To his community, Peter Vasilyevich Verigan was known simply as “Petyushka.” To others outside the tight-knit Doukhobor family, he was “Peter Lordly.” His leadership of an exiled group of pacifists to a new land in Canada ended in a train explosion – the motive of which remains unexplained to this day.
The Doukhobor community was born in the 17th century in Russia, after rejecting the Orthodox Church for a simpler, more egalitarian form of worship based on personal communion with god. They developed a “Living Book” in which they passed their beliefs and teachings to new generations through oral tradition. For this, as well as their communal living, vegetarianism, and rejection of material wealth, alcohol and tobacco, they were branded heretics and persecuted for the next 200 years before finding temporary refuge in the mountains of southern Russia in the 1840s.
Fifty years later, their pacifist ideology collided with military conscription. Many Doukhobors refused service and burned weapons in a symbolic gesture. Verigan brought his followers’ plight to Leo Tolstoy, author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, who advocated for the group in the foreign press. Tolstoy’s support, along with that of groups like the Quakers, helped roughly 7,500 Doukhobors seek refuge in Canada in 1899. Fewer than 10 years later, some 6,000 of Verigan’s loyal followers relocated to the Kootenay Boundary area of British Columbia, between Castlegar and Grand Forks. There, they established the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, the largest communal living community in North America.
In Castlegar, B.C,, near the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers, the community featured a jam factory, sawmill and pipe factory, flour mill, along with residential villages, orchards and vegetable gardens fed by irrigation. A suspension bridge spanning the Kootenay River connected the Doukhobor community at Brilliant with farms lands in Ootischenia. It was rebuilt a few years ago.
Peter Vasilyevich Verigan. Image from Library and Archives of Canada.
Peter Vasilyevich Verigan oversaw all this until his sudden death in a CPR train explosion in 1924. Verigan had his challengers, including his son, Peter Petrovich Verigan, and a group called Freedomites, or Sons of Freedom, who rejected modernization and protested by burning farming machinery. However, most people held Verigan in high esteem, as indicated by the group of 6,000 that followed him from the prairies to the Kootenay commune.
The blast happened near Farron, B.C., at the top of the Monashee Mountains, and killed Verigan and eight others, including a B.C. Member of the Legislative Assembly and Verigan’s 20-year-old female companion. The investigation stretched on for seven years, with two coroners’ inquests, yet remains unsolved. Investigators, and subsequent researchers, provided plenty of suspects and theories.
The usual suspects included the governments of Canada and British Columbia, which wanted to assimilate the commune into mainstream culture; Doukhobor factions at odds with Verigan, including his son, who later returned from Russia to lead the community after his father’s death; and the Soviet Bolshevik government, which wanted the farming expertise of the Doukhobor community but was at odds with their pacifist beliefs.
One of the stranger theories is that of the Ku Klux Klan, which are alleged to have killed Verigan after he toured available farm land in Oregon as a possible new home for his followers.
It’s possible the explosion was an accident, due to a gas leak from in-cabin lighting or improperly stored explosives used in mining operations in the area. Another is that Verigan wasn’t even the real target. John McKie, MLA for Grand Forks-Greenwood, was one of 24 Conservatives elected out of 48 seats. The Liberal Party would need to choose a Speaker of the House, giving the Tories a slight edge. McKie’s death, however, meant the Liberal Party kept control of the legislature for a full four-year term.
For a comprehensive collection of newspaper reports, inquest transcripts, and interviews with witnesses and survivors, please visit CanadianMysteries.ca.
To honour their spiritual and community leader, Doukhobors built a memorial park high up the mountain overlooking his cherished community. Peter Vasilyevich Verigan is interred here with his wife, Evdokia Gregoryevna Verigina; his son and successor, Peter Petrovich Verigan, and his wife, Anna Fyodorovna Verigina; his grand-daughter Anna Petrovna Markova and her son John J. Verigan, who acted as a leader of the community from the 1960s until his death in 2008.
Verigan’s Tomb is a peaceful place, quiet, where the churning river waters and the sound of traffic don’t carry. You hear only the breeze rustling leaves and bees buzzing in the flowers of the extensive gardens. It’s a place for souls to rest, knowing the work of their day is done.
You can visit Verigan's Tomb and learn more about the Doukhobor community. From Highway 3, take the Robson exit and turn right onto Terrace Road. Be sure to visit the Suspension Bridge nearby, as well as the Brilliant Cultural Centre.
Inscription painted on rock above Verigan's tomb.