BLAINE LAKE, Sask. – Jim Fred Popoff was an 11-year-old orphan when he came to live in a cave overlooking the North Saskatchewan River.
He was one of 200 Doukhobors who in 1899 chose this spot near the north-central Saskatchewan town of Blaine Lake as their home. The panoramic views of the river valley and its expansive flood plains were only part of the appeal. The site was near year-round spring water and nestled into an embankment that would shelter them through a brutal prairie winter.
He resided with as many as 40 others in a 400 sq. foot cave for five years in the short-lived village of Ospennia.
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The cave dwelling consisted of logs, with wooden pegs and clay to hold it together. The back wall was the embankment, the floor prairie clay and the roof sod.
Popoff’s great-granddaughter Brenda Cheveldayoff still farms here but all that remains of the cave is a few greying tilted walls with poplars growing in and around it.
She grew up hearing stories about these early settlers from her father, history buff Samuel James Popoff, and set out to find and preserve the dwellings that mirrored the pescheri (cave) dwellings they occupied in their native Transcaucasia in Russia.
Discovering what could be the only existing structure of its kind in Saskatchewan, she saw its potential as a heritage site and tourist attraction that also could be a sideline for the family’s farm.
“I want to educate everybody about Doukhobor culture,” Cheveldayoff said.
She has invested $6,000 in the project and hopes to receive grants to continue the work on what could one day be a provincial heritage site. She also hopes to restore a nearby chicken coop and barn, built by Doukhobors in the decades after Ospennia’s demise in 1912.
Marion Burak said the project undertaken by Cheveldayoff has renewed interest within and about the ethnic group, which also settled farther east near Verigin, Sask.
“It’s sort of a reflection of what the Doukhobor people have contributed to the province,” said Burak.
Archeologists and volunteers have scoured the village and cave site, unearthing cookware, an oven door, drawers and tools. These are neatly labelled and displayed nearby in a large Quonset, alongside a clay oven, clothing and numerous period artifacts.
Cheveldayoff hosted 1,000 visitors at this site in July to view the original structure and walk inside a sod and wood replica with little more than the door visible from a pathway down the hill.
The Doukhobors came here to live in permanent exile, after years of persecution in Russia for their pacifist views and communal lifestyles.
They came with little money and few belongings, but received financial help from Leo Tolstoy and the Quakers to finance their journey overseas via cattle boats.
Some went to the Mediterranean island of Cypress but found the climate too severe. About 7,500 came to Canada, with as many as 2,000 settling in Saskatchewan. About 12,000 remained to eke out an existence in Russia.
About 1,450 people came by wagon to Duck Lake, Sask., before the smaller group moved to Ospennia, where they were promised a communal lifestyle and freedom from military service.
“They had no idea what they were coming to but they knew they were coming for freedom,” said Doreen Konkin of Blaine Lake, whose grandparents once lived in the caves.
Five babies were born in the caves, but conditions were primitive and at least one baby was buried here.
Many also died from diseases like diphtheria, while others succumbed to the cold or were stricken with rickets.
The men went to Winnipeg to make money to buy horses and equipment, while the women hitched themselves to plows to support their vegetarian diets, breaking 100 acres of virgin prairie.
Later a local native loaned them horses, the beginning of an interdependent relationship between the two peoples.
As pacifists, they refused to pledge allegiance to the Canadian flag so could not participate in the homesteading act. Instead they had to buy land privately from others.
That compromise created a split with a Sons of Freedom sect of Doukhobors, who moved to British Columbia around 1908 to create a colony and continue a communal lifestyle.
The Doukhobors continue to be a presence in Blaine Lake, where a Doukhobor prayer home built in 1931 still provides regular services.
