village had a street in the middle with houses on both sides. There were twenty one houses on one side and nineteen houses on the other side.
Twelve women milked cows in one place and the milk put into a tub. The people came with pots and pans and it was divided.
There were three big outside bread ovens. Women took turns baking bread. One batch went in in the morning, one at lunch, and one in the evening. The bread was divided equally too. Some needed half loaves, and some a full loaf, depending on the size of your family.Eggs were collected, I remember, only I don't know how they were divided.
Our village had twelve horses. One day they became sick, runny noses. The inspectors said to shoot them. Our people would not shoot them but guarded them day and night. The horses were getting better so that night there was no guard and the inspectors came and without our permission shot all twelve horses and ran away.
Potatoes were planted in open fields but beets, carrots, cabbage and onions we planted near creeks. Every morning the women carried water and watered the gardens.
Harvesting was done by men and women. They would load the produce on wagons, stop at each house and so many pails of different vegetables left for each home. Depending on the number of people living in that house.
The wheat was sown by the villages and harvested by all the village people together. There was a flour mill in our village and then the wheat was ground into flour. The same procedure of doling out, so much to each person followed and the rest held communally for baking bread.
When harvest came, the men cut the wheat, women raked and a machine made sheaves. The women stooked the sheaves. Men and women hauled the sheaves in. When time came for threshing we had a machine for it.
We stored the grain in special barns as we had no elevators. Whenever anybody needed grain for cattle or themselves they just opened the trap door and the chute let the grain down into a pail or sack.
In our village there was a woman, Katy Strelioff, who represented women at meetings and went to town to buy material for all our needs. She was very adept at these things, well, like figuring out what women wanted and needed. After she brought the material home the woman would all get together and so much given for somebody that would make a blouse or skirt and so much given for the husband for a shirt or pants. There were very few sewing machines. You might be allotted the sewing machine for one week and all the sewing and patching had to be done in that one week because you will not see that machine for the rest of the year. Next week your neighbour would come and pick it up.
We came to B. C. in 1912. Some families like Kalmakoffs, Tom Samorodin Pete Maloff, Tamalin and his nephews John and Bill from our village moved to Ootishenie while our family settled at Pass Creek.
Travelling in the train was a wonderful experience for us children. Every time the train would stop we would all get off and see new towns and our parents would buy grapes for us and oranges.
When we came to Brilliant it was so strange and frightening, forest practically to the tracks. My father took me and my brother to the banks to see the ferry that was crossing right below us. It was strange to see such a big river and such a small ferry.
We all got into the wagons and headed for our new homes in Pass Creek. There were two levels of villages. The top level was called Cartoshna, Potato Village. There were three villages there and a lower shelf with three other villages.
When we went from Brilliant to Pass Creek, the road! Oh, the road! We had to dodge stumps, ride over rocks, branches poked you in the eyes, the forest so thick like going through a tunnel, so dark you could barely see the road.One way traffic.
When we finally reached Pass Creek there were three families living there already, Stoochnoff, Zarubin and Podmoroff. Homes were built but the land not cleared. Stumps right in the yard, a pathway cleared to the barns but huge trees right up to the house.
The men would tie a rope to the top of the tree and bend it to the direction they want it to fall and start chopping from the opposite direction. The stumps that were closest to the houses were not blown up but a crosspiece of logs on top was attached, then cable wound around the crosspiece and stump and the horse pulls the other end and thus twists the stump out on the principle of a bottle, cork and corkscrew, the stump is twisted out. Some of the stumps had roots that vibrated under the house.
People that moved into these villages settled down to the serious business of clearing land and making a living. The younger people were allotted rooms upstairs, the older ones on the ground floor. We had a big kitchen and living room. The living room was used for prayer meetings, funerals and weddings.
Women decided on cooking matters. Two women would cook and bake bread for a week for approximately fifty people. Then another set of two women take over for a week. In the morning make porridge, soup and baked apples. Jam was given by the community from the jam factory. Lunch was borshch or boiled potatoes and kvass Supper was fried potatoes in oil or zaterka, a soup made out of potato water with a topping of crumbles made of flour and water and browned in the oven. A dessert made of dried fruit and baked in the oven, saladooshka. Or boiled, dried fruit with plenty of water as a drink, atvar.
The community supplied us with all the food staples, potatoes, rice, butter, sugar, oil, beans, dried fruit, jam, flour, seeds for planting, material for clothes.
Next spring some women cooked, others went to the fields. We planted our garden between stumps. Whatever shortage, the community supplied us as men all worked clearing land for orchards and gardens. Trees were planted the following year. For each village so many apples, prunes, pears, cherries. Equal amount for everybody.
We had one cow for six houses. This cow was extra special. She would stay in one home for a week. Women took turns milking it and from five other villages women came for their milk. Then next week the cow would move to the other village. Some procedure. Sometimes you get only a tablespoon of milk. If a family has a lot of children you might get half a cup. That cow was really travelling. The children and the sick were allotted the milk first.
Time came to plant the garden, the women were very cooperative and willing to try any method to improve our work. There was one woman in our village who was a good organizer. She was Nastia Cheveldave. Come time to plant tomatoes, the men had all the horses out in the field, but she had the brilliant idea of the women loading up the wagon with manure and pulling it to the garden site. She hitched herself and Pearl Strelioff in the front while some pushed from the back and sides. It was all right where there was barely a slope but when the slope became a hill the wagon increased its speed and we couldn't hold it. Nastia and Pearl, barefooted, tried to brake it with their feet, only succeeded to plow furrows with their feet and raise a dust storm. End result, wagon and manure ended up in the creek bed.
First year we would take sacks and pick grass on the hillside for our gardens. Make ditches, tamp grass in them, then haul turf to put on top and plant the seeds in these rows. Everything grew very good. Watermelons and pumpkins exceptional, potatoes planted under plow. Vegetable rows were not wide, to be weeded by hoe, no tillers then. Then next year, rotate it. Seed the vegetable patch in clover and gardens on the next patch.
Besides the garden we planted fields of hemp and flax for spinning and making clothes. It grew very good in Pass Creek as the soil was very rich and black.
If there was any quarrelling in the villages or dissatisfaction or dissension, usually Lordly Verigin settled it fast. He would soon talk to the parties concerned and if it has gone beyond repair he then moved some of the families to other villages.
You asked me about momulega. It was a poor man's poor time soup being the thickness of stew. Recipe: two pails of water, salt, about ten pounds potatoes boiled and mashed. Then separately make ten pounds of flour sprinkled with water and rubbed together like for pie crust till it is all crumbly. Put it in oven to give it a browning. Put all this in boiling water and potato on top and sugar sized lumps of butter and three cups of chopped onion. Let it come to a boil and serve. That was a meal, additives were baked apples, beets and carrots. In autumn we used to pick mushrooms. They looked like cauliflower. Scald them,string them, and hang up to dry for winter use. Hazelnuts too.
What do you remember about Peter Verigin?
I remember him, only he didn't come often to Pass Creek. Our neighbours were Holuboffs and he usually stayed at their place. He usually drives up in a spring wagon, gets off always with a happy smile, greets us and talks to the people gathered in the courtyard. His manner towards us was always tolerant, even tempered, and very understanding of our woes and hardships and always we depended on him to settle our problems fairly. He was very handsome and tall, walked very straight with a spring in his step. Nothing hesitant but a sure step. He stood out in a crowd. In his right hand his index finger didn't seem to bend as if pointing all the time. If he was stressing a point or if he was wiping his face the index finger was pointing straight. Lordly often brought people to look at our irrigation. He would make a picnic outing of it. Eat and sing under the trees and view the irrigation. He would bring Molokans, Mennonites and some of our people. Anastasia Holuboff, Feka, John and Dora Podovinikoff, Paul Osochoff and wife. It was a treat to us because we lived out of the way.
[Pass Creek]
I was born in Saskatchewan. Our nearest town was Buchanin. The name of our village was Mesivka. People from Rasbivita and Kerilooke moved into our village.and we were called Lemonovski, Lake People. I never saw the lake though.
We had horses, cattle, and chickens in our village. Our village had a street in the middle with houses on both sides. There were twenty one houses on one side and nineteen houses on the other side.
Twelve women milked cows in one place and the milk put into a tub. The people came with pots and pans and it was divided.
There were three big outside bread ovens. Women took turns baking bread. One batch went in in the morning, one at lunch, and one in the evening. The bread was divided equally too. Some needed half loaves, and some a full loaf, depending on the size of your family.Eggs were collected, I remember, only I don't know how they were divided.
Our village had twelve horses. One day they became sick, runny noses. The inspectors said to shoot them. Our people would not shoot them but guarded them day and night. The horses were getting better so that night there was no guard and the inspectors came and without our permission shot all twelve horses and ran away.
Potatoes were planted in open fields but beets, carrots, cabbage and onions we planted near creeks. Every morning the women carried water and watered the gardens.
Harvesting was done by men and women. They would load the produce on wagons, stop at each house and so many pails of different vegetables left for each home. Depending on the number of people living in that house.
The wheat was sown by the villages and harvested by all the village people together. There was a flour mill in our village and then the wheat was ground into flour. The same procedure of doling out, so much to each person followed and the rest held communally for baking bread.
When harvest came, the men cut the wheat, women raked and a machine made sheaves. The women stooked the sheaves. Men and women hauled the sheaves in. When time came for threshing we had a machine for it.
We stored the grain in special barns as we had no elevators. Whenever anybody needed grain for cattle or themselves they just opened the trap door and the chute let the grain down into a pail or sack.
In our village there was a woman, Katy Strelioff, who represented women at meetings and went to town to buy material for all our needs. She was very adept at these things, well, like figuring out what women wanted and needed. After she brought the material home the woman would all get together and so much given for somebody that would make a blouse or skirt and so much given for the husband for a shirt or pants. There were very few sewing machines. You might be allotted the sewing machine for one week and all the sewing and patching had to be done in that one week because you will not see that machine for the rest of the year. Next week your neighbour would come and pick it up.
We came to B. C. in 1912. Some families like Kalmakoffs, Tom Samorodin Pete Maloff, Tamalin and his nephews John and Bill from our village moved to Ootishenie while our family settled at Pass Creek.
Travelling in the train was a wonderful experience for us children. Every time the train would stop we would all get off and see new towns and our parents would buy grapes for us and oranges.
When we came to Brilliant it was so strange and frightening, forest practically to the tracks. My father took me and my brother to the banks to see the ferry that was crossing right below us. It was strange to see such a big river and such a small ferry.
We all got into the wagons and headed for our new homes in Pass Creek. There were two levels of villages. The top level was called Cartoshna, Potato Village. There were three villages there and a lower shelf with three other villages.
When we went from Brilliant to Pass Creek, the road! Oh, the road! We had to dodge stumps, ride over rocks, branches poked you in the eyes, the forest so thick like going through a tunnel, so dark you could barely see the road.One way traffic.
When we finally reached Pass Creek there were three families living there already, Stoochnoff, Zarubin and Podmoroff. Homes were built but the land not cleared. Stumps right in the yard, a pathway cleared to the barns but huge trees right up to the house.
The men would tie a rope to the top of the tree and bend it to the direction they want it to fall and start chopping from the opposite direction. The stumps that were closest to the houses were not blown up but a crosspiece of logs on top was attached, then cable wound around the crosspiece and stump and the horse pulls the other end and thus twists the stump out on the principle of a bottle, cork and corkscrew, the stump is twisted out. Some of the stumps had roots that vibrated under the house.
People that moved into these villages settled down to the serious business of clearing land and making a living. The younger people were allotted rooms upstairs, the older ones on the ground floor. We had a big kitchen and living room. The living room was used for prayer meetings, funerals and weddings.
Women decided on cooking matters. Two women would cook and bake bread for a week for approximately fifty people. Then another set of two women take over for a week. In the morning make porridge, soup and baked apples. Jam was given by the community from the jam factory. Lunch was borshch or boiled potatoes and kvass Supper was fried potatoes in oil or zaterka, a soup made out of potato water with a topping of crumbles made of flour and water and browned in the oven. A dessert made of dried fruit and baked in the oven, saladooshka. Or boiled, dried fruit with plenty of water as a drink, atvar.
The community supplied us with all the food staples, potatoes, rice, butter, sugar, oil, beans, dried fruit, jam, flour, seeds for planting, material for clothes.
Next spring some women cooked, others went to the fields. We planted our garden between stumps. Whatever shortage, the community supplied us as men all worked clearing land for orchards and gardens. Trees were planted the following year. For each village so many apples, prunes, pears, cherries. Equal amount for everybody.
We had one cow for six houses. This cow was extra special. She would stay in one home for a week. Women took turns milking it and from five other villages women came for their milk. Then next week the cow would move to the other village. Some procedure. Sometimes you get only a tablespoon of milk. If a family has a lot of children you might get half a cup. That cow was really travelling. The children and the sick were allotted the milk first.
Time came to plant the garden, the women were very cooperative and willing to try any method to improve our work. There was one woman in our village who was a good organizer. She was Nastia Cheveldave. Come time to plant tomatoes, the men had all the horses out in the field, but she had the brilliant idea of the women loading up the wagon with manure and pulling it to the garden site. She hitched herself and Pearl Strelioff in the front while some pushed from the back and sides. It was all right where there was barely a slope but when the slope became a hill the wagon increased its speed and we couldn't hold it. Nastia and Pearl, barefooted, tried to brake it with their feet, only succeeded to plow furrows with their feet and raise a dust storm. End result, wagon and manure ended up in the creek bed.
First year we would take sacks and pick grass on the hillside for our gardens. Make ditches, tamp grass in them, then haul turf to put on top and plant the seeds in these rows. Everything grew very good. Watermelons and pumpkins exceptional, potatoes planted under plow. Vegetable rows were not wide, to be weeded by hoe, no tillers then. Then next year, rotate it. Seed the vegetable patch in clover and gardens on the next patch.
Besides the garden we planted fields of hemp and flax for spinning and making clothes. It grew very good in Pass Creek as the soil was very rich and black.
If there was any quarrelling in the villages or dissatisfaction or dissension, usually Lordly Verigin settled it fast. He would soon talk to the parties concerned and if it has gone beyond repair he then moved some of the families to other villages.
You asked me about momulega. It was a poor man's poor time soup being the thickness of stew. Recipe: two pails of water, salt, about ten pounds potatoes boiled and mashed. Then separately make ten pounds of flour sprinkled with water and rubbed together like for pie crust till it is all crumbly. Put it in oven to give it a browning. Put all this in boiling water and potato on top and sugar sized lumps of butter and three cups of chopped onion. Let it come to a boil and serve. That was a meal, additives were baked apples, beets and carrots. In autumn we used to pick mushrooms. They looked like cauliflower. Scald them,string them, and hang up to dry for winter use. Hazelnuts too.
What do you remember about Peter Verigin?
I remember him, only he didn't come often to Pass Creek. Our neighbours were Holuboffs and he usually stayed at their place. He usually drives up in a spring wagon, gets off always with a happy smile, greets us and talks to the people gathered in the courtyard. His manner towards us was always tolerant, even tempered, and very understanding of our woes and hardships and always we depended on him to settle our problems fairly. He was very handsome and tall, walked very straight with a spring in his step. Nothing hesitant but a sure step. He stood out in a crowd. In his right hand his index finger didn't seem to bend as if pointing all the time. If he was stressing a point or if he was wiping his face the index finger was pointing straight. Lordly often brought people to look at our irrigation. He would make a picnic outing of it. Eat and sing under the trees and view the irrigation. He would bring Molokans, Mennonites and some of our people. Anastasia Holuboff, Feka, John and Dora Podovinikoff, Paul Osochoff and wife. It was a treat to us because we lived out of the way.
Helen Verigin interviews Polly Zoobkoff
I was born in Russia. I don’t remember the name of the village but I remember when my parents had to move after the burning of the arms at midnight on July 11/12/1895, [June 28/29 old style]*. Thirty-five families were forced from their homes and trekked one hundred miles into exile to Signak, Dusheti, Tianeti and Gori districts.
Four thousand men, women and children reached the fever ridden swamps not far from the railway line to Batum. They were sent to Tianeti in Georgia. They lived in Georgia for three years. We helped one family in need and they gave us an old house to fix and live in. We were fortunate.
The order came and our village was to be transported to Cyprus. We were taken to Batum where we slept on the street in the middle of town. Then they put us on boats and took us onto the ship for Cyprus. In Cyprus, we were in Arnak [Larnica]. From Arnak they took us to Perganayl. Our ship was the Durau, which landed in Larnica Cyprus, August, 1898, and we settled at Pergamo and Kuklia.
In the ayl [village] we lived for nine months, and in this time, one hundred people died. Some days they took out two or three caskets to bury the dead. I don’t know why they died. It was a form of sickness. It was too hot, one takes a drink of cold water, he becomes inflamed and dies. So after nine months we went from Cyprus to Canada, April 18, 1899.
Our ship was the Lake Superior. It landed in Quebec, proceeded to Montreal, and from there we went to Yorkton by rail. From there we went to villages assigned to us. Some of us had tents, some slept in woodsheds.
Our village was called Radionovska. There were no houses, we had to start our village from the ground up. We had to make our houses from the prairie sod. Mostly stoves in the houses were made of walls of bricks with tin on top, like a barbecue but mostly we built big bread ovens for heat and cooking [petch]. There were tables made and beds like shelves around the walls for sleeping. Bowls were carved out of wood, so were spoons. Then after a while we started to acquire things.
The men went to work at fifty cents a day in towns on railways as far away as Winnipeg. Our men worked making a roadbed, then the steel came after. In our village there was no school whatsoever. Your [Soukeroff] parents lived in the Prince Albert district.
A lot of houses were made of sod as winter was approaching. Others were half in the ground and half above ground with willow twigs woven and plastered over with mud between twigs and upright hay packed in for insulation. Women mixed mud with their feet and used hands to plaster walls. Then women made bricks too. Stoves had sides of bricks and tin on top.
Women earned money by digging Seneca roots by the wagon load. It grew in places where the prairie sod wasn't disturbed. Sometimes a bunch of women had to walk miles and stay four or five weeks digging before they had a load. The Indians told us about these roots. We sold them to the stores. It looked like, well, the best way to describe it, it is a white flower and a white root and is very aromatic. When you chew dentine gum it tastes and smells like the root.
In Tryshdenia, our village, we had no horses or oxen and we had to plant gardens to survive the winter months. The men were away working so we women decided to hitch ourselves to the plough and break ground. We raised enough to see us through the winter; carrots, beets, potatoes, cabbage, winter radish. It was either that or starve. We went barefoot during the summer until our village organized a shoe making shop. We had two cows though, and the milk was divided with a ladle.
After several years in different villages Peter Verigin moved us Zoobkoffs and Soukeroffs on to the first section near Verigin. We lived there until 1918, then we decided to move to B.C. Us, Soukeroffs, and Shukins moved to Ooteshenie, but Negraeffs and Wanjoffs moved to Grand Forks. At Ooteshenie the houses were built except for the last coat of plaster.
The men worked communally on the third level, where the golf course is now. They cleared it, pulled the stumps manually. Food was supplied from the community, and clothing. Flour, no butter or milk, but something like Mazola [linseed oil] was given for cooking.
Behind our village was a big pit and somehow, grease [pitch] was made from birch bark by steaming it. The grease was used on harnesses, plus waterproofing shoes, but not on your hair or face. The pit on the third level was for burning out lime rock. We had our own lime to use in white washing homes plus other things.
There were English people living here. Theodore, a German, had a farm here, a good orchard with lots of cows and pigs. When anybody was sick we bought milk and eggs from him. Doukhobors all went to Theodore for doctoring and he had one medicine for all; molasses, cream of tarter and sulfur. All sickness he treated with this and all were well. Also our people went for advice to him. Tony Swanson also lived here. He was a forest ranger and a photographer. They both lived below the villages near the inlet. Dushan also lived here, only higher up on the mountains, and had a sawmill. A lot of our people worked for him. I am eighty three years old.
*Dates and spellings of villages have been corrected throughout.
I was born in Russia. I don’t remember the name of the village but I remember when my parents had to move after the burning of the arms at midnight on July 11/12/1895, [June 28/29 old style]*. Thirty-five families were forced from their homes and trekked one hundred miles into exile to Signak, Dusheti, Tianeti and Gori districts.
Four thousand men, women and children reached the fever ridden swamps not far from the railway line to Batum. They were sent to Tianeti in Georgia. They lived in Georgia for three years. We helped one family in need and they gave us an old house to fix and live in. We were fortunate.
The order came and our village was to be transported to Cyprus. We were taken to Batum where we slept on the street in the middle of town. Then they put us on boats and took us onto the ship for Cyprus. In Cyprus, we were in Arnak [Larnica]. From Arnak they took us to Perganayl. Our ship was the Durau, which landed in Larnica Cyprus, August, 1898, and we settled at Pergamo and Kuklia.
In the ayl [village] we lived for nine months, and in this time, one hundred people died. Some days they took out two or three caskets to bury the dead. I don’t know why they died. It was a form of sickness. It was too hot, one takes a drink of cold water, he becomes inflamed and dies. So after nine months we went from Cyprus to Canada, April 18, 1899.
Our ship was the Lake Superior. It landed in Quebec, proceeded to Montreal, and from there we went to Yorkton by rail. From there we went to villages assigned to us. Some of us had tents, some slept in woodsheds.
Our village was called Radionovska. There were no houses, we had to start our village from the ground up. We had to make our houses from the prairie sod. Mostly stoves in the houses were made of walls of bricks with tin on top, like a barbecue but mostly we built big bread ovens for heat and cooking [petch]. There were tables made and beds like shelves around the walls for sleeping. Bowls were carved out of wood, so were spoons. Then after a while we started to acquire things.
The men went to work at fifty cents a day in towns on railways as far away as Winnipeg. Our men worked making a roadbed, then the steel came after. In our village there was no school whatsoever. Your [Soukeroff] parents lived in the Prince Albert district.
A lot of houses were made of sod as winter was approaching. Others were half in the ground and half above ground with willow twigs woven and plastered over with mud between twigs and upright hay packed in for insulation. Women mixed mud with their feet and used hands to plaster walls. Then women made bricks too. Stoves had sides of bricks and tin on top.
Women earned money by digging Seneca roots by the wagon load. It grew in places where the prairie sod wasn't disturbed. Sometimes a bunch of women had to walk miles and stay four or five weeks digging before they had a load. The Indians told us about these roots. We sold them to the stores. It looked like, well, the best way to describe it, it is a white flower and a white root and is very aromatic. When you chew dentine gum it tastes and smells like the root.
In Tryshdenia, our village, we had no horses or oxen and we had to plant gardens to survive the winter months. The men were away working so we women decided to hitch ourselves to the plough and break ground. We raised enough to see us through the winter; carrots, beets, potatoes, cabbage, winter radish. It was either that or starve. We went barefoot during the summer until our village organized a shoe making shop. We had two cows though, and the milk was divided with a ladle.
After several years in different villages Peter Verigin moved us Zoobkoffs and Soukeroffs on to the first section near Verigin. We lived there until 1918, then we decided to move to B.C. Us, Soukeroffs, and Shukins moved to Ooteshenie, but Negraeffs and Wanjoffs moved to Grand Forks. At Ooteshenie the houses were built except for the last coat of plaster.
The men worked communally on the third level, where the golf course is now. They cleared it, pulled the stumps manually. Food was supplied from the community, and clothing. Flour, no butter or milk, but something like Mazola [linseed oil] was given for cooking.
Behind our village was a big pit and somehow, grease [pitch] was made from birch bark by steaming it. The grease was used on harnesses, plus waterproofing shoes, but not on your hair or face. The pit on the third level was for burning out lime rock. We had our own lime to use in white washing homes plus other things.
There were English people living here. Theodore, a German, had a farm here, a good orchard with lots of cows and pigs. When anybody was sick we bought milk and eggs from him. Doukhobors all went to Theodore for doctoring and he had one medicine for all; molasses, cream of tarter and sulfur. All sickness he treated with this and all were well. Also our people went for advice to him. Tony Swanson also lived here. He was a forest ranger and a photographer. They both lived below the villages near the inlet. Dushan also lived here, only higher up on the mountains, and had a sawmill. A lot of our people worked for him. I am eighty three years old.
*Dates and spellings of villages have been corrected throughout.
Helen Verigin interviews Frank Savinkoff
I lived in the village of Orlovka in Russia after the Doukhobors emigrated to Canada in 1899. I came to Canada in 1911 so I saw what happened in Russia to the Doukhobors that remained. I will start from as far back as I can remember.
Lukeria Vasilievna took one of Anastasia’s sons, Peter, to educate him in the ways of leadership, as she had no sons or daughters from her marriage. Anastasia Verigin was a direct line to Kapustin, with the Kalmykovs, and Peter Verigin was the sixth son of the Verigin brothers.
Lukeria’s family of Gubonovs didn't like it as Mike Gubonov wanted the leadership. After Lukeria’s death, Gubonov had the ear of the governor, and after graft and bribery, Peter Verigin was arrested and sent up north to Tombovskaii to a penal colony and the Gubonov smaller party, through bribery, won the court case where the treasury and material wealth belonging to all the Doukhobors was awarded to him.
After this the split between the parties became impossible to heal. They might have taken our hard earned material wealth but our religion and our souls they did not touch. In the end the Gubonov party reaped the whirlwind.
When the Doukhobors from our villages went to Gubonov for their share that they put into the common treasury, he wouldn't let them in and Petushka [Lordly] told us to forgive and forget.
The people that stayed with the Gubonov party still wouldn't accept him [Gubonov] as leader so he put two women on the throne, companions of his sister Lukeria, Maria Tehonov and Koolyshg. Not only had they no sense of leadership but were so simple to the point of being senile. Zoobkoff and M. Gubonov were the power behind the throne.
They kept moving Petushka from one penal colony to another secretly and none of our Doukhobors could get to him until a most resourceful man, Mike Androsoff, got through. He brought a verbal message; that we will move, to quit eating meat, drinking alcohol, and abstain from sexual intercourse as the move would be hard on the children. Some quit all three, some weren't able to so families split.
My father’s parents continued eating meat and mother went with the first party to Canada and dad was left behind. Another Ukase was very strict: to equalize everything. Richer must share their wealth with the poorer. Pay or forgive their debts. Go halves. Some of the richer ones didn't want to share so, though still believing in Petushka, didn’t emigrate to Canada. My father was one of them.
So the ones that shared were banished to Georgia to Tiflis gubernia where the hill tribes were so fierce and war like that they would sooner kill you as look at you. I remember where your husband’s grandfather lived, Pronka Verigin, the oldest of the Verigin brothers. He lived at Elizavetpol. They had quite a place, hundreds of sheep, cattle and horses. Then they moved to Karakhan, then to the border. They lived about seventy miles from Kars and I went to see where all the Verigins lived. All the Molokans took over their prosperous lands, four villages, Petrovka, Gorelovka, Spasovka, Novatroitska. The last one Doukhobor village there was only twelve miles away from Kars. All the rest were moved to Karakhan in the Wet Mountains.
When I lived in Orlovka, Russia, there were still eight villages of the Doukhobors: Orlovka, Bogdanovka, Gorelovka, Troitskoe, Rodionovka, Spasovka, Ahrenovka, Tambovka. These were in the Wet Mountains, the other two villages were near Elizavetpol. Gorelovka did not participate with us as they belonged to Gubonov.
Peter Verigin the second, Chistiakov, was our neighbour in Russia. His uncles, Katelnikovs, came to visit him often. His uncle Mike was a doctor, he came sometimes but Chistiakov didn't like him, but his uncles Andrew and Louis, he loved them. They often came and brought him grapes and wheat.
People of Orlovka built a home for Chistiakov when he came to live with us. The people donated animals toward the home, five hundred sheep, thirty head of cattle, and twenty horses. He hired workers to look after the animals. The head cattleman received room and board and $100.00 a year and the foreman and plain worker, room and board and $35.00 a year, a friendly sum in those days.
Our village was right near the caves where they burned the firearms. The burning of the firearms, well, I don’t want to talk about that horror. We, the Doukhobors that still belonged to Petushka, would celebrate Peter’s Day and the burning of the arms. Everybody together in our village, singing, playing games, then having a picnic meal, and the Gubonov’s people would be standing across the creek, crying. As they left this party, their’s was falling apart. Their children were scattering and picking up the worst traits of the surrounding population and drifting away from the religious ideals of Doukhoborism. They said the Gubonovs are lost people, that Michael Gubonov wanted to swallow Petushka and the Doukhobors but instead, swallowed us and his own party.
In 1911 thirty of us farmers decided to move to Canada. There were three Stoochnoff brothers, Peter, Bill and George, Storgoff, Mike Kalmakoff, I forget the rest. We came on the boat, the ‘F. Missler Bremen Bahohofstrasse 30'.
We went to the village Petrovka where my mother lived. The houses were made already and plastered with mud and roof covered with Kolodsa. Kolodsa are stalks remaining after threshing. Take an armful, dip them into a channel of mud, dip them again, tie them together, dip again, and place them on roofs of houses in two layers.
The zemlyanki were nearly all destroyed but my grandma told me about them. Theirs was a big one four feet in the ground, sides above ground were woven with saplings. Sides below ground had prairie turf and then were all covered with mud, and the roof had sod of two layers, the floor was dirt. The kitchen stove had sides made of bricks and a sheet of iron on top. Bread was baked communally, labour divided amongst everybody.
Everybody went to work communally and earnings were given to head man of the village. Work was wherever you can get it, railroad, carpentry, farms. By 1910 Petrovka had fifty cattle and fifty horses. There were some schools in English, none in Russian.
I came to B. C. in 1913. There was no bridge but two ferries, one below the bridge and one at Kinnaird. We lived in Ooteshenie and I worked on bridge building. We lived in John Sherbinin’s house at the hospital.
I remember the hospital well. It was built past where the graveyard is. It had twenty rooms, nineteen for patients, and one the doctor occupied and the medicine was there. Forgot the doctor’s name, he had a limp and was a Russian Jew who came from Montreal. Nurses were there, and a kitchen. It was like a village within a village. Only our own people were patients in the hospital. Internal trouble started. The doctor was practising what he shouldn't so Lordly stopped the hospital, dispersed the staff, sent the doctor away and the nurses. He told me to dig a big hole, which I did, and broke all the medicine bottles with a shovel, and buried everything.
The flour mill on the Ooteshenie side milled barley, millet and porridge and flour. All was divided amongst all in the community. Daily rations were a half pound of flour per person. Everybody was trying to clear the land as soon as possible. There was no irrigation from Pass Creek yet. Trees were planted already but as the soil was very sandy we had to haul turf from Pass Creek for two winters. Then the men in charge of trees hauled so much under each tree at the bidding of Petushka. The trees were ordered by the thousands from California and a man came with them to show our people how to plant them. In Pass Creek there was a mill where Hadikins live right now and our people lived there but not on top of the flats. Our young people could not get work individually. Contracts had to be signed by the Brilliant administration. Food was supplied to them by the community, earnings were delivered to the community. There was quite a colony of bees at Brilliant and William Chernoff was in charge of them. Only thing is, I don’t believe anybody tasted honey.
About the land in Oregon, well I never borrowed the money to Verigin for it but my neighbour Bill Savinkoff did and John Verigin paid him back the loan of $500.00
I went to Vancouver to look for a job. There were jobs only for men with experience. I came there like a wild man, no experience in the bush, boats, or anything except cattle. So thanks to one Jew, he gave me a job as handyman, fixing chairs, tables, stoves. I worked for a month, then got a job building a wharf. It was a two year job not far from the old sugar factory.
I came back to Brilliant afterwards. During the first World War Peter the Lordly refused to have our men conscripted into the army. All of us had to carry cards to identify us. He did not refuse help though. I myself helped to load a carload of jam for the soldiers overseas. And he gave a thousand dollars in money to the men that supposedly came from the government. Never heard if they received it or not or where it ended up. Couldn't trace it.
Helen Verigin interviews Helen Fominoff
[Likely an apocryphal story about the rocks.]
Yes, when we came to Canada, we were told that there are no rocks here. So mother kept saying, how will we make sauerkraut without our leverage rock? These are rocks that have enough weight when placed on top of cabbage to crush it down to where cabbage releases its natural juices. She put away one rock for herself and one for a relative that came previously on a different boat to Canada and hadn't heard that there were no rocks here. When we came to port and saw all the rocks, well, all the people went and got their rocks and dropped them overboard. And you know what, the boat rose one foot higher on the ocean!
When we first came to Canada we had no father and mother and us children stayed with my older brother and his family. Our house was a zamlyanka, a house half in the ground and half on top. The floor was of dirt, shelves on sidewalls for sleeping. The only place we had to sleep, as we were extra family, was on the floor under the shelves. I would pull my skirt between my bare leg and floor, then my back would be bare. No blankets, no anything. Pretty rough, the first couple of years.
Then I was married to Peter Fomenoff, had a baby girl Nora, and in 1911, came to B. C. from Saskatchewan. The house on Sion was allotted to us, the one above Peter Verigin’s tomb, across the old highway and on the hill.
The land wasn't cleared, not even a path to get to Sion. We climbed the hill, dodged stumps, hung onto branches and I was carrying my child under one arm. The climb from Brilliant station and up was practically on all fours. Half way up, the baby blanket caught on a stump and before I had a chance to grab the baby, it started to roll down the hill. The harder I ran, the faster she rolled. The blanket caught on some branches but the baby continued rolling and all the people that were with us finally caught up with the baby. Finally the climb was accomplished but with more caution. Nellie had some bruises, just enough to toughen her up.
Next spring we had to clear the land for gardens, at the time not a green pea, not a cabbage head, might as well put your teeth on the shelf and start looking for the place where that corn is supposed to be growing.
Brilliant had absolutely nothing, no store, no jam factory, no packing house or elevator. In the spring time we started clearing our garden patches. Women were collecting roots in aprons. [Lordly Verigin forbade the wearing of aprons, sign of vanity]. One day Lordly came unexpectedly and asked how come we were wearing aprons? As I was elected spokesman I told him that they were not to beautify my costume, but it was part of our working equipment, that we collected roots and rocks in our ‘vanities’. So he smiled and left.
My husband helped to paint the new bridge.
[Likely an apocryphal story about the rocks.]
Yes, when we came to Canada, we were told that there are no rocks here. So mother kept saying, how will we make sauerkraut without our leverage rock? These are rocks that have enough weight when placed on top of cabbage to crush it down to where cabbage releases its natural juices. She put away one rock for herself and one for a relative that came previously on a different boat to Canada and hadn't heard that there were no rocks here. When we came to port and saw all the rocks, well, all the people went and got their rocks and dropped them overboard. And you know what, the boat rose one foot higher on the ocean!
When we first came to Canada we had no father and mother and us children stayed with my older brother and his family. Our house was a zamlyanka, a house half in the ground and half on top. The floor was of dirt, shelves on sidewalls for sleeping. The only place we had to sleep, as we were extra family, was on the floor under the shelves. I would pull my skirt between my bare leg and floor, then my back would be bare. No blankets, no anything. Pretty rough, the first couple of years.
Then I was married to Peter Fomenoff, had a baby girl Nora, and in 1911, came to B. C. from Saskatchewan. The house on Sion was allotted to us, the one above Peter Verigin’s tomb, across the old highway and on the hill.
The land wasn't cleared, not even a path to get to Sion. We climbed the hill, dodged stumps, hung onto branches and I was carrying my child under one arm. The climb from Brilliant station and up was practically on all fours. Half way up, the baby blanket caught on a stump and before I had a chance to grab the baby, it started to roll down the hill. The harder I ran, the faster she rolled. The blanket caught on some branches but the baby continued rolling and all the people that were with us finally caught up with the baby. Finally the climb was accomplished but with more caution. Nellie had some bruises, just enough to toughen her up.
Next spring we had to clear the land for gardens, at the time not a green pea, not a cabbage head, might as well put your teeth on the shelf and start looking for the place where that corn is supposed to be growing.
Brilliant had absolutely nothing, no store, no jam factory, no packing house or elevator. In the spring time we started clearing our garden patches. Women were collecting roots in aprons. [Lordly Verigin forbade the wearing of aprons, sign of vanity]. One day Lordly came unexpectedly and asked how come we were wearing aprons? As I was elected spokesman I told him that they were not to beautify my costume, but it was part of our working equipment, that we collected roots and rocks in our ‘vanities’. So he smiled and left.
My husband helped to paint the new bridge.
Helen Verigin interviews Polly Kanigan
Well, I don’t want to add or subtract too much, but let’s say, at the time of the burning of arms, I was unto seven years old.
About the burning of arms, we saw big flames like a pillar, very high. From our village we could see all. The children were herded into one place and one woman cried; ‘Look, a pillar of fire straight to heaven’. Everybody started crying and praying, children screaming.
Only very few men knew, none of the women. It was done in secret. We thought that the pillar of fire would come and consume us all. Older people said not to be afraid, that this was a good thing. The older people stayed and prayed by the fire on their knees. All the old people, some younger, not children, went there too.
The Cossacks came and whipped the praying people senseless with leaded whips. These victims were dragged into the midst of the praying throng by others who took their places in front. Something very strange happened when the Cassocks drew back and at a gallop and roweling their horses, went straight for the people that were praying. The horses would gallop but slide to a complete stop right in front of the Doukhobors, they reared and screamed, snorted, and would not ride them down or even trample the front rows. Very many from our village were brought home on stretchers.
After two weeks, we were exiled to Georgia as a punitive measure, they told us, because my grandfather Soukeroff and grandfather Sylavianoff were with the first party to burn arms. They thought we wouldn't be able to last there, as the tribes were wild, warlike, fierce, and would sooner kill a stranger first than look at him. No law prevailed there, a sort of robber’s roost.
We lived three years in Georgia. It was very tough on Georgians too. They never had any beds, just bank up dirt and sleep on it. Their babies slept in boxes with sand in them with a rag to cover them plus a tube inserted inside a boy or girl so that the sand wouldn't be wet and urine went on the floor. No diapers. Their houses, of the poorer class, were either a tent, a hole in the bank, or a cave. The richer ones had houses. Their firewood was a form of thistles that the Tartars gathered every day.
Compared to them, we Doukhobors were not that bad off. At least we brought our clothes with us. It was very hard to get jobs as everybody was poor. We lived with my uncle Cecil in Karelia. Our neighbours had a renter, whose wife had died and he had two children to support. He left in the morning for work, at which job he received a form of dividend instead of payment, one portion for him and two portions for the owner.
The children were left on their own, so they would come over to our place and play with me but my mother was pretty upset when she saw them crawling with lice. So after my bath, she bathed them, put them in a corner, bent down to pick up their two dresses and they weren't there. She looked around and the dresses had walked two feet back under their own power. So she poured boiling water over them, then started to scrub them. From then on they lived with us. When we moved away two miles to another job the children found us again but we were afraid for them as they had to cross the big plain on the road and the Tartars stole children.
This job of my father’s was with a well to do family back in the hills. They were an old couple, whose one daughter fell down a bank and died and the rest of the children left for town. They came to visit the old folks. They had a lot of cows and a very big churn on ropes and it was my job to swing this rope that turned the churn. Usually it produced one pail of butter. They sold eggs and butter in town, milk too. Mother did all their cooking and baking. Another of my jobs was to pick nuts from the bushes, peel and shell them, then thread them through with a needle like a necklace. The lady of the house would make a form of syrup from plums and sugar that she dipped this necklace of nuts in, twice, then hang them outside and sell as candy in town.
One day their children came from town for a visit and brought a mouth organ. They played and danced, so I jumped off of the barrel and started dancing with them. They sure danced funny, jumping backwards. Then they started to barbecue shishliki [pieces of meat braised over open fire] and mother caught me trying one and made me spit it all out. Didn’t have a chance to taste it, out it went.
The grandfather of the family had a whole cellar full of wine as he grew grapes. He would hire a Tarter, scrub him good, and then the Tarter would crush the grapes with his feet in the barrel. The strangest thing was that they would never wash their clothes. The only time they got washed was when they swam in the river with them on. Clothes and they got washed at the same time. When the clothes were tattered, they would get new ones.
The separation before marriage of boys and girls was very strict. If a boy approaches a girl and is seen, he’s under sentence of death. So if he wants to marry a girl he steals her first and next morning the parents are willing to perform the marriage ceremony, that’s the Georgian and Tarter clan ways. If the family is well off the girls are a little better dressed. Otherwise she is unkempt, tangle haired, stank of smoke, dirty, barefoot, and generally untidy.
As soon as we came, we helped the families that were in need. We even helped them bury their dead. One man came to us and said that the priest would not bury his wife unless he got the money from us to pay him, then he would bury her. Our Kanigan family said, no, we will not give you the money but we will bury your wife with our own religious rites. We made a coffin, made new clothes, dug the grave, said the prayers and sang the psalms. After, we gave the man food and money for his present use.
Next day the priest came to us and said: ‘Emil, what are you doing? They’ll banish you where Makar couldn't even pasture his calves’. Emil answered him: ‘If the sun rises and sets there, we’ll be able to live there too and help your helpless people, but you, under a priest’s cloak, have no pity but just want the almighty dollar’. The Doukhobors never refused to bury the clans’ dead.
The priest saw and reported that instead of killing us off, the Tartars and Armenians formed a sort of brigade and protected us. If any brigand came and even spoke a derogatory word against us he was punished severely. I saw one of their funerals. They hire mourners that scream and shriek and tear their hair while the family stands in a group and looks on. Very frightening!
We were taken to Batum, no houses, only a roof. Everybody slept outdoors in family groups. They loaded the children first while the older ones sang psalms and recited prayers. We were warned it was a cattle boat and not too seaworthy and we were not too sure if it would reach its destination. Quite a few government officials came and asked our people to stay. Only it was a little too late as one and all refused.
They finally loaded people and goods by squeezing and pushing and packing. This was the first boat to go to Canada. Mostly our men cooked our dried peas we brought with us. Quite a few people were very sick due to rough weather and rough seas and vomited quite a bit. Somehow I was not even seasick.
There were very many children on this boat. We watched the water pigs [sharks] that followed our boat. One man died. They wrapped him up and tied a heavy iron to him so he would go down fast and the water pigs didn’t get him.
We came to one place here where it was very warm with unusual trees. They took all the sick people off on stretchers unto the beach for several days and we all went and played and swam in the water. Then several sick walked on board and others were carried on board. At Halifax, lots of people met us. Quakers, ladies and men and other people. The ladies gave us oranges, sandwiches and candies. Some were carried off the ship on stretchers, immigrant patients not able to walk off.
We stayed in the immigration hall all winter. We picked two men for each district to go survey our villages. Melosha Kanigan and Nick Zeberoff were from our villages. Then in the spring they took all of us to the districts.
There was brush and woods, nothing else. Our village was called Mekhailovka. Families that had grown men were able to clear the land and make houses quickly out of logs. Hadikins and Kastrukoff made dugouts with a roof above ground. Markins and my granddad and an uncle made a house. My dad was alone so we lived in a zamlyanka or dugout. We had ovens of clay bricks for heat and a piece of tin over the top for cooking. Then we made big bread ovens and also did our cooking in them.
We used to go to dig Seneca roots. They’re expensive. Nick Zeberoff sold them, or we did, and put the money in the village kitty. The roots were used for anti-pain medicine. We planted flax, made cooking oil from it and soaked and pounded the stalks till they became thread like and then we wove the threads into linen material for our clothes. We used to fry sunflower seeds, peas, wheat and poppy seed. That was used as people use candies nowadays. After the work was done in the evening, after supper, the older folks sat on benches behind the house and while warming themselves in the rays of the setting sun, they chewed these varieties of seeds instead of smoking. That is the time the old folks recount the tales to the children of bygone days.
One winter I wove a big sheet out of marijuana stalks, very rough fibres, but I used it to dry my portion of fifteen sacks of wheat. Everything grew it seemed, from vegetables to wheat. Everybody was very cooperative in our villages.
Why did we move to B. C.? Because of my father in law’s firm conviction not to swear allegiance for his homestead because they had originally agreed we didn't have to. Father in law went to B. C. with the first party to clear land and build houses and I was one of the first women with the labour force to go and cook and clean and sew for these men.
The men of the first party as I remember them were Mike Kanigan, Larry Fomenoff, John Sherbinin and very many more. When Petushka was away he left J. Sherbinin in charge in B. C. Another one was Nick Zeberoff. We had to sew pants, shirts and jackets for these men.
When we first came we had to cross over on a long boat from Kinnaird. All of us women, Aprosa Kanigan [mother in law], Dora Maloff, Dora Fofonoff, Vishloff, Aprosa Fomenoff, Matrusha Maloff and myself closed our eyes and prayed till we crossed the river to Jerusalem [Waterloo]. After we landed we kneeled and kissed Mother Earth and asked her to welcome us and let us stay. Last of all we asked forgiveness and sang a song of thanksgiving.
We went up the hill where the men were waiting. We greeted them and gave them regards from their families and friends. They had a big table made out of a huge tree split down the centre and placed down for men to eat on. Alex Chernoff was top cook and we helped. There were two clay brick ovens for baking bread. There was a stove for the rest of the cooking.
We planted a garden too, right by Landis’s place. It was in our time they made a ferry here and another one where the bridge is now. There was no road and on the second flat there was one only at Jerusalem.
As soon as the upper bench was cleared the men planted apples, prunes, pears, peaches, and cherries. On the third shelf there was a lime pit where they burned out lime for our use from a mountain on the way to Champion Creek. We also made grease [pitch] from birch bark. That was where the golf course is now. We planted flax on the second shelf and made cooking oil out of it, and linen cloth. We pounded the stalks till they were like silk threads. Then we spun the threads, then wove linen material from it.
At one time we lived at Porcupine near Porto Rico and Hall. Others lived there too, it’s just past Nelson towards Salmo. The other families that lived there were John Hadikin, Poznikoffs, Shustoff, Faminoffs, Alex Babakaiff, Chernoff Sam, John Strelioff, John Verigin, Joe Shukin, Pete Reibin and Zmaeffs.
There was a big saw mill there, that’s why we lived there. Alex Makortoff was the spark chaser but was not sharp enough to detect where it was smouldering. The workmen did not take into consideration the hot dry summer and tinder dry woods and take to their heels when the first alarm sounded. It happened so fast. Didn't let the horses go till too late. Some horses got through but they would lie down and just burst open. There were men that were burned and died and some reached our place and stayed overnight. The whole night through I was washing their eyes out because they were full of ashes and they said they were the first to run down the flume. Philipoff’s shirt was not even burned off but the skin seemed to be baked and we would dilute canned milk and give them to sip.
In the morning the train came and took them to Nelson.
Terror like that fire is hard to think about.
Lord protect us from it.
Helen Verigin interviews Tom Oglow
[I have corrected some syntax in the interests of clarity].
You see, I was born in 1886 In Russia. I started to remember events when I began to grow up. Our village was called Novatroiskie. It was situated 18 mile from Kars. In between were villages of Russians and one village of Molokans, and Armenians across the river.
When the big move was on it was our good fortune that Queen Victoria* was gracious enough to allow us to settle in one of her dominions. I had just turned 13 years in May 13 when we reached Batum on the Black Sea getting ready to go to Canada . We came there by train and had to wait two weeks for the boat, the Lake Huron, that would take us on her last voyage transporting Doukhobors. Your parents, Soukeroffs, were on the same boat. All six villages that were together in Russia came on this boat.
The Lake Huron came to Quebec. When we came to Quebec we were held in quarantine near an island because of sickness on the boat. When we were anchored by the island they inoculated us. Then we went by train to Winnipeg.
From there people were taken to different districts, wherever they chose or had friends or relatives. Some went to the Prince Albert district. Your parents went there. The ones that stayed here were absorbed into villages from Yorkton to Swan River. The name of our village was Kirilovka. Your parents lived in the village of Petrovka on the Saskatchewan River.
We started on our house as soon as we came. We dug three feet into the ground and got some ash saplings for sides. We made a ceiling by laying the saplings flat. The sides were backed with dirt and two layers of sod put on the roof. We had two windows 10" x 12". This was only temporary.
In winter we prepared logs and in springtime made a house above ground. Walls of log with roof of sod. The walls were chinked with mud mixture between the logs, the floor was dirt. Everybody had to help one another.
We had a pair of oxen in our village so as to go to Yorkton for provisions, forty-five miles. It took us three days there and three days back. I think the Quakers supplied our first seeds. They even sent flour for emergency use. The people that came from Selka came with just what was on their backs, they were very poor.
Earnings were fifty cents a day. Men were working wherever they could get a job, mostly on the C. P. R. The work on the railway absorbed the bigger amount of workers. There were very few ranches and they were far between, mostly cattle ranches about fifteen miles apart. At that time nobody had a chance to even think of schools. The only thing was how to earn that slice of bread and not starve.
The reason we and others like us moved to B. C. was because we didn't take out citizenship papers and swear allegiance to the monarchy. That was understood when we were seeking new land yet and when we were allowed to apply for homesteads. Of course houses built on homesteads and ground cultivated is more attractive to repossess than empty prairies nobody wanted.
The land was bought in B. C. The more religious decided they would rather move to the tops of mountains and into forests than compromise their principles. We moved in 1913 to the Kootenay - Columbia River district in B. C., later named Brilliant.
There was no bridge across the river, only a ferry. The government was to supply material for the bridge but the Doukhobors were to supply the labour. There was only one English engineer to supervise. Two parties were working, one from the Brilliant side, one from the Ootishenie side. It was six months before the bridge was ready to walk across.
[Read elsewhere on this site: The Making of the Doukhobor Suspension Bridge].
I didn't work on the bridge but since I was a carpenter I worked on the homes in the Brilliant area. We felled the trees and split them into planks for the homes right here in Brilliant on the small sawmill. There were plenty of rocks so foundations were made of them and basements put together with lime we burned out ourselves. Some lime we got from a mountain past Nelson, some locally, and with a cement mixture it held. We had no money to buy cement so we had to find a way to utilize the material that was available.
The forest at Brilliant was so thick that we just heard that there was a town of Castlegar but we never saw it. To Pass Creek the road was one way and branches met overhead as if you were travelling through a tunnel. If you met a wagon going in the opposite direction you stopped, tipped the wagon on the side of the road till one would pass, then walk back, help the other fellow to hitch up and put his wagon on the road. You can't believe it now but I witnessed it.
Food was very lean and scarce. We had to use discretion in the amount used. If I tell about it today, it's hard to believe that people could live and work on that type of diet. Well, we didn't die but worked hard, cleared land, dug stumps and roots.
. . . Beans was a very rich, filling and sustaining food. The type of food we had has left me with a memory for the rest of my life. How good everything tasted, maybe because we never had enough, compared to the rich food now and plenty of everything. After land was cleared we planted all kinds of vegetables. Watermelons really grew here. It was very warm and with light rain showers, didn't even need irrigation. Now it’s hard to grow with irrigation, fertilizer and sprays. Since it took quite a while for fruit trees to produce we planted small fruits, strawberries, raspberries, carrots, gooseberries. Fruit trees came later, apples, prunes, pears, peaches, apricots. Started living good then. Planted buckwheat, millet, some wheat, but mostly got the wheat from the prairies and milled our flour here. Flax we grew for oil and made linen out of it for clothes. The Doukhobor people adapted and utilized every available and edible thing from the land. They found a way to use it for their own benefit. Things that grew wild in the forest such as roots were used for medicine. In springtime wild onions, garlic, mushrooms, a form of spinach, with salt brine on them, wonderful with fried potatoes, a delicacy.
In autumn hazelnuts husked and dried used in baking and instead of candies for Christmas. Morel mushrooms dried for winter. Sunflower seeds dried used for enjoyment in winter evenings.
We people will never go hungry as long as we live on the land. Even in Siberia we survived by digging and eating certain roots. We found certain grass that was used for cleaning [mare’s tail] but for brooms collected a weed that looks like a tumbleweed. For our steam baths we had spring twigs from hazel nut trees tied together. So many other things.
Our village women were truly a marvel. They worked summer and winter, their hands were never at rest, continually moving. Cooking, sewing, spinning, weaving, knitting, whole winter. I always thank God that He made women. They didn't know how to be tired.
* In actual fact Queen Victoria had nothing to do with the Doukhobor migration to Canada. Read elsewhere on this site about the process of immigration from Russia to Canada.
www.larrysdesk.com/migration-sk-bc.html
[I have corrected some syntax in the interests of clarity].
You see, I was born in 1886 In Russia. I started to remember events when I began to grow up. Our village was called Novatroiskie. It was situated 18 mile from Kars. In between were villages of Russians and one village of Molokans, and Armenians across the river.
When the big move was on it was our good fortune that Queen Victoria* was gracious enough to allow us to settle in one of her dominions. I had just turned 13 years in May 13 when we reached Batum on the Black Sea getting ready to go to Canada . We came there by train and had to wait two weeks for the boat, the Lake Huron, that would take us on her last voyage transporting Doukhobors. Your parents, Soukeroffs, were on the same boat. All six villages that were together in Russia came on this boat.
The Lake Huron came to Quebec. When we came to Quebec we were held in quarantine near an island because of sickness on the boat. When we were anchored by the island they inoculated us. Then we went by train to Winnipeg.
From there people were taken to different districts, wherever they chose or had friends or relatives. Some went to the Prince Albert district. Your parents went there. The ones that stayed here were absorbed into villages from Yorkton to Swan River. The name of our village was Kirilovka. Your parents lived in the village of Petrovka on the Saskatchewan River.
We started on our house as soon as we came. We dug three feet into the ground and got some ash saplings for sides. We made a ceiling by laying the saplings flat. The sides were backed with dirt and two layers of sod put on the roof. We had two windows 10" x 12". This was only temporary.
In winter we prepared logs and in springtime made a house above ground. Walls of log with roof of sod. The walls were chinked with mud mixture between the logs, the floor was dirt. Everybody had to help one another.
We had a pair of oxen in our village so as to go to Yorkton for provisions, forty-five miles. It took us three days there and three days back. I think the Quakers supplied our first seeds. They even sent flour for emergency use. The people that came from Selka came with just what was on their backs, they were very poor.
Earnings were fifty cents a day. Men were working wherever they could get a job, mostly on the C. P. R. The work on the railway absorbed the bigger amount of workers. There were very few ranches and they were far between, mostly cattle ranches about fifteen miles apart. At that time nobody had a chance to even think of schools. The only thing was how to earn that slice of bread and not starve.
The reason we and others like us moved to B. C. was because we didn't take out citizenship papers and swear allegiance to the monarchy. That was understood when we were seeking new land yet and when we were allowed to apply for homesteads. Of course houses built on homesteads and ground cultivated is more attractive to repossess than empty prairies nobody wanted.
The land was bought in B. C. The more religious decided they would rather move to the tops of mountains and into forests than compromise their principles. We moved in 1913 to the Kootenay - Columbia River district in B. C., later named Brilliant.
There was no bridge across the river, only a ferry. The government was to supply material for the bridge but the Doukhobors were to supply the labour. There was only one English engineer to supervise. Two parties were working, one from the Brilliant side, one from the Ootishenie side. It was six months before the bridge was ready to walk across.
[Read elsewhere on this site: The Making of the Doukhobor Suspension Bridge].
I didn't work on the bridge but since I was a carpenter I worked on the homes in the Brilliant area. We felled the trees and split them into planks for the homes right here in Brilliant on the small sawmill. There were plenty of rocks so foundations were made of them and basements put together with lime we burned out ourselves. Some lime we got from a mountain past Nelson, some locally, and with a cement mixture it held. We had no money to buy cement so we had to find a way to utilize the material that was available.
The forest at Brilliant was so thick that we just heard that there was a town of Castlegar but we never saw it. To Pass Creek the road was one way and branches met overhead as if you were travelling through a tunnel. If you met a wagon going in the opposite direction you stopped, tipped the wagon on the side of the road till one would pass, then walk back, help the other fellow to hitch up and put his wagon on the road. You can't believe it now but I witnessed it.
Food was very lean and scarce. We had to use discretion in the amount used. If I tell about it today, it's hard to believe that people could live and work on that type of diet. Well, we didn't die but worked hard, cleared land, dug stumps and roots.
. . . Beans was a very rich, filling and sustaining food. The type of food we had has left me with a memory for the rest of my life. How good everything tasted, maybe because we never had enough, compared to the rich food now and plenty of everything. After land was cleared we planted all kinds of vegetables. Watermelons really grew here. It was very warm and with light rain showers, didn't even need irrigation. Now it’s hard to grow with irrigation, fertilizer and sprays. Since it took quite a while for fruit trees to produce we planted small fruits, strawberries, raspberries, carrots, gooseberries. Fruit trees came later, apples, prunes, pears, peaches, apricots. Started living good then. Planted buckwheat, millet, some wheat, but mostly got the wheat from the prairies and milled our flour here. Flax we grew for oil and made linen out of it for clothes. The Doukhobor people adapted and utilized every available and edible thing from the land. They found a way to use it for their own benefit. Things that grew wild in the forest such as roots were used for medicine. In springtime wild onions, garlic, mushrooms, a form of spinach, with salt brine on them, wonderful with fried potatoes, a delicacy.
In autumn hazelnuts husked and dried used in baking and instead of candies for Christmas. Morel mushrooms dried for winter. Sunflower seeds dried used for enjoyment in winter evenings.
We people will never go hungry as long as we live on the land. Even in Siberia we survived by digging and eating certain roots. We found certain grass that was used for cleaning [mare’s tail] but for brooms collected a weed that looks like a tumbleweed. For our steam baths we had spring twigs from hazel nut trees tied together. So many other things.
Our village women were truly a marvel. They worked summer and winter, their hands were never at rest, continually moving. Cooking, sewing, spinning, weaving, knitting, whole winter. I always thank God that He made women. They didn't know how to be tired.
* In actual fact Queen Victoria had nothing to do with the Doukhobor migration to Canada. Read elsewhere on this site about the process of immigration from Russia to Canada.
www.larrysdesk.com/migration-sk-bc.html
Helen Verigin interviews 88 year old Peter Ozeroff
[Born in Terpenie in Kars]
. . . I remember the burning of the arms. It was done in secret. The wood cut and taken to the plain near us. Then the guns and weapons. We found out next day that the arms were burned. Our Karahonski spies reported to our village guard and military that we burned the arms. The military said ‘What of it? They belong to them and if they aren't afraid of the Tartars, it's up to them.' He was a very smart, religious and good man. The matter ended there. But in the Wet Mountains people were really beaten because the Gubonovs of the minority party reported to the military of the district that the people were collecting arms for an uprising. So a lot of military and Cossacks were brought into the area. In those villages near the caves or peshchera there was a holy holocaust.
I remember when they were marching a battalion of Doukhobor men, the ones that refused to serve in the army. All our village went to see them because there were quite a few there of ours. The small children hanging on to their fathers' legs, crying and begging them to come home and the soldiers, cuffing and booting them away from their fathers. The fathers were being marched to penal servitude.
Yes, I remember John Fomenoff, he was my mother's brother and Masha's husband. He was in the above battalion and sent to the Tartar's colony or aool. My grandfather and his wife Masha went to see him because he was very sick. When they arrived there he was crawling with lice. They were practically eating him alive. Your grandfather Sookeroff was not too far away and tried to do all he can for him but he was beaten so bad he was helpless. Grandfather, Masha and your grandfather buried him when he died. Buried on Tarter soil but in our religious ritual.
Helen Verigin interviews John Fomenoff
I think we came on the first Lake Huron (ship) in 1899. I remember my parents telling me that the waves were so high in a very turbulent ocean. We would be sailing for ten to twelve days and yet the compass showed we were twelve to twenty five miles back to where the ship was supposed to be. Very strong winds.
We settled close to Manitoba. The nearest town was Swan River but the little town of Benito was even closer, only ten miles away from us. Our village was Uspenia.
We had no schools, even the English people had no schools, maybe at Swan River but not where the farms were. George Kanigan taught us how to read and write in Russian.
Our homes were made of logs. We had a lot of forest where we settled. We had a little mill for sawing timber for homes in other districts too. Fours years ago I was in our district where we first lived and our community hall is still standing and in good shape along with two other houses. A farmer is using them as barns. The logs are all solid and still glisten and all the chinking is still in between the logs. Looks as if they were just recently made. It’s the dry cold climate I think.
Up till I turned eight years I was looking after cows and horses. When I turned eight the village gave me and my friend a pair of oxen and yokes for them, that the two of us could barely lift. We had to work them and tend to their needs.
We lost our homesteads and moved to B. C. in 1909 because our parents would not take the oath and swear allegiance to the Crown.
The first forty working men were Kootnikoff, Fomenoff, Abrossimoff, Voykin, Evdokimoff, others I don’t remember. First year we were there the Jerusalem ferry tore lose so we had to use the long boat to take supplies and people over.
It was very hard work clearing land. There was a lot of bull pines and brush with a root spread of ten paces around. By the time you dug out the roots you practically ploughed it. This was all done by backbreaking work with a pick and a shovel. It especially was hard clearing land on the second level, where the clover village was, where Kanigans lived.
The food was very good for the hardworking men. Porridge, borshch, fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, cold cucumber soup [kvass], juice from dried fruit, sauerkraut, a baked in oven dessert from dried fruit and plenty of bread.
We had neighbours. Theodore had a cattle ranch and a good orchard. Landis lived there too but then sold his place to the Doukhobors and moved to Pass Creek and the Doukhobors built a village on his place where Petushka lived. There was a hospital our people built there, that was after we left. The doctor’s name seemed to be Dr. Fershal, I’m not so sure. It didn't last very long and closed down.
I remember the Brilliant bridge being built. At the time I was working at the Brilliant sawmill. The Doukhobors hewed out the road leading up to it and then cemented blocks, strung the cable and planked it. The agreement was labour to be ours and the government was to supply the materials. When they were hewing the road out a strange thing happened. A rock at least twenty tons slid from above right over the working crew, everyone ran except John Samsonoff who wasn't fast enough to pick up his crowbar and run. The rock slid right over him and over the other bank into the river. The other men ran up to him and he got up and walked away. After investigating they found that as the road wasn't finished - the rocks jutting out of the road were high enough that they balanced the big rock and left enough space underneath for John, not to even touch him. The crowbar was like a pretzel.
When they were blasting for the bridge, the dynamite was cold and damp. Sometimes it would explode and sometimes not. The men started drying it in the electric pump house that was on the Ooteshenie side. John Sherbinin warned them that it was dangerous, yet the men continued to do it.
One day the dynamite exploded in the pump house and some were injured, some died. Strukoff was blasted right into the door. Other men that were in there were John Strukoff, his brother, Alex Reibin, Mike Labentsoff. He was deaf from then on and four died.
We hitched a team at the sawmill and went to help. They were bringing out the wounded and the dead. Who knows what really happened there.
I think we came on the first Lake Huron (ship) in 1899. I remember my parents telling me that the waves were so high in a very turbulent ocean. We would be sailing for ten to twelve days and yet the compass showed we were twelve to twenty five miles back to where the ship was supposed to be. Very strong winds.
We settled close to Manitoba. The nearest town was Swan River but the little town of Benito was even closer, only ten miles away from us. Our village was Uspenia.
We had no schools, even the English people had no schools, maybe at Swan River but not where the farms were. George Kanigan taught us how to read and write in Russian.
Our homes were made of logs. We had a lot of forest where we settled. We had a little mill for sawing timber for homes in other districts too. Fours years ago I was in our district where we first lived and our community hall is still standing and in good shape along with two other houses. A farmer is using them as barns. The logs are all solid and still glisten and all the chinking is still in between the logs. Looks as if they were just recently made. It’s the dry cold climate I think.
Up till I turned eight years I was looking after cows and horses. When I turned eight the village gave me and my friend a pair of oxen and yokes for them, that the two of us could barely lift. We had to work them and tend to their needs.
We lost our homesteads and moved to B. C. in 1909 because our parents would not take the oath and swear allegiance to the Crown.
The first forty working men were Kootnikoff, Fomenoff, Abrossimoff, Voykin, Evdokimoff, others I don’t remember. First year we were there the Jerusalem ferry tore lose so we had to use the long boat to take supplies and people over.
It was very hard work clearing land. There was a lot of bull pines and brush with a root spread of ten paces around. By the time you dug out the roots you practically ploughed it. This was all done by backbreaking work with a pick and a shovel. It especially was hard clearing land on the second level, where the clover village was, where Kanigans lived.
The food was very good for the hardworking men. Porridge, borshch, fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, cold cucumber soup [kvass], juice from dried fruit, sauerkraut, a baked in oven dessert from dried fruit and plenty of bread.
We had neighbours. Theodore had a cattle ranch and a good orchard. Landis lived there too but then sold his place to the Doukhobors and moved to Pass Creek and the Doukhobors built a village on his place where Petushka lived. There was a hospital our people built there, that was after we left. The doctor’s name seemed to be Dr. Fershal, I’m not so sure. It didn't last very long and closed down.
I remember the Brilliant bridge being built. At the time I was working at the Brilliant sawmill. The Doukhobors hewed out the road leading up to it and then cemented blocks, strung the cable and planked it. The agreement was labour to be ours and the government was to supply the materials. When they were hewing the road out a strange thing happened. A rock at least twenty tons slid from above right over the working crew, everyone ran except John Samsonoff who wasn't fast enough to pick up his crowbar and run. The rock slid right over him and over the other bank into the river. The other men ran up to him and he got up and walked away. After investigating they found that as the road wasn't finished - the rocks jutting out of the road were high enough that they balanced the big rock and left enough space underneath for John, not to even touch him. The crowbar was like a pretzel.
When they were blasting for the bridge, the dynamite was cold and damp. Sometimes it would explode and sometimes not. The men started drying it in the electric pump house that was on the Ooteshenie side. John Sherbinin warned them that it was dangerous, yet the men continued to do it.
One day the dynamite exploded in the pump house and some were injured, some died. Strukoff was blasted right into the door. Other men that were in there were John Strukoff, his brother, Alex Reibin, Mike Labentsoff. He was deaf from then on and four died.
We hitched a team at the sawmill and went to help. They were bringing out the wounded and the dead. Who knows what really happened there.
Helen Verigin interviews Paul Trubetskoff
What do you remember about the early days of Brilliant and Ooteshenie? About the early Indians?
One time my Dad and I were digging a root cellar at Brilliant and came across a human baby skeleton and in a sitting position. I often wondered why not lay them down? So we dug a grave further back and buried it again. Most of the burial ground was on a point where the upper villages were.
We used to find beads there and some knives out of white rocks and sharpened at both ends [flint]. The rocks that strike sparks when hit one against the other. The bowls that we found were hollowed out of grey rocks and very shallow like cereal bowls. Maybe they ground millet in them.
Another Indian I know, his name was Alex. He had a shack where Pictin's village was. He was already living there when the Doukhobors came to settle. The shack was right on the hill where the Kootenay and Columbia meet. Alex had an agreement with the Doukhobors not to touch his shack. Every Doukhobor that moved into that village was warned against trespassing on his property. It stood there till it finally collapsed by itself and one spring when the rivers were in full spate the river even took the logs away.
There was another man, a white Russian who lived on that triangle where the pipeline is now. The Doukhobors built him a shack there as he wanted to join our faith. His name was Kryglak. One day he went away some place and when he came back, went to the lean-to to get some chips to start a fire, he heard rustling in there. By the time he got the lantern, and came back, there was a huge cougar lying on his dry pile of chips. He said that in that moment he regretted joining our faith. Because he had to chase that beautiful winter coat away instead of shooting it and skinning it. There used to be an awful lot of cougars in this district.
One thing happened here in the early, early days. The following was told me by the man who was one of six who were digging a grave in the old cemetery that was known as the Waterloo cemetery. Taras Makeiff's first wife died when they just moved to Ooteshenie. These men went to dig a grave, and when they dug up to four feet they struck steel. What they brought up was a steel box, well approximately 3' x 4' long, took it to Makeiff and they told the men not to open it as it might be a ‘pandora box'. So without looking they buried it back in the same old place and made a grave for Mrs. Makeiff further away. I've often wondered what was in it. There were lot of mines around that place, could be somebody stashed gold there. Then again might be somebody stole something and died before he could benefit by it.
I remember an old mine at Ooteshenie, that Landis looked after. All the machinery was left in it. My dad got a sheet of very funny metal there, one side looked like copper and yet the other side looked white. We used it to line certain parts of the spinning wheels. My dad and I made one spinning wheel, working together, for three days and sold it for $150.00. Pretty tough in those days.
What do you remember about the early days of Brilliant and Ooteshenie? About the early Indians?
One time my Dad and I were digging a root cellar at Brilliant and came across a human baby skeleton and in a sitting position. I often wondered why not lay them down? So we dug a grave further back and buried it again. Most of the burial ground was on a point where the upper villages were.
We used to find beads there and some knives out of white rocks and sharpened at both ends [flint]. The rocks that strike sparks when hit one against the other. The bowls that we found were hollowed out of grey rocks and very shallow like cereal bowls. Maybe they ground millet in them.
Another Indian I know, his name was Alex. He had a shack where Pictin's village was. He was already living there when the Doukhobors came to settle. The shack was right on the hill where the Kootenay and Columbia meet. Alex had an agreement with the Doukhobors not to touch his shack. Every Doukhobor that moved into that village was warned against trespassing on his property. It stood there till it finally collapsed by itself and one spring when the rivers were in full spate the river even took the logs away.
There was another man, a white Russian who lived on that triangle where the pipeline is now. The Doukhobors built him a shack there as he wanted to join our faith. His name was Kryglak. One day he went away some place and when he came back, went to the lean-to to get some chips to start a fire, he heard rustling in there. By the time he got the lantern, and came back, there was a huge cougar lying on his dry pile of chips. He said that in that moment he regretted joining our faith. Because he had to chase that beautiful winter coat away instead of shooting it and skinning it. There used to be an awful lot of cougars in this district.
One thing happened here in the early, early days. The following was told me by the man who was one of six who were digging a grave in the old cemetery that was known as the Waterloo cemetery. Taras Makeiff's first wife died when they just moved to Ooteshenie. These men went to dig a grave, and when they dug up to four feet they struck steel. What they brought up was a steel box, well approximately 3' x 4' long, took it to Makeiff and they told the men not to open it as it might be a ‘pandora box'. So without looking they buried it back in the same old place and made a grave for Mrs. Makeiff further away. I've often wondered what was in it. There were lot of mines around that place, could be somebody stashed gold there. Then again might be somebody stole something and died before he could benefit by it.
I remember an old mine at Ooteshenie, that Landis looked after. All the machinery was left in it. My dad got a sheet of very funny metal there, one side looked like copper and yet the other side looked white. We used it to line certain parts of the spinning wheels. My dad and I made one spinning wheel, working together, for three days and sold it for $150.00. Pretty tough in those days.