The ability of the Doukhobors to make appreciable economic advances during the initial years of settlement can be largely attributed to the division of labour achieved by their communal organization, which enabled the men to 'hire out' as farm labourers or railroad navvies while the women and old men cleared the land. Middle-class Anglo-Canadians were not accustomed to seeing women hard at work in the fields and found the Doukhobors different and even strange in their ways. They were shocked when, in 1902, a number of Doukhobor radicals, concerned over the growing materialism of their sect, freed their livestock, divested themselves of their possessions, and set off on a mass pilgrimage towards Yorkton.
Courtesy: Public Archives of Canada and United Church Archives
