First in a series of first-hand accounts from the children of Sons of Freedom Doukhobors that were forcibly removed from their families and confined at the New Denver School. Approximately 200 children were interned at the school between 1953 and 1959.
Eleven-year-old Michael’s journey to the began when several policemen wielding billy clubs came through the door of his Krestova home on a cold winter day in 1955.
The officers declared that all of the children in the house had to come with them. Michael’s parents and grandparents begged the officers to leave their children alone, but to no avail.
When his grandmother reached out to touch a policeman’s hand in a pleading gesture, she was struck with a club. Michael’s father and grandfather were tossed out of the house into the snow, even though they were barefoot.
The police then turned their attention to Michael’s 13-year-old sister. She lied to the officers, telling them she was 15. Being tall for her age, they believed her and she escaped the horrors that Michael was soon to experience.
Michael was then taken to the school at Crescent Valley where children from the area, some as young as six years old, were being collected into a group.
Those children were then placed on a bus for the two-hour drive to New Denver. They weren’t given an opportunity to use the washroom.
“A lot of people filled their pants,” said Michael, who is now in his 80s. “I still remember the smell.”
That was just the beginning of many embarrassing and uncomfortable situations those children would endure.
Michael was one of about 200 Sons of Freedom Doukhobor children that were removed from their homes between 1953 and 1959. He spoke to Castlegar News after the Province of B.C. offered an apology in February for the forced confinement of the children. Michael isn’t his real name, but we have agreed to grant him anonymity due to the sensitivity of the events he shared with us.
When Michael and the other children arrived at the site of the former tuberculosis sanatorium they were forced to go up into the attic of the facility and bring down the old beds.
“That attic was rat and mice infested,” said Michael. “The mattresses were there from the old, sick people. They were stinky and stained and we had to put those mattresses on our beds.
“We had to sleep in them — small, young children sleeping in mattresses that were soiled and dirty and mouse infested.”
Michael kept that mattress for the entire three years he spent there. To this day, the memories of sleeping on that bed bring him to tears.
Michael says abuse at the school came in many forms – psychological, physical and sexual. Some came from the adults who were supposed to be caring for the children, and some came from the children themselves.
“When the lights go out, that’s when bad stuff starts among the kids,” he said.
Michael has a noticeable scar on the tip of his nose from one of those incidents.
One night after the lights went out, some of the older boys were smoking. One of those boys took his cigarette and burned Michael’s nose.
“I have to carry that the rest of my life. That mark – it’s a brand.”
On another occasion, Michael was just getting comfortable in his bed and drifting off to sleep. An older boy jumped on his bed, pinning him down so that he couldn’t move and performed a sex act right in front of Michael’s face.
Michael says he thinks he was a target for the bullies because he was quiet and not a fighter. Personal belongings were not secured at the school, so Michael says that the stronger children took what they wanted.
“They controlled the whole thing like a mafia. If you weren’t nice to them, you get beaten up. They controlled everyone else through fear.”
He recalls one particularly quiet girl whose arms were black and blue most of the time.
“She never was OK after she left,” said Michael.
Abuse also came from some of the adults and Michael was aware of other children who were sexually abused at the school.
Over the years, Michael would endure more incidents of bullying, physical punishments, hard work and psychological abuse.
“A lot of times I thought about taking my life,” said Michael. “It was unbearable.”
He occasionally found ways to sneak out of the school. But the fear of being caught and punished was always top of mind and the students knew they had to be back in time for role call.
One day, he and a friend decided they couldn’t take it any more. The pair sneaked out of the facility and tried to hitch hike home, but no one would pick them up.
They made it as far as Silverton (about five kilometres) before a police car came around a corner and they knew that was the end of their escape plan.
Upon returning to the school, Michael remembers being given extra work, including washing windows, as punishment.
Another tragedy of the New Denver internment was broken familial relationships. For Michael, the breach was not repairable.
“I had no relationship with my parents after I got out of there.”
He says the children were repeatedly told by staff that their parents did not want them.
“That stays with you,” said Michael. “They were programming kids to be against their parents.”
Life after New Denver
Life was not easy for Michael after he left New Denver.
From age 16 on, he had to support himself in spite of not having a proper education. That meant doing mostly low-paying labour and seasonal jobs for many years.
“You were programmed to take the back seat of the bus all of the time,” said Michael. “When an opportunity would come, I always felt I was not good enough.
“You are ashamed when you are around people to say that you were in New Denver and that was where you got your education.”
Michael moved to the Okanagan to find work in the agriculture industry while still a teenager. But he avoided telling people he was a Doukhobor because he feared the stigma.
“I didn’t speak proper English and had a strong accent,” said Michael. “It was a drawback.”
“I felt I was a third-class citizen, that I was not good enough.”
He couldn’t blend into the society of the Okanagan, so eventually he came back to the West Kootenay and his childhood homestead.
Michael remains heartbroken not just over the things he experienced, but also over the tragic outcomes of other families affected by the New Denver internments.
He knew a mother who committed suicide after her children were taken, a grandfather who had a heart attack as he watched his grandchildren taken away, several suicides of former school residents, and multiple stories of addiction among survivors that ruined lives and families, and led to premature deaths.
“They tried to drown out the memories,” said Michael.
He says the memories from his childhood are difficult to talk about.
“Between us survivors, we don’t really talk about it,” said Michael.
“Deep inside, we are burnt out. We are flattened. When you start talking one-to-one, you start crying.”
Elizabeth’s story
One day while living and working in the Okanagan, Michael ran into Elizabeth, another New Denver survivor. She too had gone to the area to find work.
The two would eventually marry, have several children and spend the rest of their lives together.
Elizabeth’s trauma started before she was taken from her Glade home. Like many Son’s of Freedom children, she spent months hiding from the police.
“There were a lot of times they would come looking and I would be hiding in different places,” says Elizabeth.
She remembers hiding in the hay and in a neighbour’s root cellar. She also hid in a crawl space under her family’s home that was so small she could barely fit into it. She remembers trembling as she watched through cracks.
“I could see their boots,” she recalls now.
Many survivors recount stories of policemen and other searchers looking for children in haystacks by poking into them with pitchforks.
Elizabeth escaped one such search because she and several other children were hiding in a wooden shelter buried in a haystack that a neighbour had made.
The pitchfork did not reach the huddled children.
“It was traumatic,” said Elizabeth. “Every time you are hiding, you are nervous and scared.”
Eventually, at the age of 10, she was captured and transported to New Denver.
Some of the hardships she recalls revolve around the chores the children were made to do.
A few years into the detentions, a new director was appointed at the New Denver Residential School. According to historical documents included in the BC Ombudsperson’s report Righting the Wrong, the director dismissed all of the housekeeping staff and decided that the interned children would be responsible for all of the cleaning going forward.
Many survivors recount stories of long chore lists and chores used as punishments.
On top of rotating daily chore lists, Elizabeth was assigned to peel mounds of potatoes every morning before breakfast. Potatoes were a principal staple of the children’s diet.
The loss of family connections and missing out on family milestones was especially hard for Elizabeth. She missed her grandmother’s funeral and her brother’s wedding.
“I always had a feeling that things were not right, the way things were,” said Elizabeth.
She also remembers “the fence.” Children had to visit with their parents outdoors through a chain link fence, no matter the weather. Those visits occurred every other week, for just one hour.
“It was just with the fingers you could touch, or kiss, through the fence. You couldn’t hug or anything, and that was hard.”
Elizabeth says there were some occasions that she had fun and good times with the other girls at the school.
“But in the back of your mind was always the thought that we were not at home and things were not right.”
Elizabeth stayed at the school for three years. At that time, all of the children at the school were released after an agreement was made between the parents and government officials.
By then, she was 13 years old and her childhood was gone.
“It was hard, I was really happy we were coming home. But three years passed – I was 10 and then I was 13.
“I was a teenager already, and I wasn’t sure how to go about being at home again. I lost my connections with my parents.”
Elizabeth says she has tried to train herself to leave the past in the past.
“So you don’t get upset every time you think about it or talk about. It is not good for us.”
But Michael says he hasn’t been able to put the past behind him.
“There is not one day that goes by that it doesn’t come and haunt you – the baggage that we have lived through.”
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