Jay Silverheels

Jay Silverheels (May 26, 1912 – March 5, 1980) was a Canadian Mohawk First Nations actor. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the faithful American Indian companion of the character, The Lone Ranger in a long-running American television series.

Early life

Silverheels was born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, the son of a Canadian Mohawk tribal chief and military officer, A.G.E. Smith. Silverheels excelled in athletics and lacrosse as a boy before leaving home to travel about North America, having competed in boxing and wrestling tournaments. In the 1930s, he played indoor lacrosse under the name of Harry Smith with the “Iroquois” of Rochester, New York in the North American Amateur Lacrosse Association. He lived for a time in Buffalo, New York. In 1938, Silverheels placed second in the middleweight section of the Golden Gloves tournament.

Film career

Silverheels began working in motion pictures as an extra and stunt man in 1937. During the early years of his screen career, he was billed variously as Harold Smith or Harry Smith, and appeared in low-budget features, westerns, and serials. He adopted his screen name from the nickname he had had as a speedy lacrosse player. From the late 1940s he played in more prestigious pictures, including Captain from Castile starring Tyrone Power, I Am an American (1944), Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart (1948), Lust for Gold with Glenn Ford (1949), Broken Arrow (1950) with James Stewart, War Arrow (1953) with Maureen O’Hara, Jeff Chandler and Noah Beery, Jr., Drums Across the River (1954), Walk the Proud Land (1956) with Audie Murphy and Anne Bancroft, Alias Jesse James (1959) with Bob Hope, and Indian Paint (1964) with Johnny Crawford. He made a brief appearance in True Grit (1969) as a condemned criminal about to be executed. He played a substantial role as John Crow in Santee (1973), starring Glenn Ford. One of his last roles was a wise white-haired chief in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973).

Television career

Silverheels achieved his greatest fame as the The Lone Ranger’s friend, Tonto. Being irreplaceable as the Lone Ranger’s best friend he subsequently also appeared in films, The Lone Ranger (1956) as well as in The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958).

Following the end of The Lone Ranger television series, Silverheels found himself firmly typecast as an American Indian. On January 6, 1960, he portrayed an Indian fireman trying to extinguish a forest fire in the episode “Leap of Life” in the syndicated series, Rescue 8, starring Jim Davis and Lang Jeffries.

Eventually, Silverheels went to work as a salesman to supplement his acting income. Simultaneously, he began to publish poetry inspired by his youth on the Six Nations Indian Reserve and appeared on television to recite his works. In 1966, he guest-starred as John Tallgrass in the short-lived ABC comedy/western series The Rounders, with Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne, and Chill Wills.

Despite the typecasting, Silverheels in later years often poked fun at his character. In 1969, he appeared as Tonto without The Lone Ranger in a comedy sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The sketch was featured on the 1973 record album Here’s Johnny: Magic Moments From The Tonight Show. “My name is Tonto. I hail from Toronto and I speak Esperanto.” In 1970, he performed in a commercial for Chevrolet as an Indian chief who rescues two lost hunters who ignored his advice in that model year’s Chevy Blazer with the William Tell Overture playing in the background.

Silverheels also spoofed his Tonto character in a famous Stan Freberg Jeno’s Pizza Rolls TV commercial opposite Clayton Moore, as well as in The Phynx, opposite John Hart, both actors having played The Lone Ranger in the original television series.

He appeared in three episodes of NBC’s Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker as the historical frontiersman.

Among his later appearances were an episode of ABC’s The Brady Bunch, as an Indian chief who befriends the Bradys in the Grand Canyon, and in an episode of the short-lived Dusty’s Trail, starring Bob Denver of Gilligan’s Island.

In the early 1960s, Silverheels supported the Indian Actors Workshop, as an institution where American Indian actors refine their acting skills in Echo Park, California.Today the workshop is firmly established.

Personal life

Silverheels raised, bred and raced Standardbred horses in his spare time. Once, when asked about possibly running Tonto’s famous Paint horse Scout in a race, Jay laughed off the idea: “Heck, I can outrun Scout!”

Married in 1945, Silverheels was the father of three girls and a boy.

Death

Silverheels died from complications of a stroke in 1980, at age 67, in Calabasas, California. He was cremated at Chapel of the Pines Crematory. His ashes were returned home to Six Nations Indian Reserve. He had his final great appearance when he was awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Legacy

In 1993, Silverheels was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was named to the Western New York Entertainment Hall of Fame, and his portrait hangs in Buffalo, New York’s Shea’s Buffalo Theatre. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6538 Hollywood Boulevard.

Walter Davis Pidgeon

Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs. Miniver, The Bad and the Beautiful, Forbidden Planet, Advise & Consent, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Funny Girl and Harry in Your Pocket.

Early life

Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Pidgeon was the son of Hannah (née Sanborn), a homemaker, and Caleb Burpee Pidgeon, a merchant who owned a men’s clothing store. Pidgeon attended local schools, followed by the University of New Brunswick, where he studied law and drama. His university education was interrupted by World War I, and he enlisted in the 65th Battery, Royal Canadian Field Artillery. Pidgeon never saw combat, however, as he was severely injured in an accident. He was crushed between two gun carriages and spent 17 months in a military hospital. Following the war, he moved to Boston, where he worked as a bank runner, at the same time studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was a classically trained baritone.

Career

Discontented with banking, Pidgeon moved to New York City, where he walked into the office of E. E. Clive, announced that he could act and sing, and said was ready to prove it. After acting on stage for several years, he made his Broadway debut in 1925.

Pidgeon made a number of silent movies in the 1920s. However, he became a huge star with the arrival of talkies, thanks to his singing voice. He starred in extravagant early Technicolor musicals, including The Bride of the Regiment (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Viennese Nights (1930) and Kiss Me Again (1931). He became associated with musicals; however, when the public grew weary of them, his career began to falter. He was relegated to playing secondary roles in films like Saratoga and The Girl of the Golden West. One of his better known roles was in The Dark Command, where he portrayed the villain (loosely based on American Civil War guerrilla William C. Quantrill) opposite John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and a young Roy Rogers.

It was not until he starred in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture How Green Was My Valley (1941) that his popularity rebounded. He then starred opposite Greer Garson in Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver (1942) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor) and its sequel, The Miniver Story in 1950. He was also nominated in 1944 for Madame Curie, again opposite Garson. His partnership with her continued throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s with Mrs. Parkington, Julia Bisbehaves, That Forsythe Woman and concluding with Scandal at Scourie in 1953. He also starred as Chip Collyer in the comedy Week-End at the Waldorf (1945) and later as Colonel Michael S. ‘Hooky’ Nicobar, who is given the difficult task of repatriating Russians in Post-World War II Vienna in the drama film The Red Danube (1949).

Although he continued to make art films, including The Bad and the Beautiful and Forbidden Planet (the latter based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest), Pidgeon returned to work on Broadway in the mid-1950s after a twenty-year absence, and was featured in Take Me Along with Jackie Gleason. He received a Tony Award nomination for the musical play.

He continued making films, playing Admiral Harriman Nelson in 1961′s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, James Haggin in Walt Disney’s Big Red (1962), and as the Senate Majority Leader in Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent. His role as Florenz Ziegfeld in Funny Girl (1968) was well received. Later, he played Casey, James Coburn’s sidekick in Harry in Your Pocket (1973).

In addition, Pidgeon guest-starred iin the episode “King of the Valley” (November 26, 1959) of CBS’s Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater. Pidgeon plays Dave King, a prosperous rancher who quarrels with his banker over a $10,000 loan. When the banker dies of a heart attack on the job after a confrontation with King, it is discovered that the bank is missing $50,000. Leora Dana plays Anne Coleman, the banker’s widow and the rancher’s former paramour. The banker lost the funds with a bad investment, but the irate and uninformed townspeople are blaming King. Karl Swenson appears in this episode as Will Harmon.

His other television credits included Breaking Point, The F.B.I., and Marcus Welby, M.D.. In 1963 he guest starred as corporate attorney Sherman Hatfield in the fourth of four special episodes of Perry Mason while Raymond Burr was recovering from surgery.

Pidgeon was active in the Screen Actors Guild, and served as president from 1952 to 1957. As such, he tried to stop the production of Salt of the Earth, which was made by a team blacklisted during the Red Scare. He retired from acting in 1978.

Walter Davis Pidgeon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6414 Hollywood Blvd.

Personal life

Pidgeon married twice. In 1919, he wed Edna (Muriel) Pickles, who died during the birth of their daughter, also named Edna, in 1921. In 1931, he married his secretary, Ruth Walker, to whom he remained married until his death at age 87 in Santa Monica, California, 25 September 1984 following a series of strokes.

 

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke, OC ONS (born 12 February 1960) is a Canadian poet and playwright. His work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that Clarke refers to as “Africadia”.

Life

Born to William and Geraldine Clarke in Three Mile Plains, Nova Scotia, Clarke has spent much of his career writing about the black communities of Nova Scotia. Clarke worked as a parliamentary assistant to Howard McCurdy, MP in Ottawa. He also taught for a time in the African-American Studies department at Duke University.

Clarke earned a B.A. honours degree in English from the University of Waterloo (1984), an M.A. degree in English from Dalhousie University (1989) and a Ph.D. degree in English from Queen’s University (1993). He has received honorary degrees from Dalhousie University (LL.D.), the University of New Brunswick (Litt.D.), the University of Alberta (Litt.D.), the University of Waterloo (Litt.D.), and most recently, Saint Mary’s University (Litt.D). He is currently an English professor at the University of Toronto.

Clarke is a sought-after conference speaker and is active in poetry circles. He is currently promoting his latest book, I & I (January 2009). It delves into layers of spiritual meanings involving a couple traveling from Halifax to Texas and encountering tragedies of racism and sexism.

He currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

Writing career

Clarke was recognized for collecting and promoting stories of African writers and poets. Clarke lives in Toronto and began teaching Canadian and African diasporic literature in 1999 at University of Toronto where he is currently completing a second volume of essays on African-Canadian literature.

He views “Africadian” literature as “literal and liberal—I canonize songs and sonnets, histories and homilies.”  Clarke has stated that he found further writing inspiration in the 1970s and his “individualist poetic scored with implicit social commentary” came from the ‘Gang of Seven’ intellectuals, “poet-politicos: jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, troubadour-bard Bob Dylan, libertine lyricist Irving Layton, guerrilla leader and poet Mao Zedong, reactionary modernist Ezra Pound, Black Power orator Malcolm X and the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau.”Though flawed, Clarke found “as a whole, the group’s blunt talk, suave styles, acerbic independence, raunchy macho, feisty lyricism, singing heroic and a scarf-and-beret chivalry quite, well, liberating.”

Clarke’s literary emphasis is on the perspectives of the African descendents in Canada and Nova Scotia, focusing on the African American slaves’ descendents who settled in the East coast of Nova Scotia, whom he calls “Africadian.” He writes that it is a word that he “minted from “Africa” and “Acadia” (the old name for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), to denote the Black populations of the Maritimes and especially of Nova Scotia”.

Clarke maintains that Africadians originated in 1783 and 1815, when Black Loyalists and refugees arrived in Nova Scotia.

Clarke continues to address and challenge the historic encounters with racism, segregated areas, discrimination, hatred, forced relocation and a loss of a sense of identity and a sense of belonging experienced by the Black descendents though they had settled in Canada for hundreds of years. Black immigrations to and within Canada have been compared to a biblical journey beginning with Lamentations and ending with Exodus.

Similarly, Clarke explores specific beliefs, longings and experience of oppression and resistance, the desire for safety, freedom, equality and other basic human rights, shared among the immigrants, historically and contemporaneously. In his anthology Fire On The Water Clarke uses biblical timeline, Genesis, Psalms and Proverbs and Revelation to present Black writings and authors born within a specific period. These names reflect the Africadians’ and other Black peoples’ forebears and the first singers’ own preferences for singing “the Lord’s song in this strange land.”

Clarke is known for his lyrical style, and his other intellectual contributions involve both his ability to combine literary criticism and theatrical forte and his continuance of the themes of cultural inclusiveness and Canadian iconic symbolism. In his 2007 play Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path, Clarke features his Liberal hero Trudeau (1919–2000) describing him as “the Shakespearean character: … He’s a figure about whom it is almost impossible to say anything definitive, because he is encompassed by so many contradictions but that’s what makes him interesting.” In presenting a multicultural Trudeau on the international stage, Clarke seeks to capture the human dimensions, the personality of Trudeau rather than his politics so as to emphasize the dialogues among key characters to “show the people as people not just exponents of ideas”.

Family

Clarke is a great-nephew of the late Canadian opera singer Portia White, politician Bill White and labour union leader Jack White. Clarke is a seventh-generation African Canadian and is descended from African American refugees from the War of 1812 who escaped to the British and were relocated to Nova Scotia. Clarke is the great grandson of William Andrew White, an American born Baptist preacher and missionary, army chaplain, and radio pioneer, who was the only black officer in the British army worldwide during World War I.

Awards and Merits

Clarke has received several awards. The most recent (2009) was as co-recipient of the William P. Hubbard Award for Race Relations from the City of Toronto for his outstanding achievements and commitment in making a distinct difference in racial relations in Toronto. Clarke was cited for “his local and national leadership role in creating an understanding and awareness of African and black culture and excellence in his contribution to redefining culture.” He was a featured writer/instructor at the 2007 Maritime Writers’ Workshop & Literary Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

On 16 January 2008 Clarke was made an honorary Fellow of the Haliburton Literary Society, the oldest literary society in North America, at the University of King’s College, Halifax. He was also inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2008.

In 2001 Clarke won the Governor General’s Award for poetry for his book Execution Poems.

Clarke’s Whylah Falls was selected for the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by Nalo Hopkinson.

 

Rocky Johnson

Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles; August 24, 1944) is a retired Canadian professional wrestler. Quite popular in his own right in the 1970s and 1980s, he is also known for being the father of American actor and professional wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. During his wrestling career he became a 1-time National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) Georgia Champion and also became a 1-time NWA Southern Heavyweight Memphis Champion as well as winning many other championships. Along with his partner Tony Atlas, Johnson was a part of the first black tag team to win the World Tag Team championship in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

Early life

Rocky Johnson was born Wayde Douglas Bowles in Amherst, Nova Scotia, where he was raised, the fourth of five sons of Lillian and James Henry Bowles. A Black Nova Scotian, he is descended from slaves who escaped from the American South. At the age of 16, Johnson moved to Toronto, Ontario, where he began wrestling and worked as a truck driver. Initially, he trained to be a boxer and eventually sparred with greats such as Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, but he was always fascinated by wrestling.

Professional wrestling career

National Wrestling Alliance

Johnson began his career as a professional wrestler in the mid-1960s. He was a top contender in the National Wrestling Alliance in the 1970s, receiving title matches against then-World Champions Terry Funk and Harley Race. He was well-suited to tag team wrestling, winning several regional tag team championships in the NWA. He also wrestled under a mask as “Sweet Ebony Diamond” in the Mid-Atlantic area as well.

World Wrestling Federation

In 1983, he was recruited by the World Wrestling Federation where he feuded with Don Muraco, Greg Valentine, Mike Sharpe, Buddy Rose, and Adrian Adonis. He was then paired with Tony Atlas as a tag team. They defeated the Wild Samoans (Afa and Sika Anoai) for the Tag Team Championship on November 15, 1983. They were the first black tag team to hold the tag title. Together, Johnson and Atlas were known as “The Soul Patrol”.

Retirement

After retiring in 1991, Johnson along with Pat Patterson, trained his son Dwayne to wrestle. While he initially resisted his son’s entry into the business because he knew it was extremely difficult, he agreed to train his son on the condition that he would not go easy on him. Johnson was instrumental in getting Dwayne (later dubbed “Rocky Maivia” after both Rocky Johnson’s and Peter Maivia’s ring names) signed to a WWF developmental deal. Initially, Johnson had an on-camera presence at his son’s matches, jumping into the ring on his son’s behalf after he was attacked by The Sultan and the Iron Sheik at WrestleMania 13. Johnson was not seen on-camera again after the Rocky Maivia character flopped, but this was actually a blessing, as his son achieved crossover popularity as a cocky heel, The Rock.

Johnson was hired as a trainer for the WWE developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling, in early 2003 but was let go in May of that year. On February 25, 2008, Johnson was announced as an inductee for the 2008 class of the WWE Hall of Fame along with his father-in-law “High Chief” Peter Maivia. Both he and his father-in-law were inducted into the Hall of Fame on March 29, 2008 by his son and professional wrestler, The Rock. One week earlier on March 22, Rocky Johnson wrestled his retirement match in Toronto for Stranglehold Wrestling.

Personal life

Johnson married into the prolific Samoan wrestling family, which included the Anoa’i family, by marrying “High Chief” Peter Maivia’s adopted daughter Ata Maivia. Ata met Rocky after Maivia and Johnson were tag team partners in a match on the independent scene. Maivia disapproved of the relationship—not because of anything personal against Johnson, but because of Johnson’s chosen profession. The couple had a son, Dwayne, in 1972. Dwayne Johnson portrayed his father in an episode of That ’70s Show.

Johnson lived in Davie, Florida with his wife, Ata. He also has two other children, as he announced in his 2008 HOF induction, a son Curtis, and a daughter Wanda from his first marriage in 1967. Johnson is honored being the first non-Samoan to be named High Chief. His title is High Chief Tafiaiafi.

 

Principality of Outer Baldonia

The Principality of Outer Baldonia is a now defunct micronation whose territorial pretensions comprised the roughly 4 acres (16,000 m²) of Outer Bald Tusket Island 8 nautical miles (15 km) off the southern tip of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

Origins

Founded in 1948 by Russell Arundel, who was an American business man and lobbyist for Pepsi Cola Company (today: PepsiCo), and entitled the “Prince of Princes” of Outer Baldonia, the Principality is often classed as a ‘whimsy state’. Endowed with a charter, flag, and organized military, it was one of the more developed, and highly populated of the various historical micronations. Coinage and passports were also issued.

Apparently, Arundel stumbled upon the island while fishing recreationally for tuna. While there are reports that the island was used as a base for fishing (possibly seasonally), and was also used as a sheep pasture, Arundel negotiated its purchase for $750, and constructed a stone edifice for himself and his friends to use as a fishing lodge during the sport fishing season. Legend has it that it was, in fact, while Arundel and his friends were engaged in an episode of rum drinking, that they conceived, wrote, approved and published the Declaration of Independence of Outer Baldonia. Reflecting the primacy of sport fishers such as Arundel in its leadership, the trappings of the state seem to have teemed with aquatic life. The currency, for example, was called the Tunar.

Geography and demographics

The island is situated to the south of Nova Scotia and a few kilometers off the coast of Yarmouth, belongs to the group known as the Tusket Islands, and is relatively flat and treeless. While it is said to have had until the 1960s a local population of Acadian fishermen and at least one shepherd, it may be assumed that their habitations were temporary, rather than permanent. It is likely that the fishermen had a few shanties, now rotted away, where they would stop from time to time, or stay for a matter of convenience. The shepherd’s use of the island is attested to by a term of the 1973 sale, which promised the extension of grazing rights until the death of the shepherd, which, it seems, was not likely to be much longer. The only structure of human origin on the island at this date in 2006 is the 30 by 20-foot (6 m) stone building that was built by Russell Arundel, and served as the capitol of Outer Baldonia. This building is in some disrepair, but the initial ‘A’ is still visible above the mantle. The vegetation of the island is predominantly Aster, with Queen Anne’s lace, tall grasses and Vetch as well. The fauna is primarily avian and arthropodic in nature.

Political pretensions

The exact governmental structure of Outer Baldonia is now difficult to discern. All citizens of the Principality who caught a Bluefin Tuna and paid a $50 fee were accorded the rank of Prince. The ranks of the peerage were limited to 100. It is unclear whether there were any citizens of the state who did not belong to this class. The known figures of government are as follows:

Head of State: Prince of Princes Russell Arundel
Chancellor: Elson Boudreau
Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary: Ron Wallace

While never legally recognized by any government other than that of Nova Scotia, Outer Baldonia managed to acquire a certain amount of prestige on the international stage. Simply by listing his law office’s phone number as that of the Consulate of Outer Baldonia in the telephone registry of Washington, D.C., Prince Russell received many invitations to gatherings which he attended in his diplomatic garb, which some say was decorated largely with sardine cans and bottle caps. Outer Baldonia was even invited to apply for membership to the then nascent United Nations. The publication of the Charter of Outer Baldonia brought giggles from some quarters, but stern denunciations from the parodically humourless Soviet Union. This precipitated a series of events leading to the downfall of the political pretensions of Outer Baldonia.

Charter and Communist critiques thereof

The text of the Charter of Outer Baldonia is preserved today in the Yarmouth County Museum, but we must rely on what few details have been repeated by those familiar with its contents. The general drift may be surmised by the following extract from the Declaration of Independence:

That fishermen are a race alone. That fishermen are endowed with the following inalienable rights: The right to lie and be believed. The right of freedom from question, nagging, shaving, interruption, women, taxes, politics, war, monologues, care and inhibitions. The right to applause, vanity, flattery, praise and self-inflation. The right to swear, lie, drink, gamble and silence. The right to be noisy, boisterous, quiet, pensive, expensive and hilarious. The right to choose company and the right to be alone. The right to sleep all day and stay up all night.

The Charter was surprisingly broad ranging, setting out tax policy, codes of conduct for its citizens, a military hierarchy, as well as trade and industrial policy. For example, taxes, ‘double-talk’, and inhibitions were proscribed, while drinking, swearing, and exaggerations of the size of fish were enjoined. Women were banned entirely from the island, but not apparently, from citizenship. Arundel’s secretary is known to have been granted the title of Princess. The activity of fishing seems to have been at least implicitly enshrined as a constitutionally mandated activity as well as the production and exportation of empty rum and beer bottles. Naturally, the charter was generally received in the spirit in which it was intended, but not universally. A communist writer in the Soviet Union published an attack upon the content of the Charter, which she claimed dehumanised and decivilized the citizenry, and upon the person of the Prince of Princes, whom she denounced as a ‘savage’ Western Imperialist. This attack upon the reputation and way of life of Outer Baldonia could not be tolerated, and Prince Russell’s response led to the most famous episode in the history of the micronation.

Military history

The state’s constitutional characteristics seem to have been largely military. Its 70 person population were all titularly, or actually involved in the defense of the island through military means. The Military itself seems to have been limited to a navy of indeterminate size: its personnel was constituted by 69 Admirals of the Fleet, but it is unclear how many ships were at their disposal. Reasonable estimates range between 20 and 100 vessels of varying size, from dories to larger vessels, used primarily for commercial, sport or sustenance fishing.

The bellicose nature of the state was manifested in the most celebrated event in the history of the Principality: its confrontation with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It seems that while there were no previous diplomatic relations between the two entities, nor any direct interaction, the fighting spirit of the Outer Baldonians was roused by the appearance of a slanderous critique of Outer Baldonia’s charter, as described above, in the USSR state publication Literaturnaya Gazeta. When the Soviet Government declined an invitation to visit and observe the wholesomeness of the micronation’s way of life with an eye to retracting its insults, a declaration of war was issued on March 9, 1953. The Baldonian navy put to sea upon a war footing, one that, one may assume, involved a remarkable amount of fishing. Ron Wallace, Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Outer Baldonia, secured the alliance of the nearby Armdale Yacht Club, which committed its own fleet to the defense of the island Principality. The response from the USSR was, by all accounts, highly satisfactory to Outer Baldonian popular sentiment. Not daring to challenge the Baldonian Navy on the high seas, the USSR merely issued a series of condemnations through their various press outlets.

Alas, the press coverage that resulted involved investigative reporting, which could only have the result of the exposure of the Principality as a humorous half-truth. Accusations of fraud were splashed across the pages of the world’s newspapers, the invitations to diplomatic soirées dried up, and Outer Baldonia ceased to exist in the eyes of the world.

Later history of the territory

In 1973, Outer Bald Tusket Island was sold by Russell Arundel for the price of one Canadian dollar to the Nova Scotia Bird Society, who are the current owners. The island has been designated the Earle E. Arundel Breeding Bird Sanctuary. It is open to the public, but may have a tern rookery, and should not be visited during breeding season. Hunting is permitted in season.

 

Doukhobors

The Doukhobors or Doukhabors, earlier Dukhobortsy  are a Christian group of Russian origin. The Doukhobors were one of the sects—later defined as a religious philosophy, ethnic group, social movement, or simply a ‘way of life’—known generically as Spiritual Christianity. There were numerous Russian groups considered “spiritual Christians.” The only common denominator among them is that they rejected the trappings of traditional religion. Starting no later than the eighteenth century, they rejected secular government, the Russian Orthodox priests, icons, all church ritual, the Bible as the supreme source of divine revelation and the divinity of Jesus. They “believe that Jesus Christ is a spiritually advanced teacher and example to others. They also believe that people are capable of divine reason and can spiritually develop without the help of intermediaries…. The only symbols Doukhobors commonly recognize are those of bread, salt and water, the basic elements needed to sustain life. These are on a table at all Doukhobor meetings and important events.

Their Pacifist beliefs and desire to avoid government interference in their life led to an exodus of the majority of the group from the Russian Empire to Canada at the close of the nineteenth century. However, their interaction with the Canadian authorities was anything but peaceful.

Assimilated to a various extent into the Canadian mainstream, the modern descendants of the first Canadian Doukhobors continue to live in south-eastern British Columbia, southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Today, the estimated population of Doukhobors in North America is over 20,000, with 15,000 in Canada and about 5,000 in the USA.

History

Early days – Ukraine and southern Russia

The origin of the Doukhobor movement dates to seventeenth and eighteenth century Russian Empire. Believing in God’s presence in every human being, they considered clergy and rituals unnecessary. Their rejection of secular government, the Russian Orthodox priests, icons, all church ritual, the Bible as the supreme source of divine revelation, and the divinity of Jesus elicited negative response from the government and the established church, as attested by the 1734 Russian Government edict issued against ikonobortsy (Iconoclasts).

The first known Doukhobor leader, in 1755-1775, was Siluan (Silvan) Kolesnikov (Russian: Силуан Колесников), originating from the village of Nikolskoye in Yekaterinoslav Governorate in what’s today south-central Ukraine. He was thought to be a well-read person, familiar with the works of Western mystics, such as Karl von Eckartshausen and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.

The early Doukhobors called themselves “God’s People” or simply “Christians.” Their modern name, first in the form Doukhobortsy (Russian: Духоборцы, Dukhobortsy, ‘Spirit wrestlers’) is thought to have been first used in 1785 or 1786 by Ambrosius, the Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav or his predecessor, Nikifor (Nikephoros Theotokis) The archbishops intent was to mock them as heretics fighting against the Holy Ghost (Spirit; Russian: Святой Дух, Svyatoy Dukh); but later (around the beginning of the nineteenth century, according to S.A. Inikova) the dissenters picked the name, usually in a shorter form, Doukhobory (Russian: Духоборы, Dukhobory), implying that they are fighting not against, but along with the Spirit.

As pacifists, the Doukhobors also ardently rejected the institutions of militarism and wars. For these reasons, the Doukhobors were harshly repressed in Imperial Russia. Both the tsarist state and church authorities were involved in the persecution of these dissidents, as well as taking away their normal freedoms.

The first known use of the spelling Doukhobor is attested in a government edict of 1799, exiling 90 of them to Finland (presumably, Vyborg area, which was already part of Russian Empire at the time) for their anti-war propaganda.

In 1802, Tsar Alexander I encouraged resettlement of religious minorities to the so-called ‘Milky Waters’ (Molochnye Vody): the region of Molochnaya River (around Melitopol in contemporary southern Ukraine). This was motivated by the desire to quickly populate the rich steppelands on the north shore of the Black and Azov Seas, and to prevent the “heretics” from contaminating the population of the heartland with their ideas. Many Doukhobors, as well as Mennonites from Prussia, took up on the Tsar’s offer, coming to the Molochnaya from various provinces of the Empire over the next 20 years.

Transcaucasian exile

As Nicholas I replaced Alexander, he issued a decree (February 6, 1826), intending to force assimilation of the Doukhobors by means of military conscription, prohibiting their meetings, and encouraging conversions to the established church. On October 20, 1830, another decree followed, specifying that all able-bodied members of dissenting religious groups engaged in propaganda against the established church should be conscripted and sent to the Russian army in the Caucasus, while those not capable of military service, as well as their women and children, should be resettled in Russia’s recently acquired Transcaucasian provinces. It is reported that, among other dissenters, some 5000 Doukhobors were resettled to Georgia between 1841 and 1845. The Akhalkalaki uyezd (district) of the Tiflis (Tbilisi) Governorate (in Georgia’s region of Samtskhe-Javakheti) was chosen as the main place of their settlement. Doukhobor villages with Russian names appeared there: Gorelovka, Rodionovka, Yefremovka, Orlovka, Spasskoye (Dubovka), Troitskoye, and Bogdanovka (now renamed Ninotsminda). Later on, other groups of Doukhobors—resettled by the government, or migrating to Transcaucasia by their own accord—settled in other neighboring areas, including the Borchaly uyezd of Tiflis Governorate (in today’s Georgia) and the Kedabek uyezd of Elisabethpol (Ganja) Governorate (in the north-west of today’s Republic of Azerbaijan).

After Russia’s conquest of Kars and the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, some Dukhobors from Tiflis and Elisabethpol Governorates moved to the Zarushat and Shuragel uyezds of the newly created Kars Oblast (north-east of Kars in today’s Republic of Turkey).

The leader of the main group of Doukhobors that arrived to Transcaucasia from the Ukraine in 1841 was Illarion Kalmykov (Russian: Илларион Калмыков). He died in the same year, and was succeeded as the community leader by his son, Peter Kalmykov (? – 1864). After Peter Kalmykov’s death in 1864, his widow Lukerya Vasilyevna Gubanova (? – December 15, 1886; (Russian: Лукерья Васильевна Губанова); also known as Kalmykova, by her husband’s surname) took his leadership position.

The Kalmykov dynasty resided in the village of Gorelovka, one of Doukhobor communities in Georgia. (Shown on one of J. Kalmakoff’s maps.. Lukerya (Lukeria) was respected by the provincial authorities, who had to cooperate with the Doukhobors on various matters. The number of Doukhbors in the Transcaucasia reached 20,000 by the time of her death in 1886. By that time, the Doukhobors of the region had become vegetarian, and become aware of Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy, which they found quite similar with their traditional teachings.

The religious revival and the crises

The death of “Queen Lukerya,” who had no children, was followed by a leadership crisis. Lukerya’s own plan was for leadership to pass after her death to her assistant, Peter Vasilevich Verigin. However, only part of the community (“the Large Party”; Russian: Большая сторона Bolshaya Storona) accepted him as the leader; others, known as “the Small Party” (Малая сторона Malaya Storona), sided with Lukerya’s brother Michael Gubanov and the village elder, Aleksei Zubkov.

While the Large Party was a majority, the Small Party had the support of the older members of the community and the local authorities. So on January 26, 1887, at the community service where the new leader was to be acclaimed, the police walked in and arrested Verigin. He was to spend the next 16 years in exile in Russia’s Far North; some of his associates were sent to exile as well. The Large Party Doukhobors continued to consider him their spiritual leader and to communicate with him, by mail and via delegates who traveled to see him in Obdorsk, Siberia.

At the same time, the government applied greater pressure to enforce Doukhobors’ compliance with the laws and regulations that they found vexatious, such as registering marriages and births, contributing grain to state emergency funds, or swearing oaths of allegiance. Even worse, the universal military conscription that had been introduced in most of Russian Empire, was now (in 1887) imposed in its Transcaucasian provinces as well. While the Small Party people would cooperate with the state, the Large Party, wounded by the arrest of Verigin and other leaders, and inspired by his letters from exile, only felt strengthened in their desire to abide in the righteousness of their faith. They stopped using tobacco and alcohol, divided their property equally between the members of the community, and resolved to adhere to the principles of non-violence. They would not want to swear the oath of allegiance required by the new Czar Nicholas II in 1894.

To avoid the temptation to use the weapons they possessed, even in an emergency (say, to resist a robber), the Doukhobors of the three Governorates of Transcaucasia made the decision to destroy them. As the Doukhobors assembled to burn their weapons in the night of on June 28/29 (July 10/11, Gregorian Calendar) 1895, with the singing of psalms and spiritual songs, arrests and beatings by government’s Cossacks followed. Soon, Cossacks were billeted in many of the Large Party Doukhobors’ villages, and over 4000 of their original residents were dispersed through villages in other parts of Georgia. Many of those died of starvation and exposure.

Migration to Canada

Persecution was unsuccessful in coercing the Doukhobors comply with the conscription laws. The entire affair proved an embarrassment in front of international public opinion, so the Russian government agreed in 1897 to let the Doukhobors leave the country, subject to a number of conditions. The emigrants were required to:

• never return;
• migrate at their own expense;
• community leaders currently held in prison or in exile in Siberia had to serve the balance of their sentences before they could leave the country.

Some of the emigrants went first to Cyprus, but the climate there did not suit them. Meanwhile, the rest of the community chose Canada for its isolation, peacefulness, and the fact that the Canadian government welcomed them. Around 6000 migrated there in the first half of 1899, settling on the land granted to them by the government in what is today Manitoba and Saskatchewan. More people, including the Cyprus colony, joined later that year, bringing the total count to 7,400–about one-third of the total Doukhobor population in Transcaucasia. Several smaller groups, directly from Transcaucasia or from various places of exile, joined the main body of the migrants in later years. Among these late-comers were some 110 leaders of the community that were in prisons or in exile in Siberia as of 1899; they had to serve their term of punishment before they could join their people in Canada.

The Doukhobors’ passage across the Atlantic Ocean was largely paid for by Quakers and Tolstoyans, who sympathized with their plight. Leo Tolstoy arranged for the royalties from his novel, Resurrection, (1899) his short story Father Sergius (written between 1890-1898), (Father Sergei,) and some other works, to go to the migration fund. He also raised money from wealthy friends. In the end, his efforts provided half of the immigration fund, about 30,000 rubles.

The anarchist Peter Kropotkin and James Mavor, a professor of the political economy at the University of Toronto, also helped the migrants.

On the Prairies of Canada

In accordance with the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, Canadian government would grant 160 acres (0.65 km²) of land, for a nominal fee of $10, to any male homesteader able to establish a working farm on that land within three years. Living on single-family homesteads would not fit Doukhobors’ communitarian tradition. Fortunately, the Act contained the so-called Hamlet Clause, adopted some 15 years earlier to accommodate other communitarian groups such as Mennonites, which would allow the beneficiaries of the Act to live not on the actual land grant, but in a village (“hamlet”) within 3 miles (4.8 km) from their land. This would allow the Doukhobors to establish a communal life style, similar to the Hutterites.

Even more importantly, in late 1898 the Canadian Government passed Section 21 of the Dominion Military Act, exempting the Doukhobors from military service.

The land for the Doukhobor immigrants, in the total amount of 773,400 acres (3,130 km²), was granted in three “block settlement” areas (“reserves”), plus an “annex,” within what was to soon become the Province of Saskatchewan:

• The North Colony, also known as the “Thunder Hill Colony” or “Swan River Colony,” in the Pelly and Arran districts of Saskatchewan. It became home to 2,400 Doukhobors from Tiflis Governorate, who established 20 villages on 69,000 acres (280 km²) of the land grant.
• The South Colony, also known as the “Whitesand Colony” of “Yorkton Colony,” in the Canora, Veregin and Kamsack districts of Saskatchewan. Some 3,500 Doukhobors from Tiflis Governorate, Elisabethpol Governorate, and Kars Oblast, settled there in 30 villages on 215,010 acres (870.1 km²) of land grant.
• The Good Spirit Lake Annex, in the Buchanan district of Saskatchewan, received 1,000 Doukhobors from Elisabethpol Governorate and Kars Oblast, Russia, who settled there in eight villages on 168,930 acres (683.6 km²) of land grant. The annex was along the Good Spirit River, flowing into Good Spirit Lake (previously known as Devil’s Lake).
• The Saskatchewan Colony, also known as the “Rosthern colony”, “Prince Albert Colony” or “Duck Lake Colony,” was located along the North Saskatchewan River in the Langham and Blaine Lake districts of Saskatchewan, north-west of Saskatoon. 1500 Doukhobors from Kars Oblast settled there in 13 villages on 324,800 acres (1,314 km²) of land grant.

Geographically, North and South Colonies, as well as Good Spirit Lake Annex (Devil’s Lake Annex, to non-believers) were around Yorkton, not far from the border with today’s Manitoba; the Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony, was located north-west of Saskatoon, quite a distance from the other three “reserves.”

At the time of settlement (1899), all four “reserves” were located in the Northwest Territories: Saskathewan (Rosthern) Colony in the territories’ provisional District of Saskatchewan, North Reserve, straddling the border of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia districts, and the other two entirely in Assiniboia. After creation of the Province of Saskatchewan in 1905, all reserves were located within that province.

Early struggles

On the lands granted to them in the prairies, the settlers established villages along the same lines as back in the old country. Some of the new villages were given the same Russian names as the settlers home villages in Transcaucasia (Spasovka, Large and Small Gorelovka, Slavianka etc); others were given more abstract, “spiritual” names, not common in Russia: “Uspeniye” (‘Dormition’), “Terpeniye” (‘Patience’), “Bogomdannoye” (‘Given by God’), “Osvobozhdeniye” (‘Liberation’).

The settlers found Saskatchewan winters much harsher than those in Transcaucasia, and were particularly disappointed that the climate was not as suitable for growing fruits and vegetables. Many of the men found it necessary to take non-farm jobs, especially in railway construction, while the women stayed behind to till the land.

Due to Doukhobors’ aversion to private ownership in land, Petr Verigin (who had served his sentence and was able to come to Canada in 1902) managed to have land registered in the name of the community. But by 1906, the Dominion Government, in the person of Frank Oliver, the Minister of Interior, started requiring registration of the land in the name of individuals owners. Many Doukhobors’ refused, resulting the Crown reclaiming more than a third (258,880 acres) of Doukhobor lands.

Oliver also posed another vexing issue when he required them to become naturalized citizens. The previous minister’s had given assurances before the Doukhbors arrival to Canada that they would not be required to swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, which was against their principles. These problems led to a new crisis just a decade after the conscription crisis in Russia.

The crisis resulted in a three-way split of the Doukhobor community in Canada:

• The edinolichniki (‘Independents’), who constituted by 1907 some ten percent of the Canadian Doukhobors. They maintained their religion, but abandoned communal ownership of land, rejecting hereditary leadership and communal living as non-essential to their religion.
• The largest group—the Community Doukhobors—continued to be loyal to their spiritual leader, Peter V. Verigin. They formed an organization known as Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB).
• The more radical Sons of Freedom group (also called the “Svobodniki” or “Freedomites”), which emerged in 1903, embraced Verigin’s writings in a more zealous manner than did even the CCUB.

The Independents were a group most easily integrating into the Canadian capitalist society. They had no problem with registering their land groups, and largely remained in Saskatchewan. It was they who, much later on (in 1939) finally rejected the authority of Peter Verigin’s great-grandson, John J. Verigin.

In British Columbia

To take his followers away from the corrupting influence of non-Doukhobors and Edinolichniki (‘individual owners’) Doukhobors, and to find better conditions for agriculture, Verigin, starting in 1908, bought large tracts of land in south-eastern British Columbia. His first purchase were near the US border around Grand Forks. Later, he acquired large tracts of land further east, in the Slocan Valley around Castlegar. Between 1908 and 1912, some 8,000 people moved to these British Columbia lands from Saskatchewan, to continue their communal way of living. In the milder climate of British Columbia, the settlers were able to plant fruit trees, and within a few years became renowned as orchardists and producers of fruit preserves.

As the Community Doukhobors left Saskatchewan, the “reserves” there were closed by 1918.

The Sons of Freedom, meanwhile, responded to the Doukhobors conflict with the Canadian policy by mass nudity and arson as a means of protesting against a host of complaints against the Canadian government and society, including materialism, the land seizure by the government, compulsory education in government schools and, later on, Verigin’s supposed assassination. This led to many confrontations with the Canadian government and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (continuing into the 1970s).

Peter V. Verigin was killed in a still-unsolved Canadian Pacific Railway train explosion on October 29, 1924 near Farron, between Castlegar and Grand Forks, British Columbia. The government initially (during investigation) had stated the crime was perpetrated by people within the Doukhobor community, while the Doukhobors suspected Canadian government involvement. To date, it is still unknown who is responsible for the bombing. Thus, while the Doukhobors were initially welcomed by the Canadian government, this assassination controversy, as well as Doukhobor beliefs regarding communal living and child education, among other beliefs, created an air of mistrust between government authorities and Doukhobors which would last for decades.

Peter V. Verigin was succeeded as the leader of the Community Doukhobors by his son, Peter P. Verigin, who arrived from the Soviet Union in 1928. He became known as Peter the Purger, and worked to smooth the relations between the Community Doukhobors and the larger Canadian society. His policies, seen by the radical (or zealous) Sons of Freedom as ungodly and assimilationist, were answered by increasing protests on the part of the latter. The Sons of Freedom would burn the Community Doukhobors’ property, and organize more nude parades.

The Canadian Parliament responded in 1932 by criminalizing public nudity. Over the years, over 300 radical Doukhobor men and women were arrested for this offense, which typically carried a three-year prison sentence.

In 1947-1948, Sullivan’s Royal Commission investigated arsons and bombing attacks in British Columbia, and recommended a number of measures intended to integrate the Doukhobors into the Canadian society, notably through the participation of their children in public education. Around that time, the provincial government entered into direct negotiations with the Freedomite leadership.

W. A. C. Bennett’s Social Credit government, which came to power in 1952, took a harder stance against the “Doukhobor Problem.” In 1953, 150 children of the Sons of Freedom were forcible interned by the government agents in a residential school in New Denver, British Columbia.

Abuse of the interned children was later alleged, and a formal apology demanded. The BC government made an official Statement of Regret that satisfied some, but not all. The Canadian Federal government still has not apologized for its role in the removal of children from their homes, saying that it is not responsible for actions taken by the government in place 50 years ago.

Many of the independent and community Doukhobors believed that the Freedomites violated the central Doukhobor principle of nonviolence (with arson and bombing) and therefore did not deserve to be called Doukhobors. However, rifts generated during the twentieth century between the Sons of Freedom and Community and Independent Doukhobors were later largely laid to rest.

Staying behind

After the departure of the more zealous and non-compromising Doukhobors and many community leaders to Canada at the close of the nineteenth century, the Doukhobor groups staying within the Russian Empire entered a period of decline. By 1905, hardly any Doukhobors remained in Elisabethpol Governorate (Azerbaijan); the former Doukhobor villages now were mostly populated by Baptists. Elsewhere, many Doukhobors joined other dissenter sects, such as Molokans or Stundists.

Those that remained Doukhobors had to submit to the state. Few protested against the military service: for example, out of 837 Russian Court Martial cases against conscientious objectors recorded between the beginning of World War I and April 1, 1917, only 16 were for Doukhobor defendants–none of those hailed from the Transcaucasian provinces.

In 1921-1923, Verigin’s son arranged the resettlement of 4000 Doukhobors from the Ninotsminda (Bogdanovka) district in south Georgia into Rostov Oblast in southern Russia and other 500 into Zaporizhia Oblast in the Ukraine.

The Soviet reforms affected greatly the life of the Doukhobors both in their old villages in Georgia and in the new settlement areas in Russian and Ukraine. The state anti-religious campaigns resulted in the suppression of Doukhobor religious tradition, and the loss of books and archival records. A number of religious leaders were arrested or exiled: for example, 18 people were exiled from Gorelovka alone in 1930. On the other hand, Communists’ imposition of collective farming did not go against the grain of the Doukhobor way of life. The industrious Doukhobors made their collective farms prosperous, specializing e.g. in cheese-making.

Of the Doukhobor communities in the USSR, those in the south Georgia were the most sheltered from the outside influence, both because of the sheer geographical isolation in the mountainous terrain, and due to their location in an area near the international border, and concomitant travel restrictions for outsiders.

Present Day

Today an estimated 20,000-40,000 people of Doukhobor heritage live in Canada, some 4000 of them claiming “Doukhobor” as their religious affiliation. Perhaps another 30,000 live in Russia and neighboring countries. About 5000 live in the U.S. along the northernmost parts of the US-Canada border.

Canada

CCUB, the organization Orthodox Doukhobors or Community Doukhobors, was succeeded by Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ, formed by Peter P. Verigin (son of Peter V. Verigin) in 1938. The largest and most active Doukhobor organization, it is headquartered in Grand Forks, British Columbia.

During Canada 2001 Census, 3,800 persons in Canada (of which, 2,940 in British Columbia, 200 in Alberta, 465 in Saskatchewan, and 155 in Ontario) identified their religious affiliation as “Doukhobor.” As the age distribution shows, the proportion of older people among these self-identified Doukhobors is higher than among the general population:

E.g., 28 percent of the self-identified Doukhobors in 2001 were aged over 65 (i.e., born before 1936), as compared to 12 percent of the entire population of Canadian respondents. The aging of the denomination is accompanied by the shrinking of its size, starting in the 1960s:

Census year	Self-identified Doukhobor population
1921	12,674
1931	14,978
1941	16,898
1951	13,175
1961	13,234
1971	9,170
1981	?
1991	4,820
2001	3,800

Of course, the number of Canadians sharing Doukhobor heritage is much higher than the number of those who actually consider oneself a member of this religion. Doukhobor researchers made estimates from “over 20,000″ people “from [Doukhobor] stock” in Canada (Postnikoff, 1977) to over 40,000 Doukhobors by “a wider definition of religion, ethnicity, way of life, and social movement” (Tarasoff, 2002).

The Canadian Doukhobors no longer live communally. Their prayer meetings and gatherings are dominated by the singing of a cappella psalms, hymns and spiritual songs in Russian. Doukhobors do not practice baptism. They reject several items considered orthodox among Christian churches, including church organization and liturgy, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the literal interpretation of resurrection, the literal interpretation of the Trinity, and the literal interpretation of heaven and hell. Some avoid the use of alcohol, tobacco, and animal products for food, and involvement in partisan politics. Doukhobors believe in the goodness of man and reject the idea of original sin.

The religious philosophy of the Doukhobors is based on the ten commandments and the Golden Rule, “Love God with all thy heart, mind and soul” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The Doukhobors have several important slogans. One of the most popular, “Toil and Peaceful Life,” was coined by Peter V. Verigin.

Georgia and Russia

Since the late 1980s, many of the Doukhobors of Georgia started emigrating to Russia. Various groups moved to Tula Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Stavropol Krai, and elsewhere. After the independence of Georgia, many villages with Russian names received Georgian names; for example, Bogdanovka became Ninotsminda and Troitskoe became Sameba. According to various estimated, in Ninotsminda District, the Doukhobor population fell from around 4000 in 1979 to 3,000-3,500 in 1989 and not much more than 700 in 2006. In Dmanisi district, from around 700 Doukhobors living there in 1979, no more than 50 seemed to remain by the mid-2000s. Those who do remain are mostly older people, since it is the younger generation who found it easier to move to Russia. The Doukhobor community of Gorelovka (in Ninotsminda District), the former “capital” of the Kalmykov family, is thought to be the best preserved in all post-Soviet countries.

Heritage: Historical sites and museums

The sites of Community Doukhobors’ headquarters in Veregin, Saskatchewan were designated in 2006 a National Historic Site of Canada, under the name “Doukhobors at Veregin.”

A Doukhobor museum, currently known as “Doukhobor Discovery Center” (formerly, “Doukhobor Village Museum”) operates in Castlegar, British Columbia. It contains over a thousand artifacts representing the arts, crafts, and daily life of the Doukhobors of the Kootenays in 1908-1938.

Although most of the early Doukhobor village structures in British Columbia have vanished or been significantly remodeled by later users, a part of Makortoff Village outside of Grand Forks, British Columbia has been preserved as a museum by Peter Gritchen, who purchased the property in 1971 and opened it as the Mountain View Doukhobor Museum on June 16, 1972. The future of the site became uncertain after his death in 2000. But, in cooperation with a coalition of the local organizations and concerned citizens, the historical site, known as Hardy Mountain Doukhobor Village, was purchased The Land Conservancy of British Columbia in March 2004, while the museum collection was acquired by the Boundary Museum Society and loaned to TLC for display.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa has a collection of Doukhobor-related items as well. A special exhibition there was run in 1998-1999 to mark the centennial anniversary of the Doukhobor arrival in Canada.

Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha , baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), was an Algonquin-Mohawk Catholic virgin and religious laywoman. Born in present-day New York, she survived smallpox and was orphaned as a child, then baptized as a Roman Catholic and settled for the last years of her life at the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, south of Montreal in New France.

Tekakwitha professed a vow of virginity until her death at the age of 24. Known for her virtue of chastity and corporal mortification of the flesh, as well as being shunned by her tribe for her religious conversion to Catholicism, she is the first Native American woman to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. She was beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 1980. On February 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI announced at Saint Peter’s Basilica that Tekakwitha is scheduled to be formally canonized on October 21, 2012. Various miracles and supernatural events are attributed to her name after her death.

Early life and education

Kateri Tekakwitha (the name “Kateri” is derived from the French Catherine, her baptismal name) was born around 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon near present-day Auriesville, New York. She was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Tagaskouita, a Roman Catholic Algonquin who had been adopted into the tribe after capture. Her mother Tagaskouita had been baptized and educated by French missionaries in Trois-Rivières, east of Montreal. Mohawk warriors captured her and took her to their homeland. She eventually married Kenneronkwa.

Kateri’s village was highly diverse, as the Mohawk were absorbing many captured natives of other tribes, particularly their competitors the Huron, to replace people who died from European diseases or warfare. She was most likely born into the Turtle Clan. (The Mohawk and other Iroquois had a matrilineal kinship system, in which children were born into the mother’s clan and took their status from her.) When she was young, her village moved to a different location. The Mohawk suffered from a smallpox epidemic from 1661 to 1663. Kateri’s brother and both her parents died, and she was left with scars and impaired eyesight. She was adopted by her maternal uncle, a chief of the Turtle Clan.

The Jesuits’ account of Kateri said that she was a modest girl who avoided social gatherings; she covered much of her head with a blanket because of the smallpox scars. They told that, as an orphan, she was under the care of uninterested relatives. However, this was probably not the case; the Jesuits wanted to present her as unique among the “pagan savages.” According to Mohawk practices, she was probably well taken care of by her clan, her mother and uncle’s extended family, with whom she lived in the longhouse. She became skilled at traditional women’s arts, which included making clothing and belts from animal skins; weaving mats, baskets and boxes from reeds and grasses;, and preparing food from game, crops and gathered produce. She took part in the women’s seasonal planting and intermittent weeding. She was pressured to consider marriage around age thirteen, but reportedly she refused.

Kateri grew up in a period of constant change as the Mohawk interacted with French and Dutch colonists. In the fur trade, the Mohawk originally traded with the Dutch, who had settled in Albany and Schenectady. The French traded with and were allied with the Huron. Trying to make inroads in Iroquois territory, the French attacked the Mohawk in present-day central New York in 1666, destroying several villages and their winter stores.

After the defeat by the French forces, the Mohawk were forced into a peace treaty that required them to accept Jesuit missionaries in their villages. While there, the Jesuits studied Mohawk and other native languages in order to reach the people. They spoke of Christianity in terms with which the Mohawk could identify. In his work on Tekakwitha, Darren Bonaparte (Mohawk) notes the parallels between some elements of Mohawk and Christian belief. For instance, the Jesuits used the word Karonhià:ke, the Mohawk name for Sky World, as the word for heaven in the Lord’s Prayer in Mohawk. “This was not just a linguistic shortcut, but a conceptual bridge from one cosmology to another.”

The Mohawk rebuilt on the south side of the Mohawk River at what they called Caughnawaga. In 1667, when Kateri was 11 years old, she met the Jesuits Jacques Fremin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron, who had come to the village. Her uncle was against any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity. One of his older daughters had already left Caughnawaga to go to Kahnawake, the Catholic mission village near Montreal.

In the spring of 1675 at age eighteen, Kateri met the Jesuit Father Jacques de Lamberville and started studying the catechism with him.

Conversion and Kahnawake

Judging her ready for true conversion, Lamberville baptized Tekakwitha at the age of 20, on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1676. This is significant because, according to Jesuit policy, baptism was usually withheld for new converts until one was on his deathbed or until the missionaries could be certain that the convert would be committed.

After Catherine was baptized, she remained in Caughnawauga for only another 6 months. Some Mohawk opposed her conversion and accused her of sorcery and sexual promiscuity. Lamberville suggested that she go to the Jesuit mission of Kahnawake, located south of Montreal on the St. Lawrence River, where other native converts had gathered. Catherine joined them in 1677.

The historian Allan Greer notes that most of these early converts to Christianity were women. They lived in a way which they thought was integral to Christianity, dependent on charity. They devoted their bodies and souls to God and participated in mortification of the flesh. There were similar practices among Mohawk traditions, usually carried out by warriors. Despite opposition from the Jesuits, the women of the village continued to practice mortification, usually in groups, claiming it was needed to relieve their people of their past sins. The people of Kahnawake usually followed the directions of the Jesuits; at other times, they evaded their control. On the whole, they wanted to experience the sacred and spiritual life, and they were determined to do this with or without the Jesuits.

Tekakwitha was said to have put thorns on her sleeping mat and lay on them while praying for the conversion and forgiveness of her kinsmen. Piercing the body to draw blood was a traditional practice of the Mohawk and other Iroquois nations. She lived at Kahnawake the remaining two years of her life. She learned more about Christianity under her mentor Anastasia, who taught her about the practice of repenting for one’s sins. When the women learned of nuns and female convents, they wanted to form their own and created an informal association of devout women.

Father Cholonec wrote that Tekakwitha said,

“I have deliberated enough. For a long time my decision on what I will do has been made. I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen Him for husband and He alone will take me for wife”.

The Church considers that in 1679, with her decision on the Feast of the Annunciation, her conversion was truly completed and she became the “first virgin” among the Mohawk.

Mission du Sault St. Louis: Kahnawake

The Jesuits had founded Kahnawake for the religious conversion of the natives. When it began, the natives built longhouses for residences. They also built a longhouse to be used as a chapel by the Jesuits. As a missionary settlement, Kahnawake was at risk of being attacked by nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. (While it attracted other Iroquois, it was predominately Mohawk.)

After Catherine’s arrival, she shared the longhouse of her older sister and her husband. She would have known other people in the longhouse who had migrated from their former village of Gandaouagué (also spelled Caughnawaga). Her mother’s close friend, Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, was clan matron of the longhouse. Anastasia and other Mohawk women introduced Tekakwitha to the regular practices of Christianity.

Chauchetière and Cholenec

Claude Chauchetière and Pierre Cholenec were Jesuit priests who played important roles in Tekakwitha’s life. Both were based in New France and in Kahnawake. Chauchetière was the first to write a biography of Tekakwitha’s life, followed by Cholenec, in 1695 and 1696, respectively. Cholenec arrived in New France in 1672, before Chauchetière. Father Cholenec introduced whips, hair shirts and iron girdles, traditional items of Catholic mortification, to the converts at Kahnawake so they would adopt these rather than use Mohawk practices.

Both Chauchetière and Tekakwitha arrived in Kahnawake the same year, in 1677. He later wrote about having been very impressed by her, as he had not expected a native to be so pious. Chauchetière came to believe that Catherine Tekakwitha was a saint. Jesuits generally thought that the natives needed Christian guidance to be set on the right path. Chauchetière acknowledged that close contact with and deeper knowledge of the natives in Kahnawake changed some of his set notions about the people and about differences among human cultures. In his biography of her, he stressed her “charity, industry, purity, and fortitude.” In contrast, Cholenec stressed her virginity, perhaps to counter stereotypes of promiscuous Indian women.

Corporal mortification

The Jesuits wanted to guide natives and share their Catholic religion, but at this time, they did not provide for natives to be trained or ordained as clergy or religious. The most devout of the natives wanted full access to the religion and believed that some secrets were being held from them. As most converts to Catholicism were women, they comprised the majority of the devout.

Tekakwitha met Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta for the first time in the spring of 1678. Aspiring to devotion, they began to practice mutual flagellation in secret. Cholenec wrote that Catherine could flog herself between one thousand and twelve hundred blows in one session. Tekakwitha’s dedication to ritual mortification became more intense and consuming over the remainder of her life; she included prolonged fasting, flogging, cutting, sleeping on a bed of thorns, and burning herself with hot coals. Marie Skarichions told Catherine and Marie-Thérèse about nuns, female religious, and their role in the Catholic religion. Through their mutual quest, the two women had a strong “spiritual friendship,” as described by the Jesuits.

The two women influenced a circle of associates. When they asked the Jesuits for permission to form a group of native disciples, they were told they were too “young in faith” for such a group. The women continued to practice together, including mortification of the flesh. Marie-Thérèse eventually left the group, supposedly due to personal issues. Catherine tried to reintegrate her into the group until her death. She had often given her guidance. Examples recorded by the priests were the following:

• “Take courage, despite the words of those who have no faith.”
• “Be assured that you are pleasing in the sight of God and that I shall help you when I am with Him.”
• “Never give up mortification.”

Death and appearances

Around the period of Holy Week 1679, friends noted that Tekakwitha was failing. When people knew she had but a few hours left, villagers gathered together, accompanied by the priests Chauchetière and Cholenec. Cholenec provided the last rites. Catherine Tekakwitha died on April 17, 1680 at the age of 24, in the arms of her friend Marie-Therèse. Chauchetière reports her final words were, “I will love you in heaven.”

After her death, the people noticed a physical change. Cholenec later wrote, “This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately.”Tekakwitha is said to have appeared before three individuals in the weeks after her death; Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo (her mentor), Marie-Therèse Tegaiaguenta (her companion) and Father Chauchetière. Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her daughter, she looked up to see Catherine “kneeling at the foot” of her mattress, “holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun”. Marie-Thérèse reported that she was awakened at night by a knocking on her wall, and a voice asked if she were awake, adding, “I’ve come to say good-bye; I’m on my way to heaven.” Marie-Thérèse went outside but saw no one; she heard a voice murmur, “Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I’m going to heaven.” Chauchetière reported seeing Catherine at her grave; he said she appeared in “baroque splendour; for 2 hours he gazed upon her” and “her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy.”

Chauchetière had a chapel built near her gravesite. By 1684, pilgrimages had begun to honour her there. The Jesuits turned her bones to dust and set the ashes within the “newly rebuilt mission chapel.” This symbolized her presence on earth. Her physical remains were sometimes used as relics for healing. Chauchetière and Cholenec wrote accounts of her life.

Epitaph

Tekakwitha’s grave stone reads:

“

Kateri Tekakwitha Ownkeonweke Katsitsiio Teonsitsianekaron The fairest flower that ever bloomed among red men.

”

Because of Tekakwitha’s notable path to chastity, she is often referred to as a lily, a traditional symbol of purity among Roman Catholics and one often used for the Virgin Mary. Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories. Colloquial terms for Tekakwitha are The Lily of the Mohawks (most notable), the Mohawk Maiden, the Pure and Tender Lily, the Flower among True Men, the Lily of Purity and The New Star of the New World. Her tribal neighbors referred to her as “the fairest flower that ever bloomed among the redmen.”‘Her virtues are considered an ecumenical bridge between Mohawk and European cultures.

Religious veneration

For some time after her death, Tekakwitha was considered an honorary yet unofficial patroness of Montreal, Canada, and Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Fifty years after her death, a convent for Native American nuns opened in Mexico. They have prayed for her and support her canonization.

The process for Tekakwitha’s canonization was initiated by United States Catholics in 1884, followed by Canadian Catholics. In January 3, 1943, Pope Pius XII declared her venerable. She was beatified as Catherine Tekakwitha on June 22, 1980 by Pope John Paul II.

On December 19, 2011, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints certified a second miracle through her intercession, signed by Pope Benedict XVI, which paved the way for pending canonization. On February 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI decreed that Tekakwitha be canonized. Speaking in Latin, he used the form “Catharina Tekakwitha”; the official booklet of the ceremony referred to her in English and Italian, as “Kateri Tekakwitha”. She is the first Native American/First Nations woman to qualify for Sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. She is scheduled for canonization in October 2012.

Tekakwitha is featured in three national shrines in the United States: the National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, New York; the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York; and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

A statue of Tekakwitha is installed outside the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, Canada. Another is installed at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Tekakwitha has been featured in recently created religious works. In 2007, the Grand Retablo, a 40-foot high work by Spanish artisans, was installed behind the main altar of the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California. It features Catherine Tekakwitha , Junipero Serra, St. Joseph, and Francis of Assisi.

A bronze statue of Blessed Kateri kneeling in prayer was installed in 2008, created by artist Cynthia Hitschler, along the devotional walkway leading to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Crosse, Wisconsin. Another life-size statue of Blessed Kateri is located at the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima in Lewiston, New York. A bronze figure of Kateri is included on the bronze front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Reputed miracles

Joseph Kellogg was a Protestant child captured by Natives in the eighteenth century and eventually returned to his home. Twelve months later, he caught smallpox. The Jesuits helped treat him, but he was not recovering. They had relics from Tekakwitha’s grave, but did not want to use them on a non-Catholic. One Jesuit told Kellogg that, if he would confess and embody a Roman Catholic, help would come to him. Joseph did so. The Jesuit gave him a piece of decayed wood from Catherine’s coffin, which is said to have made him heal. The historian Greer takes this account to mean that Tekakwitha was known in 18th-century New France, and she was already perceived to have healing abilities.

Other alleged miracles were attributed to Catherine: Father Rémy recovered his hearing and a nun in Montreal was cured by using items formerly belonging to Catherine. In those times, such incidents were evidence that Catherine was possibly a saint. Sainthood is symbolized by events following the death of a person that show the rejection of death. It is also represented by a duality of pain and a neutralisation of the other’s pain (all shown by her reputed miracles in New France). Father Chauchetière told settlers in La Prairie to pray to Catherine for intercession with illnesses. His words and Catherine’s fame were said to reach even Jesuits in China and their converts.

As people believed in her healing powers, some collected earth from her gravesite and wore it in bags as a relic. One woman said she was saved from pneumonia (“grande maladie du rhume”), and gave the pendant to her husband, who was healed from his disease.

Tradition holds that Tekakwitha’s smallpox scars vanished at the time of her death in 1680. Pope Pius XII in 1943 declared this an authentic miracle. Pilgrims to her funeral reported healings.

On December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI approved the second miracle needed for Blessed Kateri’s canonization. The authorized miracle dates from 2006, when a young boy in Washington state survived a severe flesh-eating bacterium. Doctors had been unable to stop the progress of the disease by surgery and advised his parents he was likely to die. As the boy is half Lummi Indian, the parents said they prayed through Tekakwitha for divine intercession, as did their family and friends, and an extended network contacted through their son’s classmates. The boy had received his Last Rites from a Roman Catholic priest before the miracle of the disease stopping its progression took place.

Cultural references

The historian K. I. Koppedrayer has suggested that the Catholic Church fathers’ hagiography of Tekakwitha reflected “some of the trials and rewards of the European presence in the New World.” Based on accounts from two Jesuit priests who knew her, at least 300 books have been published in more than 20 languages on the life of Kateri Tekakwitha.

In addition, Tekakwitha has been featured in novels:

• Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)
• William Vollman, Fathers and Crows (1992), second novel of the Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes series, includes her as a character, together with French colonists and priests.

 

Home Children

Home Children is a common term used to refer to the child migration scheme founded by Annie MacPherson in 1869, under which more than 100,000 children were sent to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa from the United Kingdom.

Australia has apologised for its involvement in the scheme, while in February 2010 UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a formal apology to the families of children who suffered. On 16 November 2009, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney issued a statement that Canada will not apologise to child migrants.

History

The practice of sending poor or orphaned children to British settler colonies, to help alleviate the shortage of labour, began in 1618, with the rounding-up and transportation of 100 vagrant children to the Virginia Colony. Labour shortages in the British colonies also encouraged the kidnapping of children for work in the Americas, and large numbers of children were forcibly emigrated, mostly from Scotland. This practice continued until it was exposed in 1757, following a civil action against Aberdeen businessmen and magistrates for their involvement in the trade.

The Children’s Friend Society was founded in London in 1830, as “The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy through the reformation and emigration of children”. The first group of children was sent to the Cape Colony in South Africa and the Swan River Colony in Australia in 1832 and in August 1833, 230 children were shipped to Toronto and New Brunswick, Canada.

The main pioneers of child migration in the nineteenth century were the Scottish Evangelical Christian, Annie MacPherson, her sister Louisa Birt, and Londoner, Maria Rye. Whilst working with poor children in London in the late 1860s MacPherson was appalled by the child slavery of the matchbox industry and resolved to devote her life to these children. In 1870 she bought a large workshop and turned it into the “Home of Industry”, where poor children could work and be fed and educated. She later became convinced that the real solution for these children lay in emigration to a country of opportunity and started an emigration fund. In the first year of the fund’s operation, 500 children, trained in the London homes, were shipped to Canada. McPherson opened distribution homes in Canada in the towns of Belleville and Galt in Ontario and persuaded her sister, Louisa, to open a third home in the village of Knowlton, seventy miles from Montreal. This was the beginning of a massive operation which sought to find homes and careers for 14,000 of Britain’s needy children.

 

“CHILD EMIGRATION TO CANADA The attention of the Dominion Government has been drawn to the fact that the children sent to Canada from England are street waifs and workhouse paupers, and that the professional philanthropists engaged in the work are largely prompted by mercenary and not charitable motives. A demand will be made that parliament should investigate the matter before voting any money to promote this kind of immigration.”

 

The Star, 18 April 1891

Maria Rye also worked amongst the poor in London and had arrived in Ontario with 68 children (50 of whom were from Liverpool) some months earlier than McPherson, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury and The Times newspaper. Rye, who had been placing women emigrants in Canada since 1867, opened her home at Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1869, and by the turn of the century had settled some 5,000 children, mostly girls, in Ontario.

The emigration schemes were not without their critics and there were many rumours of ill-treatment of the children by their employers and of profiteering by the organisers of the schemes, particularly Maria Rye. In 1874 The London Board of Governors decided to send a representative, named Andrew Doyle, to Canada to visit the homes and the children to see how they were faring. Doyle’s report praised the women and their staff, especially MacPherson, saying that they were inspired by the highest motives, but condemned almost everything else about the enterprise. He said that the attitude of the women in grouping together children from the workhouses, who he said were mostly of good reputation, with street children, who he considered mostly thieves, was naive and had caused nothing but trouble in Canada. He was also critical of the checks made on the children after they were placed with settlers, which in Rye’s case were mostly non-existent, and said that:

Because of Miss Rye’s carelessness and Miss MacPherson’s limited resources, thousands of British children, already in painful circumstances, were cast adrift to be overworked or mistreated by the settlers of early Canada who were generally honest but often hard taskmasters.

The Canadian House of Commons subsequently set up a select committee to examine Doyle’s findings and there was much controversy generated by his report in Britain, but the schemes continued with some changes and were copied in other countries of the British Empire.

In 1909, South African born Kingsley Fairbridge founded the “Society for the Furtherance of Child Emigration to the Colonies” which was later incorporated as the Child Emigration Society. The purpose of the society, which later became the Fairbridge Foundation, was to educate orphaned and neglected children and train them in farming practices at farm schools located throughout the British Empire. Fairbridge emigrated to Australia in 1912, where his ideas received support and encouragement. According to the British House of Commons Child Migrant’s Trust Report, “it is estimated that some 150,000 children were dispatched over a period of 350 years—the earliest recorded child migrants left Britain for the Virginia Colony in 1618, and the process did not finally end until the late 1960s.” It was widely believed by contemporaries that all of these children were orphans, but it is now known that most had living parents some of whom had no idea of the fate of their children after they were left in care homes, and some led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

Child emigration was suspended for economic reasons during the Great Depression of the 1930s but was not completely terminated until the 1970s.

As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were deceived into believing their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them. Many children were welcomed into loving homes, but others were exploited as cheap agricultural labour, or denied proper shelter and education and not allowed to socialise with native children. It was common for Home Children to run away, sometimes finding a caring family or better working conditions.

Exposure and apologies

In 1987 British social worker Margaret Humphreys carried out an investigation leading to the exposure of the child migration scheme and the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust, with the aim of reuniting parents and children. Full details of the scheme only emerged as late as 1998 during a parliamentary inquiry in Britain, which found that many migrant children were subjected to systematic abuse in religious schools in Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

In 1994 Humphreys published a book concerning her research entitled Empty Cradles. In 2010, this book detailing Humphreys’ work, political obstacles, and threats on her life along with the crimes and abuse done to thousands of children by government and religious officials was depicted in the film: Oranges and Sunshine.

Australia

In Australia, such “Child Migrant” children are part of a larger group known as the “Forgotten Australians”. “Forgotten Australians” is a term the Australian Senate has used to describe the estimated 500,000 children who were brought up in orphanages, children’s homes, institutions or foster care in Australia up until the early 1990s. “Child Migrants” refers specifically to the 7000 children who migrated to Australia under assisted child migration schemes. Child migrants were adopted or brought up in children’s homes, institutions, orphanages or foster care. Many of these children experienced neglect and abuse while in institutional care.

At the urging of the “Care Leavers Australia Network”, in August 2001, the Senate Community Affairs References Committee published “Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – Report on child migration,” and followed this in August 2004 with the “Forgotten Australians” report. Both reports concluded with a number of recommendations, one of which was a call for a national apology. Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the government of Australia on 16 November 2009. As of 2009, there were an estimated 7,000 “Child Migrants” currently residing in Australia. The Australian government had contacted about 400 British child migrants for advice on how the apology should be delivered. Australia’s Roman Catholic Church had publicly apologised in 2001 to British and Maltese child migrants who suffered abuse including rape, whippings and slave labour in religious institutions. A £1 million travel fund was set up by the British Government for former child migrants to visit their families in the UK. The Australian Government later supplemented this fund.

Canada

After the apology by the Australian government, the Canadian Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, said

There’s no need for Canada to apologise for abuse and exploitation suffered by thousands of poor children shipped here from Britain starting in the nineteenth century … the issue has not been on the radar screen here, unlike Australia where there’s been a long-standing interest. The reality is that, here in Canada, we are taking measures to recognise that sad period, but there is, I think, limited public interest in official government apologies for everything that’s ever been unfortunate or [a] tragic event in our history.

Canada did proclaim 2010 the “Year of the British Home Child” and on 1 September 2010, Canada Post released a commemorative stamp to honour those who were sent to Canada. In the province of Ontario, the British Home Child Day Act, 2011 makes September 28 in each year ‘British Home Child Day’ to “…recognize and honour the contributions of the British home children who established roots in Ontario”.

United Kingdom

On Wednesday, 23 February 2010, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown issued an official apology for the “shameful” child resettlement programme and announced a £6 million fund designed to compensate the families affected by the “misguided” programme.

 

Adrienne Louise Clarkson

Adrienne Louise Clarkson  is a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada, the 26th since Canadian Confederation.

Clarkson arrived in Canada with her family in 1941 as a refugee from Hong Kong and was raised in Ottawa, Ontario. After receiving a number of university degrees, Clarkson worked as a producer and broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and a journalist for various magazines. Her first diplomatic posting came in the early 1980s, when she promoted Ontario culture in France and other European countries. She was in 1999 appointed as governor general by Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien, to replace Roméo LeBlanc as viceroy, and she occupied the post until succeeded by Michaëlle Jean in 2005. While Clarkson’s appointment as the Canadian vicereine was generally welcomed at first, she caused some controversy during her time serving as the Queen’s representative, mostly due to costs incurred in the operation of her office, as well as a somewhat anti-monarchist attitude toward the position.

On October 3, 2005, Clarkson was sworn into the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, giving her the accordant style of The Honourable; however, as a former governor general of Canada, Clarkson is entitled to be styled for life with the superior form of The Right Honourable. She subsequently published her memoirs, founded the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and became Colonel-in-Chief of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

Family and early life

Clarkson’s ancestry lies with the Hakka in Taishan, Guangdong, China, from where her paternal grandfather (伍培 Pinyin: Wǔ Péi) emigrated in the late 19th century to Chiltern, Australia. There, he operated a general store called Willie Ah Poy Fruitier and Confectioner, Ah Poy being his name in the vocative, based on the Taishanese pronunciation, and what Australian immigration officials heard Poy enunciate in response to their request for his name. Poy’s first son, William (伍英才 Pinyin: Wǔ Yīngcái), was born in Victoria but was later sent back to Taishan, from where he made his way to Hong Kong. There, he worked with his father for the Canadian government and met and married Ethel Poy, with whom he had two children: Neville, born October 29, 1935, and Adrienne, born February 10, 1939. The elder went on to become a plastic surgeon in Toronto and married Vivienne Poy, who herself became a Senator.

Clarkson describes one of her earliest memories as that of hiding in several Hong Kong basements during the Japanese invasion of the territory in 1941. It was only through his Canadian government connections that her father gained his family the opportunity in 1942 to flee the occupation to Canada, as part of the repatriating of Canadian government staff from the fallen city. Even so, the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, prevented the Poys’ immediate entry into the country until the Department of External Affairs intervened and cited an unfilled quota in the prisoner of war exchange programme with the Japanese Imperial Forces that would permit the Poy family free passage into Canada. The family settled in Ottawa, though William had lost almost all of his substantial fortune, and the Poys lived in a cramped duplex. Clarkson attended public school in the city and, in October 1951, was lined up with her class to see Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II), as the royal motorcade passed through the city.

Education and first marriage

St. Hilda’s College, the women’s college at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, where Clarkson enrolled in 1956

Clarkson graduated from Lisgar Collegiate Institute in 1956, afterwards enrolling at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College. During her time there, Clarkson won a Governor General’s Medal in English before graduating in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in the subject, and then travelling with her parents to East and Southeast Asia. Clarkson went on to obtain her master’s degree in English literature, also at the University of Toronto.

She began post-graduate work in 1962, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, with a thesis on the poems of George Meredith, and the following year, married Stephen Clarkson, a University of Toronto political science professor. Together, the couple had three daughters: Kyra, born in 1969, and twins Blaise and Chloe, born in 1971; at the age of nine months, however, Chloe died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Adrienne and Stephen divorced four years later, with Stephen being awarded full custody of the two surviving children, and, subsequently, Stephen’s second wife, Christina McCall, adopted the two girls, who eventually became estranged from their mother for several decades.

Journalism

After being introduced by a college friend in 1964 to the producers of Take 30— an afternoon variety show run by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)— Clarkson was hired by the Crown corporation as a freelance book reviewer. This marked the start of her nearly 30 year career with the CBC, as, after less than a year in her initial position, Clarkson was promoted to co-host, thus becoming one of the first members of a visible minority to obtain a prominent position on Canadian television. She remained with Take Thirty for a decade, while also branching into print journalism by becoming a regular contributor to such publications as Maclean’s and Chatelaine. Similarly, Clarkson wrote and published her own romantic fiction novels: A Lover More Condoling in 1968, and Hunger Trace in 1970. Beyond these, her non-fiction book True to You in My Fashion: A Woman Talks to Men About Marriage— a collection of interviews with men on the subject of divorce— was published in 1971, during which time her first marriage had hit a hard patch.

In 1974, Clarkson began her own public affairs television show Adrienne at Large, though this was not particularly successful and lasted less than four months. The series did, however, allow her to travel extensively outside of Canada, as she recorded segments for the show in locations such as South Africa (where she interviewed Nadine Gordimer and Helen Suzman), and her native Hong Kong. With the cancellation of the show, the CBC created in 1975 the hard journalism programme The Fifth Estate as a means for meeting Canadian content requirements. Clarkson was brought on to co-host with Warner Troyer for the first season, but, due to persistent problems between the two, Troyer left the series, leaving Clarkson to host with Peter Reilly and Eric Malling thereafter. She focused on investigative journalism and gained prominence after an in-depth study of the McCain family’s business practices led a Senator to publicly accuse her of being un-naturalised.

After winning several ACTRA Awards, Clarkson ended her job with The Fifth Estate in 1983 and was subsequently appointed by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, John Black Aird, on the advice of his Premier, William Davis, as the Agent General for Ontario in France, acting in this role as a cultural liaison between the province and the country, as well as promoting Ontario in several other European states. After five years at this post, she returned to private business, becoming president and publisher of McClelland and Stewart, at a time when the publisher was in financial difficulty. Clarkson was not only unsuccessful at improving the company’s fiscal problems, she was also highly unpopular with employees, and resigned herself after 18 months that saw several protest resignations; the imprint Adrienne Clarkson Books does, however, remain with McClelland and Stewart.

Clarkson opted to return to television, hosting through mid 1988 Adrienne Clarkson Summer Festival, which became popular enough to be picked up and repackaged as Adrienne Clarkson Presents, an arts show that was critically acclaimed, but which never received high ratings. After four years of hosting the show, Clarkson was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada for her long media career, which included hosting more than 3,500 television programmes, as well as assisting charitable organisations, such as the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Horizons of Canada, and International PEN. Further, as host and executive producer of Adrienne Clarkson Presents, she received numerous Gemini Award nominations— winning in 1993 for best host in a light information, variety, or performing arts programme or series— and was the 1995 recipient of the Donald Brittain Award, a special honour given every year for the best social/political documentary programme. In the same year, she also won a Gémeaux Award (the French language equivalent of a Gemini) for Adrienne Clarkson Presents. Her precise diction and sometimes haughty demeanour did sometimes become the occasional subject of satire, however; most famously in the CBC Radio series Double Exposure, where co-creator Linda Cullen mimicked Clarkson with the line: “I’m Adrienne Clarkson, and you’re not” (derived from Chevy Chase’s early Saturday Night Live refrain).

Throughout the 1990s— during which time she also wrote and produced films, such as ‘The Lust In His Eye: Visions of James Wilson Morrice and Borduas and Me and Artemisia— there was much speculation that Clarkson would soon be given a high level appointment by the Queen-in-Council. This was finally realized in 1995 when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and then Minister of Canadian Heritage Michel Dupuy advised Governor General Roméo LeBlanc to appoint Clarkson as chair of the board of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and later, to the Canadian War Museum as well, all while she continued to host her show. It was during this time that the War Museum announced the decision to build the structure which now houses its collection, and which Clarkson opened as Governor General in May 2005.

Governor General of Canada

Clarkson was the first visible minority to be appointed governor general, as well as the second female (after Jeanne Sauvé), the first Chinese Canadian, and the first without a military or political background. She was also the second person to have been appointed to the Order of Canada prior to nomination as governor general-designate, after Jules Léger. Clarkson brought with her a new approach to the governor generalcy, and dedicated much of her self imposed mandate to drawing national attention to Northern Canada.

As governor general-designate

It was on September 8, 1999, announced from the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada that Elizabeth II had, by commission under the royal sign-manual and Great Seal of Canada, approved Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s choice of Clarkson to succeed Roméo LeBlanc as the Queen’s representative. At that time, it was revealed that, with Clarkson being accompanied to Rideau Hall by her longtime partner, John Ralston Saul, the official appointment would be bringing an unofficial pair to the viceregal post,in that the governor general would not be the only person actively exploring Canadian theory and culture.

In office

Bond with the military

On October 8, 1999, Clarkson was sworn in as the 26th Governor General of Canada, and was soon actively participating in her role, becoming immediately instrumental in the final stages of the repatriation of Canada’s unknown soldier from France. Her eulogy read at the tomb’s dedication ceremony on May 28, 2000, was described by the Royal Canadian Legion as “powerful”, and led journalist John Fraser to state: “You have to go back pretty far to find anyone who stirred national emotions the way Clarkson did with her magnificent speech…” In the same vein, after a decade of inaction on the part of the Cabinet, Clarkson moved to have Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry honoured with the Commander-in-Chief’s Unit Commendation, on behalf of the Queen,beginning a long relationship between Clarkson and the regiment.

Following the terrorist attacks United States on September 11, 2001, Clarkson praised Operation Yellow Ribbon, saying “communities across the country selflessly opened their homes and hearts to stranded air travellers,” and, on September 14, 2001, presided over a memorial service on Parliament Hill for the victims of the attacks, which was attended by over 100,000 people— the largest single vigil ever seen in Canada’s capital. On her cabinet’s advice, Clarkson subsequently dispatched Canadian soldiers to assist in the invasion of Afghanistan, and, in her role of representing the Queen as commander-in-chief of the Canadian Forces, visited in 2002 the Canadian troops serving in the Afghan theatre. This trip, plus similar ones she undertook during her tenure— such as those to Kosovo to meet with Canadian troops, to the Persian Gulf to spend Christmas with members of the Armed Forces on a Canadian destroyer, and again to Afghanistan to spend New Year’s with Canadian soldiers— won her acclaim for being the first governor general since at least 1945 to take seriously the duties associated with the commander-in-chief title, which was credited for helping to boost pride in the Canadian Forces.

More robust viceregal office

Clarkson took a proactive role in increasing the stature of the Canadian viceregal office, travelling widely, hosting lavish state events, and hosting conferences and forums. However, criticism soon ensued over the way her office was spending Crown funds, as, during her tenure, expenditures at Rideau Hall increased 200%; the budget for 2003 was estimated at CAD$41 million. Part of this increase was due to accounting reasons; some costs that had previously been worked into the budgets of ministries were transferred to the governor general’s office. But, the event that the media mostly focused on was Clarkson’s 2003, 19 day circumpolar “northern identity” tour, which included state visits to Russia, Finland, and Iceland, and the attendance of 50 other Canadians prominent in the fields of arts, culture, and science. In an atmosphere tainted by several spending scandals in the government, the trip’s estimated CAD$1 million cost was attacked as a waste of money. All together, this resulted in some politicians calling for the role of the governor general to be reduced or even for the position to be eliminated, and a poll taken late in 2003 found a majority of respondents thought Clarkson was “too grand” for the office. In an unprecedented move for a vicereine, Clarkson, and not her ministers, personally addressed the controversy, explaining that she had been asked to undertake the state visits by her prime minister. Still, though the Office of the Governor General defended the tour as successful, particularly with regard to the warm reception Clarkson received in Russia and during her meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and it was the Department of Foreign Affairs that commissioned and paid for the trip with funds approved by parliament, when the end cost for the trips came in at CAD$5 million, a scheduled continuation of the tour that would have included visits to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Greenland was scrapped by the federal government in early 2004. John Fraser later stated Prime Minister Paul Martin left Clarkson to defend herself because he “clearly didn’t like her very much” and “even if it was Madam Clarkson’s (and John Ralston Saul’s) own imaginative idea, it had been officially supported by the government, and no appointed high official should ever be abandoned like that. Not only should she have been defended publicly, we were made to look foolish in the eyes of the countries who had to be informed that the trip to such great allies as Sweden, Norway and Denmark (plus its province of Greenland) was called off.”

From that time on, Clarkson and her office faced intense scrutiny. By November 2004, it was announced that Clarkson’s budget would be cut by ten percent, despite the fact that parliament itself had approved her budget each year. Then, in March 2005, she again faced questions about spending after it was reported that she had been advised by Martin to make official visits to Spain, the Netherlands, and Russia in order to attend the state funeral of the victims of the Madrid terrorist bombings, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, and participate in Victory in Europe Day celebrations in Moscow, respectively. Clarkson waited until less than two weeks after the end of her time serving as governor general before she publicly criticised Jean Chrétien and the Cabinet under his chairmanship for not defending the viceregal office, and reaffirmed that she had been asked by the Department of Foreign Affairs to take each of her state trips in the first place.

At the same time, Clarkson’s unorthodox mode of exercising the Office of the Governor General led to negative critiques of how she carried out a number of ceremonial duties. In June 2004, the Governor General and her office were targeted by Canadian monarchists, who noted that, prior to the ceremony to recognize Canada’s involvement at Juno Beach in the D-Day landings of 1944, Government House claimed that Clarkson would be attending as Canada’s head of state and, at the event, the Queen, who also attended the ceremony, was relegated to third place in precedence behind Clarkson and Saul. Jack Granatstein alleged that this arrangement had displeased the Queen and “there was fury.” Government House later retracted its head of state statement, saying that it was the error of a junior official, but why the protocol was altered was never explained. At Remembrance Day ceremonies, the Governor General also caused a stir when she eschewed the tradition of placing the first wreath at the cenotaph in favour of doing so simultaneously with her husband; a practice that was discontinued by Clarkson’s viceregal successor. Then, during a visit to Vancouver in September of the same year, Clarkson was booed and hissed at by a small but vocal group of protesters. She was on a goodwill tour of a poor area of the city; however, the protesters argued that her visit was nothing more than a publicity stunt to try to gain some of her lost popular support to get her time in office extended.

In January 2005, disappointment was further expressed over Clarkson’s failure to attend a memorial service for Alberta’s late lieutenant governor, Lois Hole. Rideau Hall issued a statement saying the Governor General was, at the time, abroad representing Canada at the inauguration of the President of Ukraine, Victor Yushchenko. However, the inauguration was postponed, and it was felt that Clarkson could have returned to Canada for the service. When it was later reported by the Toronto Sun and The Globe and Mail that Clarkson would wait in Paris, France, for the rescheduled presidential investiture, more outrage was expressed in the press, which was only compounded when Rideau Hall informed the public that the Governor General would also attend a “long-standing engagement” with the Queen at Sandringham House, contradicting reports that Buckingham Palace had said the dinner was actually booked at the last minute. In response, some monarchists began lobbying Clarkson to resign, had she willingly used the Queen for publicity and damage control purposes.

Extended tenure

Regardless of the controversies, Clarkson was asked, and agreed, to remain in the Queen’s service for an additional year beyond the traditional, but not official, five year period. Though the decision was met with mixed feelings from across the country, Prime Minister Martin had advised the Queen to retain Clarkson as her vicereine in order to provide stability while the country faced potential constitutional difficulties arising from a minority government; there had been speculation at the end of 2004 over whether or not Clarkson would have to become directly involved in politics should the Cabinet led by Paul Martin lose the confidence of the House of Commons, leaving the Governor General to decide whether or not to ask the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, then Stephen Harper, to form a government, or to call a general election. Ultimately, circumstances played out so that Clarkson’s personal involvement was rendered unnecessary.

Soon after, however, on July 8, 2005, Clarkson was admitted to hospital in Toronto in order to have a pacemaker implanted. She recovered quickly, and returned to her viceregal duties in the same month. To coincide with that year’s 50th anniversary of the appointment of the first Canadian-born governor general, Clarkson moved Order of Canada investitures from their typical location in Rideau Hall to various places around the country. Also, on July 23, 2005, Clarkson was inducted as an honorary member of the Kainai Chieftainship, during a traditional ceremony held at Red Crow Park, near Standoff, Alberta, after which she was adopted into the Blood Tribe with the name Grandmother of Many Nations; this made Clarkson the first governor general since Edward Schreyer in 1984 to be made an honorary chief, and only the third woman to be inducted since the creation of the chieftainship. Then, on September 15, 2005, Clarkson announced the creation of the Governor General’s Northern Medal, to be awarded annually to a citizen whose actions and achievements had contributed to the evolution and constant reaffirmation of the Canadian North as part of the national identity.

During her last days in office, Clarkson’s popularity with the Armed Forces was expressed in a large farewell ceremony mounted by the military; the first ever such send-off for a governor general. Similarly, on the morning of September 26, 2005, Clarkson attended a celebration on Parliament Hill in which members of parliament thanked her for her work and presented her with the viceregal flag that flew atop the Peace Tower when Clarkson was present in parliament. Then, following tradition, Clarkson and Saul planted on Rideau Hall’s grounds, two ceremonial trees (swamp white oaks) to mark the end of the former’s time in office, and the next day, Clarkson’s time as vicereine ended when her successor, Michaëlle Jean, was sworn in as Governor General of Canada. However, Clarkson caused yet another controversy when she decided, with Jean’s consent, to attend Jean’s investiture, marking the first time in more than a century that a governor general had attended the swearing-in of his or her successor.

Legacy

Clarkson was seen as having brought new life to the post of governor general, receiving praise through her first years in office for being a more modern governor general who brought increased public attention to the position; Michaëlle Jean recognised Clarkson as having “infused the office with a new energy,” for “promot[ing] artists and their achievements from across Canada,” and for her “close work with aboriginal communities.” Clarkson was further praised for her devotion to the armed forces and remembrance, and was credited for breathing new life into the Canadian monarchy as a whole; Mailo’ Ken Wiwa stated in The Globe and Mail: “that Adrienne Clarkson, once a refugee, represents the Queen here in Canada is, for me, the singular most important reason for believing that the monarchy is relevant to Canada’s emerging identity. Her role may only be ceremonial and symbolic, but as the enduring quality of the Royal Family attests, you can never underestimate the power of myth. Even— or rather, especially— in this iconoclastic age.” Clarkson and her husband also travelled across Canada and met more Canadians than any other governor general in Canadian history and, unlike many other state figures, Clarkson also wrote most of her own speeches, which were noted for being simultaneously intellectual and approachable. Clarkson’s tenure was also notable for her patronage of all the arts— making such efforts as ensuring the governor general’s study at Rideau Hall had copies of every book that had won the Governor General’s Awards for literature— and for sports, as demonstrated in her creation on September 14, 2005, of the Clarkson Cup for women’s hockey in Canada. John Fraser in 2012 stated of Clarkson: “…[N]o one, in the whole history of Rideau Hall, ever evoked the country quite as effectively…”

Other summaries of Clarkson’s time as governor general, however, found that the increased travel abroad attracted negative attention to the viceregal post over costs and caused conflict between domestic duties and foreign obligations. Also, it was observed that Clarkson had succumbed too easily to the desires of her advisors— both in the prime minister’s and Privy Council offices, as well as amongst the staff of Government House— to turn the viceregal post into something it was not: Canada’s head of state. Clarkson had expressed admiration for the Queen, was said to understand “the lustre the Crown affords,” and to have “shudder[ed] a little in sympathy with members of the Royal Family at the degree of intrusion into their lives they must bear.” But the systematic downplaying of the monarch led to confusion over who was head of state and there was a sense that, by taking this view, Clarkson and her office were overturning the long-standing theory that all the viceroys and their respective jurisdictions are equal under a sovereign who reigns consistently over the whole country. When Clarkson attended a provincial occasion, her protocol officers insisted that she take precedence over the pertinent lieutenant governor and denied knowledge of the established order in which the lieutenant governor, as a direct representative of the Queen in a province, takes precedence at a provincial function over all other attendees, save for the monarch. These situations would result in “precedence battles”, in which the provincial authorities would frequently acquiesce to pressure and ultimatums from Rideau Hall. Clarkson also took the place of the monarch in presenting to the next vicereine the Chancellor’s insignia of the Order of Canada, thereby breaking the order’s “first and oldest tradition”; a move Canada’s expert on honours, Christopher McCreery, called “a rather bizarre turn of events.” The Monarchist League of Canada even reported that a member of parliament had telephoned to ask if they had ever before heard of the eruption of booing at the mention of the governor general’s name, as had apparently happened in the MP’s riding when Clarkson was spoken about.

Post-viceregal life

After leaving Rideau Hall, Clarkson and Saul purchased a new home in Toronto’s The Annex district, taking possession at the end of September 2005. Clarkson then worked towards founding and co-chairing the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and signed a deal with Penguin Canada to publish her memoirs in two books. The first, Heart Matters, was published in September 2006, making Clarkson the third former governor general to release an autobiography. In the first half of the book, Clarkson outlined her childhood in Ottawa and her career in the CBC, while the second half covered her time as governor general, and contained her own positive views of Jean Chrétien and negative views of Paul Martin. The book was met with mixed reviews, however, and her expressed opinion that future nominees for appointment as governor general should be voted on in the House of Commons was condemned by monarchists, though supported by Macleans.

During an October 2006 interview on CBC Newsworld with Don Newman, Clarkson spoke her views on the nature of the position of Governor General of Canada, stating that while the Queen remained popular with Canadians, the governor general was now the direct representative of “the Crown”, and not of the monarch, therefore making the viceroy Canada’s actual head of state. This was a theory contrary to those of Eugene Forsey, the government of Canada itself, and numerous others, but was inline with Edward McWhinney. Into 2009, Clarkson continued to promote this notion, stating at a constitutional law conference that the governor general embodied the nation and the prime minister’s nominee for the viceregal role should thus be vetted by a parliamentary committee, in a similar format to Congressional Confirmation Hearings in the United States. She then went further to say that the candidate should also submit to a televised quiz on Canadiana. Though a University of Toronto political scientist stated this would “strengthen the legitimacy of the governor-general as a non-partisan umpire,” the editorial board of the Montreal Gazette said that the position being “not elected is an asset, not a handicap” and Clarkson’s process would undermine the impartiality of the viceroy.

Clarkson was on February 7, 2007, appointed by the Queen as Colonel-in-Chief of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, replacing the Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and commented that she was “deeply honoured” and proud to accept the role. The ceremony to mark her appointment took place on March 17 at the regimental headquarters in Edmonton. Clarkson is also vice-chair of the board of directors of the dance company La La La Human Steps.

Religion

A member of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Clarkson is a devout Anglican, as is her entire family going back five generations, with her uncle being a priest in the Anglican Church in Hong Kong. Clarkson chose to attend Trinity College at the University of Toronto because of its Anglican associations, and, while there, she casually dated divinity student Michael Peers, who would later become an archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. This friendship was maintained over the years, and Peers presided over Clarkson’s marriage to Saul, officiated at her installation as governor general, and presided over the funerals of both her parents. Clarkson is also credited for returning prayer to the viceregal installation ceremony, which had been removed when Roméo LeBlanc was installed in 1995.

Clarkson was admired by the faithful for being open about her religious beliefs during her time in Rideau Hall. In a December 2005 interview with the Anglican Journal, she was quoted as saying about the Anglican elements of her heraldic arms that “I am an Anglican and that is part of my life; that I really feel at home in the Anglican Communion.” In this same interview, she criticized conservatives for creating what she called the “deep divide” in the Anglican church regarding homosexuality. Clarkson was also noted for visiting Anglican churches around Canada on her many tours, saying that she enjoyed seeing how the church fit in communities in all parts of Canada. Her public faith, however, was also the cause of controversy: She received particular criticism when she was seen taking communion in a Catholic church since that denomination does not permit open communion.

 

K-tel International

K-tel International is an “As-Seen-On-TV” company, which is most noted for its compilation music albums, such as “The Super Hits” series, “The Dynamic Hits” series and “The Number One Hits” series. It is also known for “The Record Selector,” “The Micro-Roast,” “The Tote-a-Tune portable stereo,” and many other products.

History

The company has been in business since the late 1960s and is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They also have subsidiaries or other controlled entities in the U.S., the UK and Germany. In the UK the company is known as “K-tel UK Limited.” In the U.S. and Canada it is known as “K-tel International,” with US-distributed compilation albums distributed from Plymouth, MN.

The founder of K-Tel was Philip Kives. Kives, a demonstration salesman who had previously sold cookware door-to-door and in a department store, used television advertising in 1962 to sell Teflon-coated frying pans to a large-scale audience. Kives bought and marketed a number of other products from Seymour Popeil, father of Ronco founder Ron Popeil, such as the “Dial-o-matic,” a type of food slicer that allowed the user to “dial in” the thickness of slices produced, the Veg-O-Matic, and the “Feather Touch Knife.”  The combination of inexpensive goods, mail-order distribution and a simple sales pitch were a novel combination in television advertising in the early 1960s. Kives took his “Feather Touch Knife” on the road to Australia starting in August 1965 and by Christmas had sold one million knives with a net profit of one dollar a knife.

K-Tel was formally founded in 1968. After a successful decade in the 1970s, the company expanded rapidly both through acquisitions in its core area of business and diversification into other areas. Kives’ cousin Raymond Kives was president of K-Tel USA from 1967 to 1977, and president of K-Tel Europe from 1977 to 1984. K-Tel diversified in its early years, and Raymond began to concentrate on building the USA market and music sales while Phil concentrated on housewares. The company acquired rival Candlelite Records in 1980, and also formed subsidiaries in areas such as real estate and oil exploration. By 1984, the high-risk ventures had sapped the company’s fortunes and K-Tel was unable to meet the payroll. The publicly-traded U.S. entity K-Tel International filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Mickey Elfenbein, Mr. Kives’ nephew was appointed CEO of K-Tel International in 1993 Elfenbein remained CEO of the company into the late 1990s, during which period the company achieved a resurgence in worldwide sales primarily of music-related products and had a successful NASDAQ IPO trading under the symbol KTEL. Elfenbein was recognized by Business Week Magazine in 1994 as the CEO of the 7th best publicly traded company in the US, based on growth and profitability.

Music business

In 1966, Kives released the company’s first compilation album, a collection of 25 country songs titled 25 Great Country Artists Singing Their Original Hits. Kives never intended K-Tel to be a music business, saying “I had to do something else, I thought why not do a music album? I thought it’d be a one-off. Everybody said ‘that won’t work’. Now all the major labels do compilation albums, but mine was the first.”

Ray and Phil Kives and K-Tel recruited Australian Don Reedman (Don is the twin brother of Peter Reedman who was already working in the Australian office) help set up the UK-based division of K-Tel Records in the early 1970s, with Ian Howard as Managing Director of the U.K. operation. Ian Howard recommended to Phil Kives that he hire Don Reedman as Ian Howard and Peter Reedman worked together as Managers’ of the Australian boutique at Expo 67 in Montreal, both worked together back in 1966 for Australian retailer David Jones Limited prior to joining K-Tel.

The company built the business of releasing compilation albums that combined material from a number of popular artists onto a single theme album using the tag line “20 Original Hits! 20 Original Stars!”. The company could earn revenue in this way, because they negotiated directly with artists and labels for the rights to reproduce their original recordings, in the process also securing a long-term asset through adding those recordings to their catalog. The compilation albums largely relied on the pop charts of the time but concentrated on a specific musical genre: 20 Power Hits, for example, released in 1973, mostly concentrated on rock, though it had “Yesterday Once More” by The Carpenters on it. Some compilations were made for the disco music market (Night Moves, 1979), whereas others featured older music (Summer Cruisin’, made in about 1976, featured mostly 50s music).

The company also created original records, the most notable of which were the Hooked on Classics series of classical recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1995, the company released the “Club Mix” dance compilation series, which became the highest selling music series in the company’s history, with several RIAA Gold and Platinum certifications. The Club Mix dance series was created and initially produced by Elfenbein’s son, Mark Elfenbein, who was VP of A&R for the company in the early 1990s.

Today, K-Tel remains a memorable brand associated with TV marketing and the music industry. The company now leverages their significant back catalog in a digital rights and distribution offering that supplies content to large online music retailers such as iTunes, Puretracks and Amazon.com.

Dot com bubble’s effect on K-tel

In mid-April 1998 during the Dot com bubble, news that the company was simply expanding its business to the Internet sent the thinly traded stock shooting from about $3 to over $7 in one day (3:1 split adjusted). In spite of the early gains, the company was deemed by many to be a complete bomb, and the short interest of the stock swelled. The price of the stock peaked at about $34 in early May, and began to decline, reaching $12 in November and eventually pennies. The vicious advance was fueled mainly by a massive short squeeze that financially devastated traders who held short positions and were either “bought in” or simply forced to cover the positions at very high prices because of the great losses.

K-Tel was unable to sustain the growth and profitability. The company completed a 1 for 5000 reverse split on July 18, 2007, reducing the number of public shareholders to under 300 and allowing the company to delist itself.It changed its symbol to KTLI and moved from the NASDAQ market to the Over-The-Counter market.