High on a cliff above the Columbia River in western Canada, just outside the small town of Castlegar, beautiful harmonies filled the air.
I was sitting in the garden from the Dujobor Discovery Center under a statue of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, listening to a recording of an a cappella choir singing a haunting psalm. It sounded like a multitrack version of Crosby, Stills & Nash in Russian.
“When dujobores sing, it’s a powerful experience,” explains Ryan Dutchak, director of the center’s museum and culture and an active member of the chorus.
“It gives you the chills. It is as if you are participating in history, establishing a strong connection with your ancestors in both Russia and Canada. ”
While most people visit the mountainous region of West Kootenay in I had come to British Columbia to enjoy intrepid outdoor activities, I had come to reflect on Tolstoy and penetrate the idiosyncratic and little explored world of the Dujobores.
Who?
The Dujobores are a small ethnic-religious group of Russian origin that separated from the Eastern Orthodox Church at the beginning of the 18th century.
Persecuted as “heretics” for more than two centuries by successive Russian emperors and empresses, they emigrated en masse to Canada in 1899.
As conscientious devotees of nonviolence and egalitarianism, the group were natural allies for the ascetic Tolstoy. Sympathetic to his pacificism and non-materialistic communal lifestyle, the influential writer played a pivotal role in his emigration, even donating royalties from his novel “Resurrection” to help finance his trip.
Located at Seven-hour drive east of Vancouver, the Dujobor Discovery Center occupies a beautiful cluster of red brick buildings flanked by manicured fields and twisted apple trees.
A white dove stamped on the side of a barn welcomed me, and a sign that read “Work and peaceful life ”Above the front porch he pointed out the atmosphere of quiet diligence inside.
Wrapping a grassy courtyard, several carefully selected showrooms depicted the long journey of the Dujobores from Russia to Canada and the tight-knit communal lifestyle that was once their hallmark.
Known today in Canada for their paci fism, vegetarianism, and sweet choruses in Russian, dujobores evade an orderly classification.
Some historians point to their similarities with Quakers and Mennonites . Others refer to them as proto hippies.
Possessing a strong work ethic, they have long been admired for their skills in carpentry and agriculture. When the Canadian government was looking for pioneer farmers to settle its rugged interior in the 1890, there were no better candidates.
Pacifism
“The most central belief is that the spirit of God dwells within every living being,” said Dutchak.
“This principle lends itself to a number of religious beliefs of the dujobores, including the rejection of religious icons, the emphasis on equality and the community, as well as non-violence and pacifism. ”
Dutchak was raised Catholic, but his grandmother came from a Dujobor community in Saskatchewan. He was drawn to religion after experiencing one of Castlegar’s Saint Peter’s Day festivals, a celebration of Russian prayer, song and cuisine held every June.
“I was drawn to his ideas on equality and pacifism “, he told me. “In the decade of 1960, dujobores helped organize peace vigils in Canada and today they continue to assert their identity through pacificism. ”
Dutchak went on to learn Russian and write a master’s thesis on Dujobor culture. He started singing in a choir and reconnected with his roots.
“For me, dujobores are still very relevant,” he said. “They have a lot to offer to contemporary society.”
Salt, bread and water
Between 1899 Y 1938, dujobores thrived in dozens of independent agrarian villages in Canada.
The Center Discovery is essentially a reconstruction of one of its unique self-sufficient communities. Inside, I examined a set of austere bedrooms, barns filled with old farm implements, a wood-fired bread oven, and several caster wheels similar to the Rumpelstiltskin which were used to make the distinctive robes and shawls that dujobores still wears on special occasions.
As we toured the exhibits gathered, Dutchak pointed to a table containing the “elements of life” of salt, bread and water, the only ornaments allowed in the moleniyas dujobor (prayer meetings), which take place in simple rooms instead of ornate churches.
“The Bible is considered more of a historical text than a holy book,” he said. Instead of reciting it, the group sings psalms.
Spiritual fighters
The roots of the dujobores go back to the beginning of the 18th century in imperial Russia.
It was a dissident Christian sect that rejected the liturgy of the Orthodox Church, earned the reputation of “troublemakers” whose Egalitarian views were at odds with Russia’s repressive bondage society.
It was in the late 18th century that an Orthodox archbishop began to refer to them as “dujobores” or “spiritual fighters.” He conceived the term as derogatory , well were fighting the spirit, but over time the dujobores embraced the name and redefined its meaning: they were fighting with the spirit to find the truth.
In the 19th century, the group was exiled first to the Black Sea and then to the Caucasus region on the periphery of the vast Russian Empire, where they lived independently in small villages adopting the motto of “hard work and peaceful life” that came to define them.
The change occurred in the decade of 1887 when the appearance of a new charismatic leader of dujobores, Peter “Lordly ”Verigin, coincided with the ascension of Nicholas II to the imperial throne of Russia.
Nicolas insisted in an oath of allegiance from groups across the Empire. Always resistant to state interference, the dujobores refused and, in 1895, following the instructions of Verigin (who had been exiled to Siberia in 1887), destroyed all their weapons in protest.
As government hostility intensified Russian, Tolstoy and the British Quakers intervened to help the emigration of Dujobores to Canada.
Everybody’s Land
Around 7. of the group arrived in four ships in early 1899, agreeing to establish and cultivate the undeveloped territory in the interior with two conditions: to be exempt from military service and to be would allow them to own their lands in community.
In icially they moved to the prairies of Saskatchewan, where Verigin joined them in 1902, but, after the provincial government failed to comply with its promise to allow collective ownership of land in , Verigin led most of the group to western British Columbia in one of the largest organized internal migrations in Canadian history.
There, they took root in a small community named Brilliant next to the nascent town of Castlegar .
I had visi Tado Brilliant the day before to see the grave of Peter Verigin and admire the Brilliant Suspension Bridge, built by the Dujobores in 1913 to unite communities on both sides of the Kootenay River.
Pastoral and tiny, the village and its surroundings once held a commune of around 6. 000 dujobores centered on a grain elevator and a jam factory.
The factory disappeared a long time ago , but the bridge has been reincarnated as a National Historic Site. On a large interpretive sign, I read how it was built in five months by 100 volunteers dujobor using concrete armored and packed wire cables.
What remains
While only a handful of Doukhobors remain in Brilliant today, the town preserves a cultural center managed by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC), a charitable society that keeps the Dujobor heritage alive through arts, crafts and humanitarian initiatives.
The center acts as a community center, which hosts not only prayer meetings, but also banquets, choir performances, weddings, and funerals.
“Members participate in regular prayer services on Sundays, while prayer groups The kitchen prepares bread, lapsha (noodles) and borshch (beetroot soup), ”explained Vera Kanigan, whom I met in the sunny courtyard of the Discovery Center under the watchful eye of Tolstoy. He explained that he is a long-time member of Castlegar’s Dujobor community and speaks Russian.
“There are several organized choirs as well as groups that organize and participate in activities promoting peace, justice environmental and social ”, he added. “A group of men get together to make coffins and other wooden crafts, and the cultural center offers a preschool program in Russian .”
Verigin’s tomb occupies a manicured flower garden on a rocky headland directly above the bridge.
The spiritual leader was killed in the explosion of a train in 1924 that had all the makings of a targeted murder. Mysteriously, the case remains unsolved .
Depression
In the decade of 1920, debates over land ownership and cultural assimilation had caused fissures in Canada’s Dujobor movement.
A small dissident group called the Sons of Liberty broke up and broke up. embarked on a series of radical protests that included arson attacks and nude parades.
By protesting against the invasion of materialism and the absorption of their children into the Canadian educational system , his actions attracted notoriety and negative attention in the press.
He also led to many of the Sons of Liberty to jail and affected the law-abiding dubojores in general, who were often mistakenly mistaken for them.
The last straw came in 1938 when the Great Depression, coupled with financial mismanagement, led to the foreclosure of all property owned by dujobores.
Their land Collectively owned, purchased by Peter Verigin at 1908, was quickly seized by the Canadian government. The villages of the Dujobores gradually dissolved and their inhabitants assimilated into the Canadian culture.
With a bowl of soup
Se says there is between 20. 000 Y 30. 000 dubojores in Canada today, although only about a tenth follow spiritual practices.
“ Aside from Castlegar, you can find communities in Grand Forks, British Columbia and Calgary, Alberta, ”Dutchak told me. “There are also Dujobor communities in Saskatoon and Verigin in Saskatchewan, where there is another heritage village.”
Although community life is a matter of the past, there are encouraging signs suggesting that the culture will survive , and not just in museum archives. Through festivals, food, religious gatherings, and group singing, Castlegar’s Dujobor Discovery Center enthusiastically encourages interactive activities.
“We employ between two and six students as summer guides, and borshch, pyrohi (potato dumplings) and lapsha made by community members are served in our local bistro, hopefully it will be able to reopen later this summer, ”Dutchak said.
“On 2019, we even organized a borshch cooking competition in which participants brought their homemade borshch to share with visitors and judges. ”
When I left, I took one last look at Tolstoy, who was standing nobly on his pedestal, with the choir music still playing softly in the background. I’m sure he would have approved.
You can read the original version of this article in English at BBC Travel .
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