Internees don’t get apology

VICTORIA, B.C. – The British Columbia government has issued a statement of regret but not a long-sought apology for taking Doukhobor children from their parents and interning them in the 1950s.

Lack of an apology by the provincial government upset 11 former internees who met with Attorney General Geoff Plant behind closed doors following his statement Monday in the Legislature.

Plant said there were legal and political reasons, as well as liability issues, for withholding an apology from the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, part of the Doukhobor sect that fled to western Canada in the late 1800s to escape from religious persecution in czarist Russia.

“It’s not as simple as connecting an apology to litigation,” Plant said after the meeting.

“I hope that we’re not motivated only by the threat of lawsuits,” he said. “I don’t like the fact that an apology can be read as an admission of liability.”

Between 1953 and 1959, about 200 children whose Sons of Freedom parents opposed sending them to public school were taken by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to a former tuberculosis sanatorium in New Denver, about 37 miles north of Nelson in the southern British Columbia.

Some stayed in the camps as long as six years, limited to family visits of one hour every two weeks. A chain link fence, built by the children, separated the families from their children. Some said they were sexually assaulted while being interned.

Plant should not have been swayed by concern about the possibility of lawsuits, said Walter Swetlishoff, who spent six months in one of the camps at age 11 and is chief spokesman for the New Denver Survivor Collective.

“His obligation is to apologize,” Swetlishoff said.

In 1999, after an extensive investigation, provincial Ombudsman Dulcie McCallum issued a report saying the former internees were entitled to an explanation, an apology and compensation.

Before Plant’s speech to the Legislature, which the Doukhobors attended, Swetlishoff said the group would need an unconditional government apology for full healing to begin.

“We can’t fully understand or explain the motives of a government 50 years ago,” the attorney general said. “Many of us were unaware or had forgotten about the conflicting values and the political turmoil that involved the government and these communities over half a century ago.”

Addressing the Doukhobors, Plant said, “You as innocent children were taken from your homes, your families and your communities …

“On behalf of the government of British Columbia, I extend my sincere, complete and deep regret for the pain and suffering you experienced during the prolonged separation from your families.”

The government will continue to offer counseling to the former internees, and their children and relatives also are eligible for government counseling, he said.

“We hope that this acknowledgment will enable you to work with us toward continued reconciliation and healing,” Plant said.

Doukhobors settled in southeastern British Columbia’s Kootenay region and in the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they maintained a communal, agricultural lifestyle, pacifism and often a resistance to government authority.

The Sons of Freedom, especially, bucked authority and became known for arson, bombings and public displays of nudity.

Doukhobors – especially the Sons of Freedom – posed problems for authorities but didn’t deserve to have their children interned, said John McLaren, a University of Victoria law school professor who is writing a book on the Doukhobor experience in Canada.

The internment was “an exercise in social engineering by the province at the time,” McLaren said.

“It’s a shameful chapter,” he said. “This has been unfinished business for a long time.”