CLASH IN CANADA.

Franklin Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 32, 18 March 1936, Page 6

CLASH IN CANADA.

“MOUNTIES” AND DOUKHOBORS. SEVEN KILLED. Three young Doukhobor farmers living at Arran close to the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, thumbed their noses at the village constable when he attempted to collect the license fees for a motor car used on their community farm. The constable reported his difficulties to the headquarters of the Royal Mounted Police at Regina. The commander sent two red-coats to do what appeared a routine job, but before the trouble ended four policemen were killed and the three young farmers lay on slabs in the morgue at Calgary, many hundreds of miles away from their home. The deaths of these seven in successive gunfights a few weeks ago, constitute the greatest loss of life in Canada’s history, due to a single criminal investigation. The first evidence of this extraordinary tragedy came when the bodies of Constables Shaw and Wainright were found alongside their own motor car. The officers had gone to Arran, where Kalmakoff, Voyken and Posnikoff, all 21 years cf age, still obstinately refused to. purchase a license. Surrounded by a jeering mob of SO neighbours, the two policemen did not announce the arrest of the trio and lid not handcuff them, but started for Regina, the policemen riding in the front seat of the car and the three youths m tjie back . Half, way to their destination, the young Doukhobors suddenly leaped from their seats and started fighting the policemen who attempted to draw their guns. Fighting hand-to-hand at the roadside, one officer was killed with his own gun fire, and the youths made quick work of the murder of his brother officer. Western Bandit Style. Half an hour later, in true Western bandit style, they flagged a passing motorist, seized his car, dropped him in a wooded stretch and completely disappeared before the countryside was aroused. Two days passed without report from the carefully guarded prairie roads. Then, hundreds of miles westward from the scene of the original crime, the three turned up as tourists at the entrance to Banff National Park, evidently intending to hide in the fastness of the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. When they declined to sign the register the officer refused them adipission, but they brushed him aside and dashed along the highway towards the famous Banff Hotel. Mounted police laid an ambuscade that night, but searchlights on the Doukhobors’ car disclosed the police standing alongside the highway. A volley from the youths instantly downed Sergeant Wallace and Constable Harrison. Wallace had been a sniper with the Gordon Highlanders during the World War, and from a roadside ditch he shot out both headlights on the car before he fell on top 1 of Harrison, both dead, while Posnikoff was shot through the heart inside the automobile. The other two youths escaped, but next morning 200 police found tracking them easily in the light snowfall. Before night, the hungry youths had robbed a car on the highway, and were slipping away over the .crest of a hill when Game Warden William Neish spotted them. His first bullet struck Voyken, who collapsed, and when Kalmakoff attempted to dash across an open space between the trees, he was hit with the second shot and sank in his tracks. The sound of firing brought reinforcements, and the officers found both writhing in death.