Role of Women in Doukhobor Culture?

Questions and Answers, Comments — February 15, 2011

Question 39: I am a Athabasca University student and researching a paper on Doukhobor women, their role in the Doukhobor culture. I am focusing on the Blaine Lake area [of Saskatchewan, Canada]. My mother Hazel Vereschagin (deceased) was from Blaine Lake....I am wondering if you would recommend anything specific for me to take a look at. Thank you for your consideration.

Laura Allan,  North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

Answer by Koozma J. Tarasoff:

Thank you for introducing yourself and your interesting project on Doukhobor women and their role in Doukhobor culture with a focus on the Blaine Lake area. I understand that your Mom died in 1976 when you were 10 years old. Your Aunt Angeline Wuhrer (nee Vereschagin) went to the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate Institute at the time I was there in the 1950s. She now resides in a Care Home in North Vancouver, British Columbia.

 

As for sources, I suggest the following as a start:

  1. Annie B. Barnes. 'Doukhobor Women in the Twentieth Century', in Koozma J. Tarasoff (compiler and editor), Spirit-Wrestlers' Voices Honouring Doukhobors on the Centenary of their migration to Canada in 1899 (published 1998).
  2. Various articles in Koozma J. Tarasoff. Spirit-Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers' Strategies for Living (2002).
  3. Koozma J. Tarasoff. Traditional Doukhobor Folkways....published in 1977 includes a few interviews with people from Blaine Lake without directly revealing their names.
  4. Nadya Konkin. ‘A Study in the Assimilation of Independent Doukhobors’. Unpublished Sociology 302 paper for Dr. Ross at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, February 26, 1961. 38 pp. plus addendum of xxxiv.

  1. Ashley Androsoff. ‘A larger  frame: “Redressing” the image of Doukhobor-Canadian women in the twentieth century’. In Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2007, 18 (1), 81-105.

The rest is for you to discover.

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