This volume examines the rise and dissolution of the distinctive village landscape established by the Doukhobor community on the Saskatchewan reserves at the turn of the twentieth century. Tracie documents the arrival of approximately 7,400 settlers who, between 1899 and 1918, organized fifty-seven traditional-style agricultural villages across roughly 750,000 acres of prairie set aside in three reserve blocks in what is now Saskatchewan.
The work reconstructs the planning, organization, and agrarian economy of these settlements, tracing how Old World communal patterns were adapted to the Canadian West. Central to the narrative is the leadership of Peter Verigin, under whom the communal system expanded rapidly and reached its height around 1905. Tracie considers both the internal strains within the community and the increasing pressure from federal authorities that ultimately led to the dispersal of the villages and the forfeiture of the reserved lands less than a decade later.
Notes adapted from the publisher's information.
