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Updated: July 28, 2025
In one foreign section of the Northwest I once traveled a hundred miles through new settlements without hearing one word of English spoken; and these Doukhobors and Galicians and Roumanians and Slavs were making good. They were prospering exceedingly.
Joe pushed himself close to one of the policemen and inquired the reason of their arrest, and the obliging guardian of the peace explained to him that they were "Doukhobors", a religious sect that on account of persecution had left Russia, and although they made first-class settlers, some of them had been arrested on account of queer practices which conflicted with the laws of Canada, and which, despite repeated warnings, they refused to discontinue.
The Liberals will not face the plain consequence that such a state of affairs is hopelessly unstable, that it involves the maximum risk of war with the minimum of permanent benefit and public order. They will not reflect that the stars in their courses rule inexorably against it. It is a vague, impossible ideal, with a rude sort of unworldly moral beauty, like the gospel of the Doukhobors.
The Doukhobors, particularly the new generation, have made much progress and have prospered in establishing some useful industries. But for several years they were a source of a good deal of anxiety to the red-coated riders, who wished to guide them to better conditions without harshness. Events have justified the attitude of the Police.
Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly.
Foremost in numbers were the Ruthenians from Galicia. Most distinctive were the Doukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military service.
Christianity has divided itself into Catholicism and Protestantism; and when Protestantism gave the right of interpretation of the Bible to each individual, there were evolved such forms of Protestantism as Christian Science, Holy Rollerism, Seventh Day Adventism, Swedenborgianism, and the cults of the Doukhobors, the Shakers, the Mennonites, the Dunkards and the Salvation Army.
Down in the Middle West the Mounted Police were having difficulty with people whose type of religion, being unmixed with intelligence, led them into fanatical excesses. The Doukhobors, or "Spirit Wrestlers" as their name means, were a body of people who had come from Southern Russia, where they had not enjoyed anything like liberty.
A few days later I was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors Russians again had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please take care not to run over them. So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness soft, savage, and mad.
"Oh, Kalman," said his sister anxiously, "why do you fight so much?" "They make me fight," said the boy. "They try to drive me off the corner, and he called me a greasy Dook. But I showed him I am no Doukhobor. Doukhobors won't fight." "Tell me," cried his sister, her face aglow "but no, I don't want to hear about it. Did you how did you beat him? But you should not fight so, Kalman."
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