Reproduced from the Goldstream News Gazette, Sep 28 2007:

Langford novelist explores B.C.’s Doukhobor culture

By Rick Stiebel
News staff

Sep 28 2007


For most people, the Doukhobors are synonymous with burning barns or farm folk protesting in the nude, or both.

Langford author Bill Stenson’s latest book, however, takes a deeper look at a people and culture that remain for the most part shrouded in mystery.

When asked why he chose the topic, Stenson, who has no family connection to the Doukhobors, blames the voices in his head.

After he completed Translating Women, a collection of short stories published by Thistledown Press in 2004, Stenson promised himself he would spend a week figuring out what to do next.

“I woke up the next day and a voice in my head said ‘you need to do a Doukhobor novel,’” said Stenson, a retired teacher who’s been writing for 20 years. “The voice wouldn’t go away.”

Stenson poured 16 months into researching the novel, including making two trips to the Kootenays, where he spoke to not only Doukhabors, but people who had lived with them and people who had written about them.

Stenson soon found out that the Freedomites, a small Doukhobor sect, were responsible for much of the stereotypical perceptions surrounding the group of people who came to Canada to escape the persecution they endured in their Russian homeland at the turn of the century.

“The Freedomites comprised only five per cent of the Doukhobor population in B.C., but they got all the press,” Stenson said.

“Svoboda (the book’s title), is a Russian word for freedom or liberty,” said Stenson, who taught for 34 years in everything from one-room schoolhouses through to elementary, middle and high school — the last 16 at Claremont secondary school in Saanich. “Svoboda represents what they thought they were coming to North America for.”

The proceeds from Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection, published in 1889, went toward getting the Doukhobors out of Russia, Stenson noted.

Stenson’s fictional novel chronicles the struggles three generations of Doukhobors face trying to fit into Canadian society.

The Doukhobors lived communally, mostly settling in the Kootenays, where education and language issues posed significant barriers, Stenson explained.

As well, because of the persecution they had suffered in their homeland at the hands of the ruling class, Doukhobors were by nature “very suspicious and cautious of anything to do with the government,” he added.

Stenson’s book follows the life of Vasili Saprikin, a young Doukhobor living in the Kootenays from the age of five to 17.

His grandfather, Alexa Barakoff — one of the first wave of immigrants to Canada — plays a central role in exposing the Doukhobor culture to Vasili, taking him into the mountains to immerse the boy in a culture that will always be a part of their past.

“The kid eats up the stories and wants to connect with his history,” Stenson said.

Vasili, however, becomes one of many Doukhobor children rounded up and forced to attend a residential school in New Denver, where visits from family are restricted to every second Sunday.

“They could only speak through a wire fence ... no touching, no direct contact,” Stenson said.

The boy’s mother, Anuta — “ a strong-willed woman for her time” — faces the same struggles trying to adapt to a new country and culture, with the additional burden of the loss of her child.

Although Stenson was born in the Kootenay region in Nelson, he had virtually no exposure to the Doukhobor culture because he grew up in the Cowichan Valley after his family moved to Vancouver Island when he was five.

He was surprised to hear about the Vancouver Island Doukhobor Choir six weeks ago, and thrilled when they agreed to take part in the launch of his book Sept. 29 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Fairfield United Church at 1303 Fairfield Rd. in Victoria.

“They’re gems of human beings and very excited to be part of this,” said Stenson, who stressed the free event is more of a cultural happening than a book launch.

“They’re going to sing five songs and speak about their culture and experiences,” said Stenson, who will do a brief reading from the beginning of Svoboda.

“I want people to get a sense of what the Doukhobor people are about,” Stenson said. “I want to demystify the bad press in my opinion that they’ve received.”

He’s preparing some traditional Doukhobor cuisine for the occasion, including a heaping helping of borscht.

http://www.goldstreamgazette.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper...

The doukhobor traditional cousine mainly consists of Borsh and the spelling should be noted that if it has any letters after the "sh" added that it signifies made by another culture. IE if the letter "T" is added then it signifies that it is the Jewish reciepe as in "borsht" and not the Doukhobor receipe as in Borsh.
I note that a lot of resurants spell it with a t and in my opinion that is trying to Anglasise the work and not staying with tradition.

Hi Mickey,

I agree with you, there are many different spellings (and misspellings!) out there for our favourite ethnic soup! The proper spelling in the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet is "борщ". However, because there is no single, standard system for transliterating the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet into the English (Latin) alphabet, a number of different spellings have arisen. According to the US Library of Congress System (my favorite) the correct spelling would be "borshch". However, it is also common to see it spelt "borsch", "borsh", "borsht", etc. I have often seen the latter spelling used by Mennonites, Germans and Jews from Russia.

Note that in the case of the "Langford novelist..." entry posted above, although I noticed the misspelling of "borsht", it has been reproduced here exactly as it was originally printed in the Goldstream News Gazette.

Thanks for pointing this out - it is important that we recognize correct Russian spellings, and strive to ensure that these are consistently followed in a standardized manner.

Best Regards,

Jon

Hi Mickey, I just checked on some old labels I have (from 1955 I believe)from the Kootenay Valley Food Products Ltd. company that used to be in Glade, B.C. and the spelling on them is BORSCH. Guess they were trying to change then? Regards, Shirli

Hi Shirli:
Sorry, my mistake (in spelling that is) you are right it is borsch and not borsh. What I meant to say is that by adding the letter "T" on the end of it is angalsizing the word and aslo that the Jewish spelling is with a "T". Hopefully that this may enlighten people in the food outlet business to be more scrutinizing if they wish to portray ethnics in our heritage.
Regards and best wishes
Mickey

Article taken from the Vancouver Sun, Saturday, January 5, 2008:

Doukhobor novel does more than tell a good story

Robert J. Wiersema, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, January 05, 2008
SVOBODA

By Bill Stenson

Thistledown Press, 292 pages ($18.95)

When someone mentions the Doukhobors, many British Columbians think first of nude protests and the grisly results of low-tech but effective fire-bombings by the Sons of Freedom. That's an unfair stereotype of the devout Russian immigrants who came to Canada in the early years of the 20th century with the financial support of Leo Tolstoy. As Bill Stenson writes in Svoboda, his impressive debut novel, "A Doukhobor was a Doukhobor was a Doukhobor."

Svoboda is both an examination of Canadian Doukhobors in the waning days of their conflict with the federal government in the 1950s and an account of the effect that cultural shift had on three generations of a Doukhobor family: There's Vasili Saprikin, a a boy who comes of age in that tumultuous time; his mother, Anuta, and his deda (grandfather) Alexay, who emigrated to Canada.

Stenson (a writing teacher who lives in Victoria and is not a Doukhobor) has done a significant amount of research, and it shows on the page. Svoboda vividly depicts Doukhobor culture -- its religious beliefs, rituals, lifestyle and history.

Occasionally, the rendering of that history is somewhat heavy-handed, with lengthy speeches detailing the movement of the Doukhobors, the nature of their leadership and the roots of their conflict with the Canadian government over taxation, education and military service. Normally, such info-dumps would be problematic, but here they are necessary to build the social backdrop against which the events of the novel play out.

These details are illuminated in the narrative by the human toll they take. Svoboda is a Russian word for freedom or liberty, and all three focal characters deal with freedom, its promises and its costs.

From Vasili, who spends much of his childhood in a residential school, being forced to learn English before being released into a world fundamentally changed; to Anuta, the single mother forced to turn away from her culture to provide a better life for her family; to Alexay, whose dreams of freedom are bound to his Doukhobor roots, liberty takes different forms and brings with it different issues.

It is testimony to the strength of Stenson's writing that the reader only becomes aware in retrospect that the story of the gradual assimilation of Doukhobor culture into Canadian culture isn't restricted to that group; it's the story of every immigrant culture struggling to keep a sense of itself while functioning within a dominant alien culture. The prejudices faced by the Doukhobors -- prejudices which Svoboda rightly depicts as feeble and small-minded -- have not disappeared. They have merely shifted to the new immigrants who are trying to find a place in the Canadian cultural mosaic.

Stenson's novel is an important work, a moving piece of fiction that not only casts light on a largely forgotten aspect of our history but also brings into focus our actions and attitudes today.

Robert J. Wiersema is a Victoria bookseller and the author of the novel Before I Wake.

Link to original article: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c024d...