STRANGE SECT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 11

STRANGE SECT.

DEATH OF LEADER.

DOUKHOBOR "EMPIRE."

RUSSIAN-CANADIANS,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

WINNIPEG, March 20.

Leader of Canada's Doukhobors, a religious sect who moved to the Dominion from Russia in 1892, Peter Petrovich Verigin, died at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on February 12. He "ruled" 15,000 subjects scattered in communities over the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and in British Columbia. The Doukhobor "Empire" includes farms, mills and factories, valued at more than £1,200,000.

Known as "Peter the Second," Verigin came to Canada from Russia twelve years ago following the mysterious death of his father, killed in a train explosion near Farran, British Columbia, in 1924. Cause of the explosion was never ascertained. The elder Verigin led his Doukhobor followers to Western Canada in IS9B.

Peter's reign was a stormy one—one of trouble with his followers and with the Dominion authorities. In 1933, after he was sentenced to prison on a perjury charge, he was ordered to be deported on a Federal warrant. He was freed after at legal battle. In protest against imprisonment of their leader, nude parades were staged by his followers. Hundreds were arrested in British Columbia and sentenced to a penal colony on Piers Island, B.C.

Verigin has two possible successors. One a son, also named Peter, is in Russia. The other is a 17-year-old grandson, John -Voiken of Grand Fork.*, B.C.