← Back to the front page

Suffer the Children: The Tragic Fate of Vulnerable Kids in Canadian Governmental Care

Khalid Elhassan December 14, 2024 13 min

Canada - Children in an Indian Residential School — Children in an Indian Residential School. Encyclopedia Britannica

8. The Splintering of the Spirit Warriors

Canada - A 1902 publication introducing Canadians to the recently-arrived Doukhobors — A 1902 publication introducing Canadians to the recently-arrived Doukhobors. Prints and Ephemera

Inability – or unwillingness – to swear allegiance to the Crown disqualified the Doukhobors from receiving land grants. They saw that as a breach of promises made by the authorities. Embittered, they trekked to British Columbia, where they established drab little communal villages. The Spirit Warriors’ leader, a charismatic figure named Peter Verigin, maintained a semblance of control over his nudist followers by flogging them with brambles. Then some Doukhobors blew him up with dynamite in 1924. With their leader’s demise, the Spirit Warriors fractured into rival factions, and things swiftly spun into a downward spiral of craziness. After Verigin’s assassination, a radical splinter broke off from the Doukhobors. This radical splinter of what was already a radical splinter of the Russian Orthodox Church rejected the modern world. More accurately, they rejected what little there was of the modern world in the Canadian sticks, where they dwelt.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.