Letter to the Editor

I am absolutely aghast at the recent multi-million dollar price tag and apology to descendants and survivors of the Sons of Freedom radicals.

Taking children away from their parents is a very extreme measure by anyone’s standards, but in this case, there is no doubt in my mind it was justified.

As a native of the Kootenays and my advanced age, I vividly remember the time period involved and can give you the full story that our media has typically left out.

The Sons of Freedom sect carried out a terror campaign here in the Kootenays for more than 20 years.  They bombed and set fire to trains, train tracks, power lines, bridges and burned their own homes in protest of government authority.

They refused to send their children to school in the belief that only their fanatical religious view should be given to their offspring.

I well remember them blowing up the Cominco power line across Kootenay Lake to Kimberley, which resulted in the company having to shutdown all operations and throwing about 1,000 employees out of work for several months.

People in the Kootenays lived with a certain level of fear in the 1950s and ‘60s while this was going on and should never be minimized.

Sons of Freedom members’ children were taken from them to provide an education and to protect them from this awful radical environment.  They lived a very primitive existence and at times were poverty stricken.

It amazes me that survivors or their descendants are not extremely grateful for government intervention in this case, as I can’t imagine what their lives and futures would have been like without it.

I think it may be a case of ‘hey, everyone else is screaming victimization, so let’s jump on the bandwagon and get some settlement from our clueless and fanciful government(s).’

Before I finish, I must say that the Sons of Freedom were a small minority of the larger Doukhobor settlers in the Kootenays, who as-a-whole, have made great contributions to our mosaic and society.

This group was simply terrorists and nothing else.

Why can’t we depend these days on our media giving the full story of events of the past?  This deserves better.

For heaven’s sake, what is the matter with our government(s)?

Neil Matheson,

Cranbrook

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