On January 20th 1899 at 4 p.m. the S.S. Lake Huron docked in the Halifax Nova Scotia Harbour with a cargo of twenty one hundred Doukhobors on board.
This was at the time the largest number of emigrants to have crossed the Atlantic Ocean in one ship. The journey took twenty nine days from the Black Sea Port of Batum, Russia.
During the voyage ten people had died, and five couples had made their marriage vows, and they had all survived an eight day storm. Even so the ship was spotless, every inch had been cleaned by the Peasant women.
The name Doukhobor means “Spirit Wrestler” and was given to this group in 1785 by a Russian Orthodox Priest. Although Archbishop Ambrosias of Ekaterinoslav was implying that the Sect wrestled against the Spirit of Christ. In fact they did the opposite and wrestled with the Spirit of Christ.
They believed in “Pacifism” and their motto was “Toil and Peaceful Life.” This was manifested in their simple ways, communal living and hard work ethic.
All went well until 1894 when Tsar Nicholas II demanded an Oath of Allegiance from all his Subjects. This demand was refused by their leader Peter Vasilievich Verigin, and the following year they then refused to serve in the Russian Army and destroyed all their weapons by fire. In retaliation the Cossack troops plundered, raped, tortured, imprisoned, beat and starved them.
At this time, the Canadian prime minister, Sir Wilfred Laurier, and Brandon’s own Sir Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, were advertising free land to encourage people to settle in western Canada. Some people, including a Russian writer named Leo Tolstoy, decided to help the Doukhobors and arranged for them to move here.
The Canadian government offered the Doukhobors free land to farm in the Saskatchewan district, the right to their own religion, and a guarantee that they would not have to serve in the Canadian military.
At St. John’s it took five passenger trains each with eleven cars in length, but one car was packed entirely with food, and because there was no room for baggage with the passengers every trunk and box had to be re-labelled.
A group of well wishers from Montreal had donated barrels of Candy for the children and they were waiting on the platform for their arrival. 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 fifty pounds of coffee all of which had been consumed by the time the trains had arrived in Ottawa, but twice that amount was waiting on the platform for the next part of the journey.
In Winnipeg the Commissioner of Immigration, Bill McCreary was hard pressed to find accommodation for twenty one hundred new arrivals because the Winnipeg Immigration Shed could only house six hundred people.
The Brandon Immigration Shed could hold four hundred, but it was not insulated, and snow was blowing in through the cracks in the walls. Calgary might have room for two hundred, but obviously he did not have enough room.
Also his Department had no means to feed so many people, if they used the two ranges in the Immigration Hall for every hour, day and night they could not boil enough vegetables or bake enough bread to feed one hundred people.
It was early January and McCreary was making some sense of his accommodation problem. Calgary was out of the question, but Yorkton could erect a frame structure by hopefully January 16th to house three hundred, or maybe four hundred. He found a shed in Dauphin, Manitoba that was big enough for three hundred women and children, the men would be utilized to build houses of timber.
An additional one hundred could be squashed into the Immigration Shed in Brandon, another in Birtle and fifty or so at Qu’Appelle, but that still left one hundred still homeless in Winnipeg.
At half past twelve on January 27th 1899 five trains with Doukhobor passengers began to arrive in Winnipeg. The first train was storm stayed at White River, and was en-route to Yorkton, but the Immigration Shed was incomplete, and so the immigrants were forced to stay in Winnipeg.
This was the coldest winter ever and when the third train pulled into the platform at 1 a.m. in the morning McCreary froze his nose and fingers. Train number four was scheduled to go the Brandon, but was running one hour late because of the cold, having to periodically stop to make steam after the engines froze.
The fifth train arrived at 5:30 a.m. but collided with a yard engine as it was leaving for Dauphin damaging two cars which had to be replaced.
The Doukhobors were ecstatic, to them the makeshift arrangements made by McCreary were admirable. When they alighted from the trains hot dinners were waiting for them. The volunteer women of Winnipeg had spent hours peeling potatoes, chopping cabbage, and making soup.
The next day saw thousands of well wishers turn out to greet the travellers, and as far as the Spirit Wrestlers were concerned their problems were over, but for McCreary his were only just beginning.
He was now facing four new concerns, clothing, delivering food to the various accommodation locations, finding permanent housing and completing all this before the next two thousand who were already aboard the S. S. Lake Superior arrive in Halifax in two weeks.
The Doukhobors demanded that they all receive the same food, and so their staple food was simplified. Cheese, molasses, and fish had been fed at Brandon, and Portage la Prairie, and so their regular diet was changed to potatoes, onions, cabbage, tea and sugar.
Four hundred Doukhobors were housed in the Immigration Sheds in Brandon. The Sun called it the Immigrant Invasion,` “Exiles … the finest agriculturists among the peasantry of Russia and, where allowed, have prospered, ‘made the wilderness smile with cultivation’.
Large numbers of Brandonites stopped by the Immigration Sheds to view and sing for the “new settlers” who returned the compliment by chanting some of their Psalms.
For almost five months newspaper reporters found in the Refugees fascinating subject material, To support themselves, Russian youths were employed by various Brandon city business houses from shovelling snow to chopping wood, the older men set up cottage industries making wooden spoons and painting bowls which they sold.
The women assisted local housewives with their Spring cleaning or undertook to do fine embroidery and woven woollens in response to local demand.
Wheat City merchants too benefited from extensive purchases just before the excited immigrants set out for new homes near Swan River…..
McCreary was to put it mildly, overworked and on the verge of a Nervous Breakdown. He had no authority to purchase needed supplies, no line of Credit, and no Committee to organize funds. He needed to buy wood, water, harnesses, oxen, sleighs, flour, vegetables, and cooking equipment.
By the mid-winter of 1899 he had worked every holiday and Sunday and most evenings until nearly midnight.
He only had time to eat with his family was during breakfast, and had to gulp down his lunch and dinner in twenty minute breaks at a Restaurant located next door to his office.
Suffering from Dipsomania he had returned to drinking at Christmas, and got into a public fight which nearly caused his dismissal from his job. He blamed his troubles on overwork, and one year later, finally quit.
He ran for federal office as a Liberal and was elected. He died three years later.
Source:
http://www.archive.org/stream/thedoukhoborsthe00elkiuoft#page/n27/mode/2up
Brandon a City By G. F. Barker.