West Kootenay Advertiser
Thursday, April 15, 2021 A3
History
Doukhobor families came and went from Skalistoye by Jonathan Kalmakoff and Greg Nesteroff
Third in a series on the history of Grohman Narrows Park Typically, one or two Doukhobor families were stationed at a time at Skalistoye, a farm west of Nelson purchased on behalf of the community in 1911. Often they would stay three or four years before being rotated back to larger Doukhobor settlements and another family was brought in to take their place. When the census was taken in June 1911, no Doukhobor families were yet permanently living on the ranch. By the time of the 1921 census (which referred to the property as “Quory” after its railway siding) the Famenoff (or Fominoff) family of 13, originally from Ootischenia, was living there. John and his wife Ahaphia, both 55, were listed along with their four sons and their families, namely Larion, 34, and wife Oprosia, 33, with sons Brilliant, 12, and Fred, 3; Wasil, 29, and wife Fedosia, 34, with daughters Mary, 10, and Polly 3; John, 25, and his son John, 5; and Savely, 16. Savely married Florence (Fenya) Chigmaroff in Krestova in 1923. Their son, Cecil Fominoff of Winlaw, says the Chigmaroffs briefly joined the Faminoffs at Skalistoye
Polly, Lucy, George and Peter Rozinkin with unknown man in front, taken at Skalistoye in 1924. Photo courtesy Sharon Hoodicoff before the families moved to Porcupine, near Salmo, then to Claybrick, near Winlaw, where Cecil was born. In 1924, the family of George J., 32, and Polly, 30, Rozinkin, along with their son Peter, 7, and daughter Lucy, 4, were re-stationed from Brilliant to Skalistoye. They remained on the ranch for five years, until 1929. In August of the latter year, the couple were swept up in a peace protest of several hundred former Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB) members from Thrums who marched past Skalistoye. George and Polly joined them, leaving their children at the ranch house while they trekked to Nelson.
Their granddaughter Sharon Hoodicoff of Kamloops recalls that her mother Lucy and brother Peter had no idea if their parents would return and, out of a sense of survival, began planting potatoes, although it was the wrong season. Their aunt soon came and took them to their parents. Sadly, the family never returned to the ranch, being subsequently confined with 530 other protestors at Porto Rico, an abandoned CCUB lumber camp, until 1930. By late 1929, another family was place at Skalistoye, that of Fred A., 23, and Polly W., 20, Konkin and their son Phillip, 1, formerly of Brilliant. The family tended the ranch for two years before leaving the
CCUB and resettling in Thrums as Independent Doukhobors in 1931. Life at Skalistoye was communal and revolved around the agricultural seasons. In spring, the men pruned the orchard fruit trees, while on the cultivated land, the women planted annual vegetables and small fruit where perennial berries were not already established. Throughout the summer, the men laboured to clear and break additional land on the property. By late summer, the entire family picked the fruit and berries grown at the ranch. These were shipped from the siding, initially to Nelson and after 1915 to Brilliant for processing in the CCUB jam factories.
A portion of the vegetables grown were retained by the ranch families for their own use, with the bulk redistributed among other Doukhobor settlements as needed or else sold at the Doukhobor market in Nelson. Over late fall and winter, the men worked at the CCUB sawmills or else sought employment from local ranchers. The farm also served as an important stopping place for Doukhobor wagon teamsters travelling from outlying settlements. Steve Hoodicoff of Castlegar says that his grandmother Mary S. Hoodicoff often mentioned how her parents Stepan and Marfa Samorodin of Koch Siding, near Slocan Park, and other Doukhobors would regularly stop at Skalistoye to rest, water and feed their horse teams before heading
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out to Nelson. By 1931, after 20 years of communal ownership and operation, the Doukhobors had more than doubled the amount of cleared land, with 30 acres in orchard at Skalistoye and another 30 acres under cultivation, with the remaining 65 acres of rocky outcropping used for pasture. For all its rocks, the ranch generated significant produce and income for the CCUB during this period from the produce grown there, with the orchard yielding approximately 240 to 450 tons of fruit per year, and the cultivated land yielding about 2,000 cases of berries and 180 tons of potatoes and other vegetables per year. As for the property itself, the Doukhobors do not appear to have made any substantial improvements or addi-
tions to the buildings over this period, their value depreciating from $1,500 in 1911 to $800 in 1931. An inventory conducted in the latter year listed “Two dwelling houses, one barn and other small buildings,” valued at $800. And despite significant improvements made to the land in terms of clearing, the property value increased only modestly after 20 years from $10,000 in 1911 to $15,450 in 1931. However, by this time, Skalistoye no longer held the strategic and locational value to the CCUB it once had, with the organization owning over 3,500 acres of bearing orchard and another 10,000 acres of small fruit and vegetables at larger, more centralized tracts elsewhere in the Kootenay and Boundary. Accordingly, then-president Peter
P. (Chistyakov) Verigin arranged to sell the isolated and remote ranch to Doukhobor John George Evin in March 1931. Evin was a founding member of the board of directors of the CCUB following its federal incorporation in April 1917. By 1921, he relocated from Brilliant to the CCUB colony at Cowley, Alta. where he remained until at least 1926. However, by 1930, he left the CCUB to live and farm as an Independent Doukhobor at Blaine Lake, Sask. Evin subsequently returned to the Kootenay with his family of five. However, if they lived at Skalistoye, it was exceedingly brief, as from 1933 on they were living at Slocan Park although they continued to own the property. Next: West Kootenay Power eyes Skalistoye
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