The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 (13 page)

This was the man who would act as the catalyst to bring the Spirit Wrestlers to Canada – the go-between who linked the American and British Quakers, the Purleigh community, the Russian expatriates, and Clifford Sifton’s Department of Immigration. Without Mavor,
the Doukhobor immigration to Canada would not have been possible.

He knew he must act quickly. “They must leave at once,” his friend Kropotkin wrote to him; “there is not a moment to be lost.” Mavor plunged into his task with characteristic enthusiasm. He wrote at once to Sir William Mulock, the Postmaster General, whom he knew, and to Clifford Sifton, whom he didn’t. He wrote to Tchertkoff, to Kropotkin, to Tolstoy. This was the beginning of a voluminous correspondence on the Doukhobors by Mavor – some five hundred letters in all, of which sixty were written that late summer and fall of 1898 when Mavor was also busying himself with the autumn semester.

The emigration was already moving with precipitate and (to Mavor) alarming speed. On September 2, long before he had any word from the Canadian government, Mavor learned that eleven hundred Doukhobors had landed at Cyprus, which was to prove unsuitable, and that a delegation from Purleigh, consisting of two Doukhobor farmers together with Aylmer Maude and Prince Hilkoff, had embarked for Canada. They expected to meet Mavor at Quebec on the tenth and proceed to Ottawa to arrange matters with the government.

They paid their own way, the penniless prince and the Doukhobors travelling steerage while Maude, who was now in charge, took a first-class cabin, “feeling much ashamed of myself for such un-Tolstoyan self-indulgence.” The Doukhobors were rarely consulted since they spoke a dialect of their own, which Hilkoff understood imperfectly and Maude not at all. Nor were they ever party to the deals that were subsequently made on their behalf with the Canadian government.

Among these well-intentioned but often naïve idealists, personality conflicts were beginning to develop. Maude, the nominal leader, unable to speak the language, found himself a mere supernumerary. Hilkoff and Tchertkoff had had a flaming row over Cyprus arising from the fact that one controlled the money – £1,100 contributed by the Purleigh community – while the other organized the emigration. They no longer spoke to one another. Maude was also cool to Tchertkoff, who he felt entirely lacked any business capacity. His own prickly letters irritated Mavor. Eventually Maude and Mavor became such bitter antagonists that in their respective books on the Doukhobor migration they scarcely mentioned one another. Similar tensions were to cause the break-up of the anarchist colony at Purleigh.

The situation was ripe for the misunderstandings that followed. The Doukhobors, “like a Queenless hive of bees,” were leaderless, their acknowledged helmsman, Peter Verigin, an exile in Siberia. Their friends and supporters were not only at odds with one another but, and this was equally serious, also appeared to believe that once the Doukhobors were landed in Canada they would be able to fend for themselves without further aid. No one, apparently, understood the rigours of the Canadian winter.

For Mavor, with the university year about to begin, the next two weeks were hectic. Sifton was in the West, but a letter from his deputy, James Smart, finally indicated the government was interested. Indeed, the Doukhobors represented exactly the kind of tough, experienced peasantry that Sifton felt could withstand the appalling conditions on the empty plains. Mavor rushed to Ottawa to talk with Smart. Here, as he had in his previous correspondence, he tried to make clear the terms under which the Doukhobors were prepared to come to Canada. They expected exemption from military service. They wanted to hold land communally. They wanted some help in getting established. They wished to be consulted about the education of their children.

Nothing, apparently, was said about the Doukhobors’ refusal to take an oath of allegiance to the sovereign. Their only allegiance, they insisted, was to God. When Maude, behind Mavor’s back and to his considerable annoyance, finally signed a contract with the Immigration Department on behalf of the Purleigh community (neither Mavor nor the Doukhobor representatives were present) the oath was never mentioned. Nor was another significant condition: the right to hold land in common rather than individually. These omissions would eventually force the Doukhobors out of Saskatchewan at great financial sacrifice.

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to take responsibility for the Doukhobors, yet more and more of them, it appeared, were preparing to leave Russia. Besides the Purleigh community, the Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic and Leo Tolstoy himself were raising funds for their passage and subsequent establishment in the West. Tolstoy, for one, contributed seventeen thousand dollars in royalties from
What Is Art?

But who would look after all this money? And was it sufficient? Many of the Doukhobors were destitute. Eleven hundred pounds had already been squandered on the abortive voyage to Cyprus.
Queries began arriving: could Canada accept another two thousand, then four thousand, then an additional three thousand, as well as the Cyprus exiles? Mavor was appalled. As he wrote to Smart, “Their idea that they might as well be frozen to death in Canada as flogged to death by the Cossacks, is natural enough, but no one would venture to induce the Government to receive a greater number of them than can be reasonably well sheltered and fed during the winter.”

Maude rushed off to Philadelphia to raise money from the Quakers there. Then, by-passing Mavor, he left for England, turning over all responsibility for the Doukhobors in Canada to Hilkoff. For Mavor this was the last straw; his breach with Maude was complete.

The government, eager to get farmers on the empty Western lands, found a way to subsidize the Doukhobors without actually having to admit to it. Since no shipping agents were involved, why not pay into a special Doukhobor fund all the public money that would normally have gone into bonuses? Thus one pound for every Doukhobor man, woman, and child landed in Canada went toward settling the new immigrants. The money, however, could not be paid out until the Doukhobors actually arrived – in instalments. This subsidy was legalized in a new contract with Hilkoff, a contract that guaranteed the Doukhobors exemption from military service and gave them a block of 750,000 acres in northern Assiniboia. But again, in this contract there was no mention of exemption from the oath of allegiance or from the homestead law, which prevented the holding of land in common.

The government was in a dilemma. It wanted these immigrants. And whether or not it wanted them, they seemed determined to come anyway. Some twenty-one hundred were already preparing to embark at the Black Sea port of Batum. But Sifton was already under extreme criticism from the Conservative press over his “coddling” of the Galicians. He could not be seen to give anything more to the Doukhobors than was the rightful due of any immigrant. On the other hand, he could not leave them to starve and freeze when they left the train at Winnipeg. The government agreed to pay out ten thousand dollars of the bonus money on the arrival of the first group of twenty-one hundred in Winnipeg. A second party, under the leadership of Tolstoy’s son, Sergius, was not expected until May. In addition to the bonus money, the Doukhobor trust fund had reached $200,000, one-fifth of it contributed by the Doukhobors themselves.

The Immigration Department now faced a superhuman task.
Nothing like this had ever taken place before, and nothing like it has ever taken place since. This was the largest single immigration ever organized in Canada. Somehow, more than two thousand men, women, and children, scarcely any of whom understood a word of English, had to be trundled half way across Canada, immediately after disembarkation.

With winter (the worst in decades) about to strike, the hard-pressed Commissioner of Immigration in Winnipeg, Bill McCreary, would have to have warm accommodation and food waiting for all of them. Somehow he would have to get them aboard other trains and dispatch them to northern Assiniboia. And there, on the treeless snow-swept prairie, frozen hard as granite, they would have to survive until they could begin tilling the land in the spring. They were slated to arrive in mid-January. McCreary had no more than six weeks to get ready.

2
“Greetings, Doukhobors!”

At 4 p.m. on January 20 – a perfect winter’s day – the S.S.
Lake Huron
steamed into Halifax harbour with twenty-one hundred Doukhobors on board – the largest single body of emigrants ever to have crossed the Atlantic in one ship. She had travelled for twenty-nine days from Batum, manned by a skeleton crew (to save money) assisted by ninety-four untrained emigrants. Ten persons had died during the voyage; five more couples had been married in the simple Doukhobor ceremony. The new arrivals had also survived a dreadful tempest that blew unceasingly for eight days, causing all to give up hope of ever reaching Canadian shores. In spite of this, the ship was spanking clean, scrubbed spotless by the women. The chief health officer remarked he had never known so clean a vessel to enter Halifax harbour.

We have joined the small knot of dignitaries boarding the steam tug
Henry Hoover
as she chugs off to meet the incoming steamship. These include James Smart and William White of the Immigration Department; Prince Hilkoff, already dubbed by the press “the 19th Century Moses”; a representative of Canadian labour; several newspapermen; and two saintly and venerable Quakers in the dark clothing and broad black hats of their sect – Joseph Elkington of Philadelphia and Job Gidley of North Dartmouth, Massachusetts
.

Across the water comes the hum of human voices raised in song. Two thousand and seventy-three Doukhobors are chanting a psalm. Hilkoff translates for us: “God is with us; he has brought us through. “Job Gidley raises his hat. “Welcome, Doukhobors!” he calls across the water
.

High above us now, crowded along the deck rail, bowing their heads in greeting, are the “peculiar people” as the newspapers have called them – the men in high boots, fur leggings, sheepskin coats, and fur hats, the women in embroidered blouses, vests, red sashes, shawls, red plaid skirts, and woollen comforters, all staring down at their first view of Canadians and Canada
.

We all clamber on board. Joseph Elkington closes his eyes, moistens his lips, and utters a prayer. The peculiar people bow. With Hilkoff translating, J.T. Bulmer, the labour man, follows with a fervent and declamatory speech on behalf of “the peaceful workmen of this country.” As he finishes, the entire multitude, in an astonishing gesture, fling themselves to their knees and press their foreheads to the deck. Bulmer looks baffled. Why this fawning display of servility in free Canada? Hilkoff hastens to explain. They are not bowing to the welcoming committee but to “the spirit of God in their hearts, which has made them take us as brothers in their own homeland of Canada.”

The
Lake Huron
steamed on to Saint John, with the Doukhobors gossiping among themselves about the marvels they had witnessed. No policemen had come to meet them! The government doctor did not wear gold braid nor did the immigration agent. The governor of the country was a Frenchman, but the English didn’t seem to mind! And it was even said there were no soldiers in this governor’s palace!

Five passenger trains, each eleven cars in length (one entire car carrying food), awaited the newcomers at Saint John. Since there was no room in the passenger cars for baggage, every trunk and box had to be relabelled. To avoid congestion, the newcomers were held on board ship until each train was ready to roll westward. On the dock, waiting for the Doukhobor children, were barrels of candies, donated by a group of Montreal wellwishers.

By the time the Doukhobors entrained, the commissary cars were loaded with 1,700 two-pound loaves of bread, 1,700 pounds of baked beans, 850 pounds of hard tack, 80 gallons of milk, 55 pounds of salt, 6 bushels of onions, and 50 pounds of coffee. By the time the trains reached Ottawa, it had all been devoured. Twice that amount was waiting on the station platform for the next leg of the journey.

In Winnipeg, meanwhile, McCreary had been struggling night and day to find accommodation for the new arrivals. Where was he going to house twenty-one hundred people? The immigration shed at Winnipeg could handle no more than six hundred. The shed at Brandon could hold another four hundred; but it was not insulated, and blowing snow was pouring through the cracks in the walls. Calgary might handle two hundred, but that, clearly, was not enough.

Nor was the department equipped to feed such an army. McCreary figured that even if the two ranges in the immigration hall ran day and night, they couldn’t boil enough vegetables or bake enough bread to feed more than one hundred. He could, of course, buy bread, but at twenty-five loaves for a dollar the price was prohibitive. He would need to have a dozen big cauldrons, again working night and day, to boil enough soup for six hundred people. Prince Hilkoff, who had arrived in town to help, suggested erecting clay ovens in the yard. He could not realize that when his compatriots arrived, the temperature would be colder than forty below with a blizzard blowing.

By early January, with the deadline fast approaching, McCreary was managing to untangle the problem of accommodation. Calgary was too far away, but he was planning to throw up a frame shed at Yorkton, which he hoped would be ready by January 16. There would be no time to paint it, but he thought he could cram three hundred into it, and in a pinch an extra one hundred. There was also a shed at Dauphin, Manitoba, that could hold another three hundred, mainly women and children (the men would be sent out at once to put up houses of timber). An additional hundred could perhaps be squeezed into the immigration shed in Brandon, another hundred at Birtle, and upwards of fifty at Qu’Appelle. That would still leave another hundred who would have to be shoe-horned into the overtaxed hall in Winnipeg.

At Selkirk, north of Winnipeg, there was an ancient railway roundhouse capable of holding between fifteen hundred and two thousand souls; but it needed to be repaired, and Sifton’s department was getting nowhere with his adversary, Israel Tarte, of the Department of Public Works. McCreary was beside himself from overwork, and on the verge of breakdown. That midwinter he had worked every holiday, every Sunday, and almost every evening until shortly before midnight. The only meal he was able to enjoy with his family was breakfast. He wolfed lunch and dinner in twenty-minute breaks at a restaurant next door to his office. “I do not think I could stand it more than a couple of
years longer,” he told Sifton. A reformed alcoholic, he had fallen off the wagon at Christmas, got himself entangled in a public quarrel, and almost lost his job. He blamed this fall from grace on overwork. “I have been completely prostrated at times,” he wrote, “and hardly felt able to draw one foot after the other from the severe strain that has been on me.… I have not a blessed moment that I can call my own.” A year later McCreary quit his job, ran for federal office as a Liberal, and was elected. Three years after that he was dead.