Their radical beliefs didn’t sit well with the Russian Tsar, and the men were forced to fight in the war. After refusing, at Midnight on June 29, 1895, 7000 Doukhobors burned their muskets to protest their conscription in the Russian army. This became known as “The Burning Of The Arms.” The first ever pacifist protest that is still celebrated to this day as Peter’s Day. For this defiance, the men were beaten and jailed. With the Tsar unable to break their beliefs, a deal was eventually made where the group could instead leave the country for good. The Doukhobors' ideals and plight struck a chord with a group of Quakers as well as the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. With financial backing from both, in 1899, around 7500 Doukhobors set sail for Canada in what was the largest migration of a single group at one time in Canadian history. This number wasn’t surpassed until over 400,000 immigrants made their way to Canada in 2022, largely made up of Ukrainians. A group who were also under persecution from Russia. It would seem history had repeated itself. After landing in Canada to open arms, these agrarians made their way to Saskatchewan, where large sections of rugged land were reserved exclusively for them to restart their lives as farmers; living communally, working the land, and educating their children at home. What started as a warm welcome soon shifted to icy suspicion over their unusual lifestyle, and again, their way of life came under scrutiny by both the locals and the government. Eventually, pressures on the group over communal land ownership from the government became too much and they split into three groups: The Independents, who chose to live and farm their homesteads individually, mainly in Saskatchewan. The Community Doukhobors, who chose to live and work communally, many of whom moved into British Columbia, and The Sons Of Freedom/Freedomites, who rejected all materialism and earthly authority. The latter group took their beliefs to the extreme and began to protest against material possessions entirely. They demonstrated this by marching the streets naked, burning their clothes & money, and occasionally burning down property and schools. Naturally, this radical group made more headlines than the ones quietly farming the land, and in general, Doukhobors developed an unfavorable reputation in Canada. In reaction to the Freedomites' disdain for government rules and public education, BC RCMP eventually rolled out “Operation Snatch”. Between 1953 and 1959, close to 200 children from Freedomite families were forcefully taken from their homes and placed in an overcrowded, prison-like New Denver school. Family visits took place every couple of weeks or months, depending on what was deemed suitable child behavior, and were often done so through a chainlink fence under police supervision. These days, the Doukhobors as a whole have transitioned to a typical Canadian lifestyle. It’s more likely the family next door is of Doukhobor descent and maybe making Pirohi in the kitchen on weekends and meeting up with other like minded descendants once a year on June 29th to celebrate Peter’s Day. I met up with Doukhobor descendant Jonathan Kalmakoff, whose great-grandparents were on the original boat to Canada in 1899. Jonathan is Canada's foremost Doukhobor researcher and writer of Doukhobor history, and I was lucky enough to land an invitation to his house for a hands-on Pirohi class with him and his daughter Emily. A traditional Doukhobor dish, Pirohi translates in English to ‘hand pie’. According to Jonathan, Pirohi often needs clarification with Pyrahi, a misspelling of the same item, and is regularly confused with Ukrainian pyrogies/pierogi/perogies, which are completely different and more like the Doukhobor vareniki. The Pirohi is a dough-based delight filled with an array of options that would typically depend on what’s being harvested at the time. Today we’re cooking up some of Jon and Emily's favorites: beet, bean, and homemade cottage cheese. Jon points out there are a wide variety of options ranging from the savory to the sweet, like sauerkraut, pureed carrot, pureed pea, garlic mashed potato, or dessert options like sweetened apple, rhubarb, saskatoon, raspberry, or cranberry. Prior to my arrival, they’d made the dough and prepped the ingredients. Like a well-organized team, Emily would roll out golf ball-sized pieces of dough into football-shaped bases about a ½” thick. She’d then slide them over to Jon, where he’d add 2-3 tbsp of either the bean, beet, or homemade cottage cheese mix. They were then pleated by folding over a 2-3cm edge onto the opposing side, creating a little blanket around the edge of the ingredients. All was going well until Jon turned over a few pies for me to prepare. While Jon & Emily’s looked like Pirohi perfection, mine looked like a lumpy wet blanket whose stuffing had sunk to one end. Emily consoled me by cheerfully stating that on her first try, it was probably worse. Sweet kid :)  While waiting for them to bake, we got to talking about history, and I asked Jon why he had assembled such an extensive amount of Doukhobor research on his website Doukhobor.org . He explains that the Doukhobor history is largely oral and passed down via stories from one generation to the next, with limited written documentation of the culture. He felt compelled to document as much as he could to keep the history alive and not let the culture slip away. What he’s been able to compile is an impressive selection of thousands of stories, facts, and photographic documents. I also asked him for some clarity on the touchy topic of the Sons Of Freedom. He didn’t deny the facts and instead noted opposing sides of the story. A bit like finding a rotten apple in a basket of beautifully harvested fresh fruit, you suddenly don’t notice the wonderful results and instead, focus on the one bad apple. If there were, say, 20,000+ Doukhobors in Canada, only a couple of hundred fell into this highly talked about splinter group. That group was then used by the media to paint a negative image of the entire culture. Really, what headline are you going to read, the one about the quiet farmers who wanted to be left alone to farm, or the one about the man naked in the streets burning his clothes? Jonathan goes on to explain that the Doukhobors were integral in helping build Western Canadian infrastructure. Not so different from the Chinese rail workers, the Doukhobors sought employment building railroads in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They would go off to work for months at a time, come back to their remote homesteads, pool together the money they had made, and then build up their farms. In a few short years, they went from destitute to successful farmers by working hard and working together. There are many examples of how they did this, but their efforts to help expand the rail system are a notable achievement. Soon, the warm scent of Pirohi fills the kitchen air, the oven opens, and dinner is ready. Jon then brushes the tops with a bit of butter and lets them cool briefly before we all sit down to enjoy! He apologizes for the multicolored plastic cups of drinking water set out, noting he has another younger child who's not here tonight and plastic is usually safer than glass. I laugh, as a 40+ year old who’d rather go for dinner at Chuck E Cheese’s than The Keg, I’m happy to have a blue plastic cup. While dishing myself up, I’m expecting the dough to be a bit dense and tough, similar to that of a commercially packaged pizza pop. With the tops still steaming, Jon says we should brush them one more time with butter before sinking our teeth in. Seems like the Doukhobors use butter much like the French. As the beet Pirohi hits my lips, I’m surprised to feel the crust is incredibly light and airy. It’s an unfair comparison like comparing sinew to steak, but the consistency reminded me more of those tubes of Pillsbury croissants you just open and bake. Almost unnaturally light and fluffy, a cumulonimbus cloud filled with sweet shredded beet that had magically floated its way into my mouth. Obviously, the taste was nothing like Pilsbury anything, but that crust was unbelievable. I try one of each flavor, and they are each amazing in their own right. A warm, wholesome delight with simple ingredients and a fascinating lineage. Traditionally, they would have been baked in a clay oven over coals; I can picture the three of us one hundred years ago in isolated Saskatchewan savoring the fruits of our labor. I’m unaware of a Doukhobor-themed store anywhere in North America. The only way to have come across this dish would be to know a descendant who’s still practicing the food traditions and wind up at their table for a meal. If there are 38,000,000 people in Canada and 30,000 of them are of Doukhobor descent, and 1/3 of those are following a tiny bit of the tradition, and I happen to meet one of them, who also happens to be the country's foremost documentary researcher of Doukhobor history…the odds of landing on this experience are rarer than getting your hands on a slice of Traditional French Salers cheese, unbelievable! A break in the conversation allowed a sort of crunching sound to be heard from under Jon's shirt. I’d noticed it once before, but this time he noticed that I noticed. He looked at me and looked at the camera, noting this wasn’t really for public entertainment. At the time, fortunately, the camera was off. The atmosphere sombered up quickly, and Jon explained that in Regin, once you turn 50 years old, the health organizations automatically mail out home testing kits for cancer. One of these had arrived shortly after his birthday and proceeded to sit on his desk for over a year. His then girlfriend pestered him constantly to use it. He did say the kit was on the top of the mail pile, but not on the top of his to-do list. Eventually, he used it and, well, he had cancer. They immediately addressed the issue, caught it early, and were able to remove the cancer. During our conversation, he was in the middle of a six-month preventative chemotherapy treatment. I looked at him and looked at Emily. Five minutes earlier, they had been telling me about the family's summer plans to head to California to visit the redwoods, and Emily was going to go to her first festival in San Francisco with her dad. I was sitting on a picnic table in a campground the next night, alone, writing this story in the notes section of my cell phone, and I started to cry. A home testing kit. Jon's life was ultimately saved by a home testing kit, wow! An initiative that I didn’t know existed and couldn’t help but acknowledge and applaud. At the same time, I could not believe that this was his current reality. At the dinner table that evening, I had looked at Jon and Emily, and reflecting that night, sitting at the picnic table by myself, I realized that instead of attending her first concert with her dad that summer, she could have just as easily been attending his funeral if it had not been for that home testing kit. More tears ran down my cheeks onto my phone as I thought about it all. It all sounds a bit overreactive when I read this again to complete the story, but the reality is, it was entirely probable that the situation could have gone another direction. Here I was running around the country banging on doors trying to meet other Canadians and uncover some of the country's great food stories, and this guy, Jon, took time from what could have been a limited number of days to entertain me. A smack of gratitude across my face focused my attention on realizing just how fortunate I am, and to enjoy each and every moment of these experiences, because you never know which one might change your life forever. If you want to learn more about the Doukhobors, I’d suggest checking out Jonathan's website Doukhobor.org RECIPE: Dough (make around 60 hand pies): Step 1: -2 tsp sugar -1 cup warm water -2 tbsp yeast Dissolve the sugar in warm, not hot water in a small bowl. Then sprinkle in the yeast and let it activate for 15 minutes. Step 2: -½ cup butter Melt butter in a separate pan or container. Step 3: -5 large eggs -1 ½ tbsp sugar -½ cup vegetable oil Whisk together eggs, sugar, and oil in a separate bowl. Step 4: -1 ½ cups milk -½ tsp baking soda Scald milk in a saucepan, making it as hot as possible without boiling it. Once scalded, add in baking soda (it will start to foam), then mix in the egg mixture from step 3, and the melted butter from step 2. Step 5: - 6 cups white flour - 1 tsp salt Mix flour and salt, then slowly stir in the mixture from step 4. Once mixed, mix in the risen yeast mixture from step 1. Step 6: -2-4 cups white flour Once all of the ingredients have been mixed, slowly add in 2-4 additional cups of white flour until you achieve a soft, smooth, and doughy consistency. The softer, the better. The mixture should not stick to your hands. Step 7: Add dough to a lightly oiled bowl big enough to allow the dough to double in size. Cover and let stand for about an hour at room temperature (21 °C). BEAN FILLING: -2 cups dried pinto beans -2 tsp salt -1 tsp sugar -¼ cup butter Soak rinsed beans overnight in cold water. Then put in a saucepan and cover with water, 2” over the top of the beans. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes, then reduce to a simmer for 60-90 minutes until soft. Then mash all ingredients together. BEET FILLING: - 1lb (4-5 small beets) - 3 tbsp butter - 1 tsp salt Peel and grate beets, then saute over medium heat for about 20 minutes with butter and salt. Once they are soft and limp, they are ready. CHEESE FILLING: - 2 cups dry curd cottage cheese - 2 tbsp sour cream - 1 egg - 1 tsp salt Mix ingredients with a spoon to avoid mashing the cheese, and it’s ready. Crafting The Pirohe: After the dough has risen (doubled in size), the portion when forming it into balls is a bit bigger than a golf ball. Sprinkle the prep area with flour, then roll into football shapes about ½” thick. Roughriders football shapes are most desired in this part of the country. Fill each portion with 2-3 tbsp of preferred filling, then pleat the edges by pulling a 1” section from one side over onto the other. Place on a pan with parchment paper and bake in a preheated oven at 425-450oF for 8 minutes or until golden brown. Or in a clay oven if you’re hoping to achieve the original results. Allow to cool on a cooling rack and freeze or enjoy!
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