Trouble in Kootenay

Along the narrow back roads of western British Columbia's Kootenay country marched sullen bands. Sometimes they halted, clustered together, chanted Russian hymns. They were Doukhobors of the Sons of Freedom sect. Wherever they went, residents braced themselves for trouble. The Sons of Freedom were on a house-burning rampage.

Bare Protest. The fanatical Sons of Freedom broke away in the early 1900s from Canada's Doukhobor colony, claiming that they alone were faithful to the old Doukhobor teachings.* They became best known for their peculiar means of public protest: stripping to the buff in fair weather and foul. Religious pacifists, they refused during the war to serve even in conscientious objectors' camps. They recently concluded that a third world war was imminent, that to avoid it they must somehow placate divine anger. They also brooded enviously about the prosperity of orthodox Doukhobors. Soon, armed with gasoline tins, they were on the march.

One band of 75 Sons, led by six naked men and a naked woman, crowded into the home of John Lebidoff, an orthodox Doukhobor, and set it afire. Sorrowfully, he submitted, because, like all Doukhobors, he has forsworn violence even in defense of his rights. At Nelson, another orthodox Dcukhobor, Peter Reiben. was warned that his house was to be burned. While he sat up at night to guard it, his haystacks and barns were set ablaze. An orthodox Doukhobor community house at Shoreacres was fired at midday by nearly 100 fanatics, who stripped and paraded.

The Sons of Freedom burned their own homes, too. When Anista Arishnikoff's home was set afire, she knelt in front of it, full of joy. "Look," she cried, "I protest the coming of World War III." Freedomite Helen Domoskoff said proudly: "I burned my house and my lovely radio." Local and provincial police, long troubled by Doukhobor outbreaks but unwilling to be called "persecutors," held back.

Full-Dress Appeal. After more than 30 buildings had been destroyed, orthodox Doukhobors began to wonder about the wisdom of continued submission. Said Peter Postnikoff: "I refuse to hit any man. But maybe I'll forget my teachings." Last week, orthodox Doukhobors finally asked for action. Extra constables hustled to the fertile Kootenay Valley. The bag by week's end: 14 Sons of Freedom arrested, seven sent to jail for terms ranging from six months to a year.

*Dissenters who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-18th Century, held that because God dictated every man's actions, civil and religious authorities were needless. After they arrived in Canada in 1899, only the most radical among them refused to submit to Canadian civil laws. Sons of Freedom now number about 1,000 among British Columbia's 15,000 Doukhobors.

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