September 9, 1953 - "Operation Snatch"

“Operation Snatch” takes Doukhobor children from their families. In 1899, Russia decided to rid itself of the Doukhobors, a pacifist religious sect that refused to serve in the Russian Army. Many Doukhobors fled to Canada, where they set up a communal life in rural areas. Even there, however, their non-conformist ways and their refusal to abide by any laws except what thy defined as God’s laws, worried the Canadian government and police. Half a century later, B.C.’s new Social Credit government and Premier W.A.C. Bennett initiated “Operation Snatch” to punish Doukhobors for refusing to send their children to public schools. Starting September 9, 1953, RCMP officers went into Doukhobor communities and took hundreds of children away from their families. For almost six years, until 1959, these children were kept in former Japanese internment camps, taught “normal” Christian ways and beaten if they spoke Russian – or if they cried from loneliness. Once the children returned to their families, the government reasoned, they would moderate their parents’ lifestyle. Of course, it didn’t work. A 1999 B.C. Ombudsman’s report urged the government to start the process of reconciliation for the children who were by then in their 50s and 60s. While the government of British Columbia issued a statement of “regret” in the legislature in October 2004, it has not apologized. Some of the adult children who were apprehended years earlier have been looking for legal compensation for their wrong, but thus far have been unsuccessful. Their children have attended public schools for years and they have established heritage-language courses within the public system. Today there are between 30,000 and 40,000 Doukhobors in Canada.

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