c. 1999 Religion News Service

NEW DENVER, British Columbia _ Kathleen Makortoff dabs her eye as she walks up to a rusting section of chain-link fence. Four decades ago, Makortoff struggled to kiss her shell-shocked parents through this same high fence.

Her mom and dad were Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, members of the most radical wing of the pacifist, anti-government Doukhobor religious sect, which settled in these rugged mountains around the turn of the century after escaping persecution in Russia.

Under the staring eyes of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Sons of Freedom parents were allowed to visit Makortoff and more than 100 other children _ who were held as year-round captives on these grounds between 1953 and 1960 _ for only one hour every second Sunday, and only through the fence.

The children’s only crime was that they were not going to school, although some of their parents had been thrown in jail for arson and nude protests, which was their disruptive way of showing God was more important than material possessions.

Makortoff often sheds a tear not only for herself, but for the other children of the small sect of Doukhobors detained at New Denver, many of whom have succumbed to suicide, alcohol, imprisonment, dysfunction or bitterness. The sect’s story was sympathetically retold in a British Columbia government ombudsman’s report released in April.

Ombudsman Dulcie McCallum argued the government should give an explanation, an apology and compensation to those children of the roughly 2,000 Sons of Freedom Doukhobors who suffered strappings, overcrowding and shoddy housing at the prison-like enclave called New Denver Elementary School Dormitory.

The ombudsman’s damning report has come out in the same year that British Columbia’s 22,000 Doukhobors, who traditionally shun military service, meat, religious hierarchy and governments, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of their ancestors’ arrival in Canada.

Championed by novelist Leo Tolstoy, they came as peasants to escape persecution from Russian czars and a Russian Orthodox church they considered idolatrous. But their unusual ways soon ran them into trouble with British Columbia politicians.

Most Sons of Freedom children who were forced to live year-round in the New Denver dormitory never want to see the place where they were kept as terrified, uncomprehending children.

But Makortoff is different.

In the same wooden buildings where she and other children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors were held against their will, she nurtures patients as a registered practical nurse. The property has been turned into a hospital, a place of healing not only for patients, but also for Makortoff.

Still, the ethical debate still burns today. Exactly why were the Sons of Freedom Doukhobor children rounded up?

Was it because, following Sons of Freedom philosophy against a government education, they weren’t going to school? And, even if some parents were known to burn down buildings _ usually their own, but sometimes those of other Doukhobors _ or engage in nude protests to show human should never become attached to possessions, was their children’s incarceration justified, or effective?”The important thing is an acknowledgment it was wrong,”says Makortoff.”If the government offers money, I wouldn’t refuse it. But it’s not something I’m holding my breath for.” If financial compensation comes, she said, she hopes it would mostly go to post-trauma counseling like the kind she’s learned about through her work at New Denver’s hospital.”People ask me how can I work here now?”she said.”And I say, `It’s like my home.’ There’s something very peaceful about the place. It feels like where I belong. At least it’s worked for me.” Then, as Makortoff does often, she laughs.

It reflects the outgoing, tough, rebellious quality she thinks got her through two years of hiding,”like a wild animal,”before she was caught in the forest by the RCMP at age eight, as well as three years of what all the Russian-speaking kids thought was a jail sentence for a crime they couldn’t fathom.

But healing has not come for many of the Sons of Freedom children who were hunted down in dawn RCMP raids 40 years ago at Krestova and other nearby Doukhobor settlements in the towering Selkirk Mountains, foothills of the Rockies.

Rooted out from under beds or from hiding places in the forest, the children were driven 50 miles up the Slocan Valley to the exact spot where the Canadian government had interned thousands of Japanese-Canadians after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Yet, while the Canadian government in 1988 compensated more than 15,000 Japanese-Canadian internees, and New Denver has honored their memory with a roadside plaque, a Japanese garden and an Internment Memorial Center, there is no similar tribute to the Doukhobors kids of long ago.

The ombudsman’s 51-page report includes archival government documents strongly suggesting the real reason for sending the children to New Denver was to assimilate them. But the most controversial item to some commentators is that it purposely avoids putting the children’s seizure in the context of their parents'”terrorism.” But in Fred Conkin’s cabin _ a typically bare-bones wooden home at the Reformed Sons of Freedom commune in the hills near Krestova called New Settlement _ the talk is heated.

Conkin, 55, a former student of New Denver, points to a recent letter to the editor arguing they don’t deserve compensation because they were confined to New Denver”for their own protection.” Says Conkin: Forget what the parents might have done.”You have to look at it through the eyes of a seven-year-old. Ask anyone now how they’d like to be taken away at six in the morning. “You don’t speak English. You don’t know why it’s happening. Kids are screaming. You’re crying. My mother tried to hug me for the last time, but the RCMP officer hit her with a club.” Or, as Joe Sherstobitoff puts his years in New Denver:”There was nobody to cry to. Nobody. Nobody.” Selkirk College Doukhobor history specialist Mark Mealing said, even for the 1950s, the seizing of the Doukhobor kids was abusive.”New Denver was pretty hard to distinguish from a concentration camp. By the time this was done to the Doukhobors, people already realized what was done to 22,000 Japanese in Canada was grotesquely wrong.” The crackdown on the truant Doukhobor children, Mealing said, was carried out by then Attorney General Robert Bonner”who was making speeches about `breaking the back of the Doukhobor problem,’ using that kind of language.” If the government was worried about truant children or criminal parents, Mealing says, many other options existed.

Whatever the case, it’s clear the New Denver incarceration just made things worse, Mealing said.”I’m impressed by the people like Kathy Makortoff who have found healing,”he said,”but it never justifies what happened.” DEA END TODD