‘To me, it was a prison’: Children held in Doukhobor camp in 1950s set to receive apology from B.C. government

Of note:

The B.C. government has offered a $10-million compensation package to people taken from their homes as children 70 years ago due to their parents’ religious beliefs.

The offer was made along with an apology from Attorney General Niki Sharma at a private event in Castlegar today, where she met with members and relatives of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors who were forcibly removed from their parents in the 1950s.

Many were placed in a former tuberculosis sanatorium in New Denver, B.C., about 150 kilometres east of Kelowna, between 1953 and 1959, where they have testified they received physical and psychological abuse

The Sons of Freedom were a small group within the Doukhobor community, an exiled Russian Christian group that was once known for naked protests and periodically burning down their own homes as a rejection of materialism.

The provincial government will be making a formal apology later this year for its treatment of children from the Doukhobor community in the Kootenays. But the apology is not seen as an entirely positive development.

There may be up to 100 survivors from the Sons of Freedom group, who are now in their 70s and 80s.

Sharma acknowledged the children were “mistreated both physically and psychologically” and that the government’s actions caused anxiety for the broader Doukhobor community.

Lorraine Walton, the daughter of two survivors of the Doukhobor internment and an advocate for the Lost Voices of New Denver group, said her parents’ souls are finally at peace following the apology.

She acknowledged, however, that the compensation being offered by the government was coming far too late for her parents and uncle, who were interned at New Denver for multiple years.

Source: ‘To me, it was a prison’: Children held in Doukhobor camp in 1950s set to receive apology from B.C. government