After reaching an accord with the Russian authorities for the Doukhobors to emigrate to Canada, writer Lev (Leo) Tolstoy asked his eldest son Sergej to accompany one of the first boatloads.

 

On 4 January 1899 Sergej L. Tolstoy sailed from the Black Sea port of Batoum aboard the S. S. Lake Superior bound for Halifax, escorting some 2,300 Doukhobors to their promised new land.  Here they attempted to fulfil their hopes for a freer life unencumbered by the surveillance and religious persecution of the past.

It was a journey of hardship (more than 20 people died during the move) and endurance (weeks of waiting in quarantine off the Nova Scotia coast).
But it was also one of excitement -- as the Doukhobors finally boarded the convoy of six special trains to the west, and began the adventure of opening up the Canadian prairie frontierland at the turn of the century.

All this is vividly described by Sergej Tolstoy -- along with his own experience of self-discovery in the process -- in his Diary and letters home.  These are published here in their original Russian and English translation (both for the first time), together with letters by friends and officials on either side of the Atlantic.

The police chiefÕs inspection began in the morning.  In preparation for this all the Doukhobors were brought onto the dock, and then the police chief, customs officials and other authorities took up positions by the gangplank and let the people back on board, taking their transit permits and checking them against the passports forwarded to the Batoum administration office by the local governors.  Then the police chief threw both the permits and the passports into a bag -- a plain canvas bag.
   The inefficiency of these measures later came to light.  Several Doukhobors were going by other names; one young man who was subject to conscription came dressed as a female member of another family.  The girl whose place he had taken had recently died, and the authorities had not been informed.
   Since the DoukhoborsÕ homes were far removed from the authorities, and the authorities generally did not enter into their lives, but only took bribes from them, confusion had become normal in the inspection process, which took up a great deal of time -- almost the whole day.  Some of the passports had simply not been forwarded by the local authorities, and in others the notations differed from those in the transit permits.  The police chief must be given credit, though: he did only what was absolutely necessary and refrained from authoritative outcries and gratuitous formalities.
 
 

Excerpt from the English translation (Part I: Ch. 6, 18 February 1899):

A crowd was standing on the dock.  Before disembarking, the starichki [Doukhobor elders] decided they would say a few words of greeting to the Canadians, represented by the immigration official who met us.  On the dock the crowd of Canadians formed one semi-circle, a crowd of Doukhobors another, and in the middle the immigration official -- a Mr [T.] Peddler -- and I exchanged words of greeting.   I translated the DoukhoborsÕ words as best I could, saying that they wanted to give thanks to God for a safe arrival, and to thank the Canadian government for receiving them and giving them land.  Mr Peddler in turn welcomed the Doukhobors to Canada and said that in this country they would be free of any persecution for their faith.
   Then the disembarkation began.  On the other side of the dock is the railway platform from which five trains -- prepared especially for the occasion -- will take the Doukhobors directly to the Far West.  The trains will depart at two-hour intervals.  A separate sixth train will take the baggage.  All this has been arranged most practically and efficiently.  The trains arrived and departed on schedule, and people disembarked from the ship and directly boarded the trains.  A fair-sized crowd of Canadians stood by.  Ladies gave out sweets to the children; many bought handcrafted wooden spoons from the Doukhobors, and for some reason had me autograph them; some came up just to shake hands ac-cording to [North] American custom, to say that they had read Tolstoy or had heard of him, and that they were very sympathetic to the arrival of the Doukhobors etc.  And I was kept running from the ship to the dock and from the dock to the railway platform to supervise the boarding, the unloading and loading.
 
 

Excerpt from the English translation (Part I: Chapter 8, 17 March 1899):

I did not expect so many houses to be already built in the colony.  About twenty homes have now been built in the big forest, on the beautiful banks of the Swan River, behind a little hill protecting it from north winds; several others are under construction.  The walls of these houses have been hastily put up using thick fir cuttings, the roofs are simply of boards, without ceilings or gratings; only underneath are they covered with cardboard.  Inside two decks of bunks have been constructed on both sides.  In the centre of each hut stands an iron stove. [...]
   McVeigh [a government agent] and the Canadian workers are quartered in plain canvas tents.  I would not have thought it possible to live in tents at -20¡ or below; it turns out, however, that as there is little or no wind here, it is not at all cold in the tents, and new settlers setting out to build themselves houses on their homestead sites usually take tents with them to live in temporarily.  Snow is piled up all around below the tent and then packed down tight, and in the centre an iron stove constantly burns, with an iron chimney taking the smoke up through the roof.  Inside the tents it gets cold only in the morning when the stove cools off.
 
 
 

. Note: The Russian words on this page appear in a photo image in place of electronic text. .