Globe and Mial Obituary, Wedsday November 26, 2008 could be found at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081126.OB...
JOHN J. VERIGIN, 87: COMMUNITY LEADER
He survived fire, dynamite and depredation to achieve peace among the Doukhobors
Thrust into the leadership at 17, he overcame alcohol and persecution to forge a reconciliation. As a result, he was awarded the Order of Canada and - much later - the Order of British Columbia
LARRY HANNANT
Special to The Globe and Mail
November 26, 2008
VICTORIA -- For 60 years,John J. Verigin was the leader of the main Doukhobor community in British Columbia, where he walked a thorny path between hostile governments and a deeply divided sect with a history of settling disputes by fire, dynamite and possibly even assassination.
Mr. Verigin's homes were torched three times by supporters of one Doukhobor subgroup, the Freedomites, but ironically he was sent to trial for conspiring with Freedomites to burn his own group's property. His acquittal began a remarkable process of reconciliation that saw Doukhobors make real strides towards amity both among themselves and with non-Doukhobors.
The Doukhobors came into being in the 18th century in opposition to the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. They saw no need for priests and had no Bible. They believed that every person contained the spark of God, so killing a human was equivalent to killing God. As pacifists, they refused to swear allegiance to the czar and were exiled, first internally and then to Canada, in 1899.
Despite their rejection of religious authority, Doukhobors have been staunchly attached to strong leaders. John J. Verigin's great-grandfather, Peter V. Verigin, who guided the Doukhobors' move from Russia to Canada, was a man with a magnetic personality who died in an unexplained explosion aboard a train bound for Grand Forks, B.C. Centred under his seat, the blast on Oct. 28, 1924, blew off the roof and sides of the carriage and killed or maimed 19 of its 21 passengers, including the newly elected MLA for Grand Forks.
Peter V. Verigin was succeeded by his estranged son, Peter Petrovich ("son of Peter") Verigin. Less revered but equally ruthless, he used curses and his fists to discipline his followers.
It was into this climate of conflict and tension that John J. Verigin arrived. Born in what was then the Soviet Union, he landed in Canada in 1928 and was just 17 when his grandfather, Peter Petrovich Verigin, died and thrust him to the fore of the 8,000-strong Canadian Doukhobor community. It was 1938, and his father, Peter III, could not leave Russia.
At the time, more than a few Doukhobors had doubts when the leadership fell to the inexperienced youth. Even so, young John J. was made secretary of the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC).
Aside from questions about his ability to lead, he faced other challenges in 1939. Foremost was the seizure, for the second time, of the Doukhobor commune's lands.
In 1907, the commune lost 100,000 hectares of Saskatchewan land when the federal government reneged on an agreement over homestead conditions. Peter V. Verigin shifted most of his supporters to the forested valleys of the B.C. interior. The second Doukhobor commune he established totalled 7,600 hectares of land scattered over three provinces, including rich orchards, a celebrated jam factory, brick yards, timber mills and scores of communal farming villages. But by 1938, the commune had been driven into bankruptcy and most B.C. Doukhobors were squatting on farms owned by the provincial government.
Another threat was a dissident Doukhobor group called the Sons of Freedom. Strongly opposed to any accommodation with government, Freedomites refused to send their children to schools because they believed militarism and materialism were taught there. They also rejected individual property ownership, insisting that land should not be bought and sold.
Although they were pacifists like their brethren, the Freedomites preferred weapon was fire. Anthropologist Mark Mealing studied the Doukhobors closely. Fire, he observed, has been "a powerful spiritual tool" in the hands of several Doukhobor leaders. They told followers: "You should burn this down; this will make things better for the Doukhobors. If you don't do it, you are not a good Doukhobor."
By the early 1950s, conflicts between Mr. Verigin's USCC members and the Freedomites had become intense. No issue was more contentious than the question of land ownership. W. A. C. Bennett's Social Credit government wanted to sell the Doukhobors their former communal farmland - but only in individual parcels. Many Doukhobors were ready to buy but feared the wrath of the Freedomites, who by this point had added dynamite to their arsenal. For instance, on the day of Mr. Verigin's marriage in 1953, nine Doukhobor homes were torched.
Nevertheless, Mr. Verigin was prepared to snub the Freedomites and the communal landholding ways of his grandfather and great-grandfather. In 1961, a day after becoming honorary chairman of the USCC, he placed a down payment on three lots of the former communal land. In doing so, he took an important step toward reconciling mainstream Doukhobors with a government that had regarded them as an unmitigated nuisance for 50 years, denying them the right to vote and refusing to recognize their marriages.
The Freedomites, meanwhile, continued their decades-long campaign of terror to warn fellow Doukhobors away from materialism. And they weren't just targeting Doukhobors - railroad bridges and tracks, hydroelectric power lines and schools all fell to fire and explosion. The phrase "Freedomite depredations" became commonplace in newspaper headlines. The B.C. government and non-Doukhobors grew increasingly furious at the apparent inability of police to halt the violence. Residents of Castlegar, B.C., marched through the nearby Doukhobor village of Brilliant threatening vigilante action if the destruction continued.
Beset by challenges from within his own fractious community, Mr. Verigin also had to contend with outside critics, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP "Special D" squad, formed in 1952 to combat the Freedomites, had little sympathy for him. Some of the police derided him as "two-bottle-a-day Johnny," mocking an addiction to alcohol that Mr. Verigin himself would later acknowledge and overcome. In the early 1960s, the D Squad even conducted an investigation into the source of his wealth. Their suspicions were shared by journalist Simma Holt, who scrutinized the Doukhobors and, in 1964, laid out a complicated and grimy story in Terror in the Name of God: The Story of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors. USCC members and Freedomites suddenly found they could agree on at least one thing - scorn for Ms. Holt.
By the early 1970s, the Freedomite fires - indeed, the movement itself - seemed to have been extinguished. The hope for peace and the recognition of Mr. Verigin's willingness to tackle the Freedomites was seized upon by Governor-General Jules Léger, who awarded him the Order of Canada in 1976. The award was presented in acknowledgment for having "devoted his life to the welfare of his fellow Doukhobors and to encouraging their greater participation in community life."
But in 1979, Mr. Verigin's life took a bizarre twist. After an investigation into the destruction by fire of the USCC's Grand Forks prayer hall and the town's post office, crown prosecutors and police issued a startling indictment. The mastermind behind the violence, according to them, was none other than Mr. Verigin himself. RCMP officers raided his home and the USCC office, carting off boxes of files. Mr. Verigin was ordered to stand trial for conspiring to commit arson.
Historian George Woodcock, co-author of The Doukhobors, who admired members of the sect after living among them, reported that "in a day or so of irresponsible government action, reconciliation has been largely destroyed."
The trial had a "circus atmosphere," according to Phillip Rankin, who was Mr. Verigin's assistant defence counsel. In a 2001 interview for the documentary film The Spirit Wrestlers, Mr. Rankin recalled witnesses being asked, "Didn't Mr. Verigin tell you not to burn things? 'Yes, but you know when he told us to not to burn things, his tie was twisted and so we knew that he meant burn.' " Freedomites who admitted to setting the fires testified that Mr. Verigin warned them to burn or face a seven-generation curse.
In the end, Mr. Verigin was acquitted. Remarkably, his trial had the opposite effect to what Mr. Woodcock expected. Instead of a new round of acrimony, it triggered the creation of a Canadian precursor to the truth-and-reconciliation process in South Africa. The Expanded Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations, which met from 1982 to 1987, gave Doukhobor factions a venue for airing decades-old grievances. After an exhausting five years, the participants signed a landmark accord rejecting violence as a means of protest. No less significantly, representatives of rival Doukhobor factions had come to a new mutual respect, even friendliness.
Mr. Verigin also sought and achieved reconciliation of another sort - with the Doukhobors' motherland, Russia. After decades of estrangement, contact with Moscow officials blossomed into regular Russia-Canada cultural exchanges and in 1989, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev awarded Mr. Verigin the Order of the Peoples' Friendship.
In 1996, he was made a member of the Order of British Columbia for "promoting peace and mutual understanding between peoples of different ethnic backgrounds."
JOHN VERIGIN
John J. Verigin was born Ivan Ivanovitch Voykin in the Doukhobor village of Orlovka in what is now Georgia on Dec. 6, 1921. He died Oct. 26, 2008, after a fall at his home in Grand Forks, B.C. He was 87. He is survived by wife, Laura, and by sons John and Barry and daughter Nina.