A welcome for Doukhobors?

Thursday, 23 September 2010 00:00

September 22, 1898. The Edmonton Bulletin appears to welcome the prospect of Doukhobors settling in the region, but two months later rejoices that these "inferior settlers" are to be settled somewhere else in the Northwest Territories.

Prince Hilkoff, two other leaders of the "Doukhbortsi, or spirit wresters," their English agent, and an immigration official from Ottawa, had arrived in Edmonton. They were looking for a place to settle some 3,000 Doukhobors, persecuted in their native Russia "because they dissent from the established Greek Church and refuse military service." They "are now in a condition resembling slavery," says the Bulletin. "The emergency is so great that 200 workmen of the sect are now on their way out to Canada to erect dwellings."

The Doukhobors are said by the Bulletin to be "honest, industrious, thrifty and moral, and rapidly become prosperous whenever allowed the opportunity."

Less than two months later, on November 11, the Bulletin congratulates the immigration department "on their decision to withdraw the Doukhobortsi families who had been sent to Edmonton."

"Immigration matters have reached a stage in this district at which the introduction of inferior settlers simply means the exclusion to a far greater degree of superior settlers," presumably from Britain. The district already had thousands of Galicians, from what is now Poland. Like the Galicians, the Doukhobors would, for a number of years, have to depend upon their labour, or upon charity. To add to their number would aggravate existing conditions to a very undesirable degree and would be grossly unfair and injurious both to the Galicians and the Doukhobortsi.

"If the department is going to adopt the policy that all is fish that comes to their net, the least they can do is to use discretion in the distribution of their favours. For the present the Edmonton district is loaded with that class of immigrants."