In 2008, the Canadian province of British Columbia celebrates its 150th anniversary.
One of the last areas to be explored and settled in North America, coastal British Columbia was variously contested by the Spanish, British, American and Russian empires. And through at least the early 1840s, Russia claimed sovereignty over the north coast of present-day British Columbia. Today, there is little that points to the Russian colonial heritage of this region. Yet the province’s largest city does have a vibrant expat community.
In a quiet corner of Vancouver, there is a small Russian Orthodox Church. Dwarfed on three sides by large, concrete apartment buildings, the Church of the Holy Trinity’s bright white siding and sky-blue onion domes shine in stark contrast with its drab surroundings.
Standing outside on a Sunday morning, it is hard to tell if anyone is inside. The lawn is empty, the door closed and no church noises are audible.
Through the front door and inside the tiny entranceway, or narthex, two boys sell candles from an old wooden rack that barely fits on their little table.
Along the sidewalls are a dozen legion-hall grade chairs. Father Serge Overt, who has served as the priest here for 15 years, described the service as “a bit of old Russia in Vancouver.”
Indeed, many of the 50 or so people in attendance are from Russia. They are of all ages. Young, old, male, female – all saying prayers along with the priest. Bowing, making the sign of the cross. From a balcony directly opposite the altar, a choir sings in time with the prayers.
A little girl in her Sunday best says something in Russian to her young father. She starts to cry. Without losing his focus on the service, he picks her up and holds her. Her cries subside. Her brother holds the hand of their mother, his free hand impatiently fiddling with an unlit candle. Miraculously, the candle survives in one piece until he can light it with his mother’s assistance.
An old woman sitting in one of the side chairs carefully follows the service with the aid of a bilingual prayer book.
Some people are in jeans and T-shirts, while others are dressed more formally. The younger parishioners speak to each other in Russian; the oldest speak English with solid Canadian accents.
The walls are lined with icons of Orthodox saints – many of which are simple prints placed there by parishioners. With his gold robes and neatly parted brown hair, Father Overt could have stepped out of one of the icons. For Overt, who has never been to Russia and who was raised in California, the Russian Orthodox Church forms the core of his and his parishioners’ Russian identity.
“I was brought up by real Russian émigrés and have always associated the Russian Orthodox Church with the traditional culture of Russia,” Overt said. “I’ve met many other people who’ve left Russia, people who were trying to get away from something or to get away from Russia. Assimilation was easier, because they wanted to assimilate and not be Russian. The Orthodox faith has kept many of these people tied to Russia.”
There are some 40,000 Russians living in the Vancouver area and 90,000 in British Columbia as a whole. These numbers include both ethnic Russians from the former Soviet Union and their descendants born in British Columbia, Canada and abroad. They are not a cohesive or highly visible community. They came in different waves of immigration and often have conflicting values and ideologies.
There are two Russian Orthodox Churches in Vancouver, aside from Holy Trinity (which is a ROCOR church*). The Holy Resurrection Cathedral (OCA) was built in 1928 and moved to a new location in 1954. The Russian Synodal St. Nicholas Church (ROCOR), located near Holy Trinity, was founded in 1940.
“All the people couldn’t get along back in the day, and that’s why we have the three churches,” Overt said. “Those people have passed away and the new people don’t understand why there are so many churches now.”
Divisions, however, do not just exist along religious lines.
Just two doors down from Holy Trinity is the Russian Hall, owned by the Federation of Russian Canadians. With its foreboding concrete exterior and bricked up window frames, the Russian Hall would not be out of place in a Moscow suburb. The Federation was formed from the remnants of the Maxim Gorky Russian Worker’s Club, a leftist organization that was banned by the Canadian Government in 1940. The Federation has fallen into decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Overt, who has a keen interest in local history, speaks of the strained relations that once existed between his church and the Russian Hall.
“People going to the Russian Hall would walk right by our church without ever going in or looking at it,” he said, smiling. “During the ‘50s, I’m told they used to show Communist era films in there for the Russian sailors that’d come through Vancouver.”
These days, things are much quieter at the Russian Hall. The space is now used mostly by residents of the surrounding neighborhood for yard sales and theater performances. Once a week, however, a Russian choir performs.
Across the city in the West Side is the Russian Community Centre, founded in 1956 by anti-Communist members of the Russian community who wanted to establish a non-religious, non-partisan cultural organization. It is a secular Russian club interested in preserving all things Russian. The space is used by a traditional Russian dance group as well as by a balalaika orchestra. Russian is taught there, as are ESL classes. The hall is also rented out to other organizations and groups.
Vancouver has a single Russian restaurant, as well as a Russian bookstore, Russian World. “We sell Russian culture,” says owner Inna Mikhailov. “We have a lot of Russian movies with English subtitles, as well as titles by many Russian classical writers.” She also sells books to local university students studying Russian.
If history had taken a different course, Russian could well have been the common tongue in a Vancouver sprinkled with onion domes.
In 1799, Russian Emperor Paul I issued the first charter of the Russian American Company (RAC). It laid claim not just to the Kuril and Aleutian Islands, but set the RAC’s sights on the American coast extending as far south as 55° latitude:
To make new discoveries not only north of the fifty-fifth degree of north latitude, but farther to the south, and to occupy the new lands discovered, as Russian possessions, according to prescribed rules, if they have not been previously occupied by, or been dependent on any other nation.
In 1821, Emperor Alexander I issued an ukaz (imperial decree) declaring that all islands on the northwest coast of America extending from 51° north (just above the northern point of Vancouver Island) had belonged to Russia from time immemorial. He granted the RAC rights to all industries connected with those lands, as well as newly discovered territory.
Russia based its claim on discovery and occupation of these lands.
In his correspondence with John Quincy Adams, the American Secretary of State, Pierre de Poletica, Russia’s Minister in Washington, staked Russia’s claim by right of first discovery. He claimed that the coasts of America as far down as 48° north had been discovered and charted by Russian explorers.
He stated that Spanish activity on the West Coast was curtailed in part by a Russian presence in the region. What is more, Alessandro Malaspina, an Italian explorer in the service of Spain, recommended in his report of his discoveries of the area that Spanish possessions on the coast of northwest America ought not extend north of 43° latitude, because of Russian activity in the area.
When Spain occupied Vancouver Island in 1789, de Poletica claimed in a letter to Adams, the Spanish government was “not ignorant” of the “Russian colonies” in the region:
… in 1789 the Spanish packet St. Charles, commanded by Captain Haro, found in the latitude 48 and 49, Russian establishments to the number of 8, consisting in the whole of 20 families and 462 individuals. These were the descendants of the companions of Captain Tehiricoff, who were supposed till then to have perished.
Adams, however, remained skeptical, stating that a mistake had been made in the charts and that the Russian settlements de Poletica spoke of were in fact located at 58 and 59 degrees north.
At the time of the 1821 ukaz, there were no Russian settlements or posts between the 51st parallel and Sitka (57° 05’), see Russian Life, July/Aug 2007. Yet Fort Ross, located at 38° 44’ in California, began to be settled by Russians in 1812 (see Russian Life, Sep/Oct 2007).
Britain and America both objected to the claim inherent in the 1821 ukaz, particularly its ban on non-Russian vessels within 100 Italian miles of the coast. Britain, which had no “friendly port” on that coast at the time, was concerned about losing trade interests in the region. British merchants considered the ukaz a “declaration of war against the commerce and fishing of British merchants if their enterprise carries their ships to the north of the limits laid down by Russia.”
The British Government also disputed Russia’s claim based on priority of discovery, but felt that sovereignty ought to be decided on title of occupation and use. In a confidential Memorandum dated November 11, 1822, the Duke of Wellington, then a senior official in the British Army, argued that Britain’s establishments further inland vis-à-vis the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company gave Britain a stronger claim to the area.
“Russia will not speak of the settlements which may exist between the forty-ninth and fifty-first parallels,” he wrote. “But as to the others, she does not hesitate to admit that she is still in ignorance of their existence, at least so far as their touching the Pacific Ocean is concerned.”
George Simpson, governor of the British territory of Rupert’s Land [a vast expanse of land, now in central Canada, which consisted of the Hudson Bay drainage basin], believed the ukaz was “absurd and sweeping,” and stressed that the “trade of this coast and its interior country is unquestionably worth contending for.”
In 1824, however, Russia signed a treaty with the United States fixing the southern boundary of Russia on the American continent at 54° 40’ north latitude. A treaty with Britain was signed the following year. (Russia gave up the last of its American possessions in 1867, when Alaska was transferred to the United States.)
By 1849, Britain had established a Crown colony on Vancouver Island, followed in 1858 by the mainland colony of British Columbia. In 1866, the two colonies merged to form the present boundaries of British Columbia. In 1871, British Columbia became Canada’s sixth province.
Today, British Columbians are reminded that this land was once part of the Spanish Empire by way of a profusion of Spanish place names: Galiano Island, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the City of Port Alberni, Langara College and so forth. Russia, however, did not leave a lasting geographical mark here they way it did further north. There are few, if any, Russian place names in British Columbia.
The Russian language, however, is alive and well in the city. The Russian Community Centre offers classes for native speakers as well as those interested in learning Russian as a second language. The city’s three Russian Orthodox Churches offer services in Russian and local libraries have copies of local Russian language periodicals.
Alexander Kulyashov is publisher of the Vancouver Express, a Russian biweekly newspaper. In Russia he was educated as a philologist, and he has carried his love of the language with him to this forgotten outpost of the Russian Empire.
Kulyashov’s office is in an old industrial building with large Russian letters pasted on the windows. Most of the decorations in the building come from Russia, including the old movie posters and curtains. He has put wood panels on the walls, but the chandelier has yet to be affixed to the ceiling. “My office is undergoing ‘perestroika,’” he joked.
Kulyashov examined some old Russian maps of the region brought in by the interviewer. He noted that an 1804 map lists the place names on the coasts as translations of existing Spanish and British place names.
“Russia developed very natural explorers,” he sad. “When they explored, they came before the British guy, but he put his name on the map and said, ‘this is mine.’ The Russians, who may have claimed the lands earlier, published their maps too late.”
While Pacific nations like China and the United States maintain impressive diplomatic missions in Vancouver, Russia has but an honorary consul who exercises his duties out of his home.
Alexander Bardin, Honorary Consul of the Russian Federation in British Columbia, assists Russian citizens in cases of emergencies and provides protocol for official visits of Russian delegations. On March 2, 2008, some 250 eligible voters in the region cast their ballots in the Russian Presidential Election under an awning set up in his driveway.
Bardin said he would welcome more dialogue and exchanges between Russia and Canada. “From the Canadian point of view, the BC government, they talk about the Gateway to Asia,” he said. “The Gateway of Canada to Asia and they never mention Russia, but Russia is the biggest region in Asia. Why not?”
The Asia-Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative is a Canadian government initiative to improve the transportation infrastructure linking Canada and Asia. Perhaps Russia is little considered in this initiative because trade between British Columbia and Russia, which are separated by just 1,500 kilometers, is minimal. In 2005, BC exports to Russia totalled CAD $64 million, compared with approximately CAD $1.4 billion to South Korea, CAD $4.2 billion to Japan and CAD $1.4 billion to China.
“There are some contracts in mining, some business between Russia and BC in the gold industry,” Bardin said. “In the mining industry, it’s a bigger part of the business relationship. The Forest industry is very small, really nothing, and in fisheries trade it fluctuates. Previously it was better, but now it’s very low.
“In my opinion, there are a lot of problems with corruption in Russia and Canadians don’t like to be involved in that kind of thing,” Bardin continued. “We have our local market, we have the United States market and some other countries, this is the main reason. Canadian companies don’t want to take the risk to go to Russia. There’s not a lot of political attempts from the Russian side and the Canadian side to establish some kind of relationship between the Russian Far East and British Columbia.”
Yet Bardin said he feels British Columbia has more in common with Russia than with some of its larger trading partners. “To be realistic,” he said, “Asian culture and regional British Columbian culture are very different. Russian culture is much closer to regional British Columbian culture. The cultural field would be very interesting to cooperate with... It can add something to BC culture in areas like music, art and dancing. It can help to be more professional in those kind of things. Real ballet troupes, a real gallery...”
Vancouver is home to at least one Russian language theatre troupe. Palme’s Performing Society practices above newspaper editor Kulyashov’s office.
The troupe is rehearsing for a Russian performance of Filumena Marturano, or Marriage the Italian Way.
When a non-Russian shows up at the March 2 performance, it is immediately clearly he does not pass as Russian.
“You might want to come to our March 16 performance,” said a woman handing out tickets. “We’ll have full translation into English through headphones!”
A crowd of 50 squeezed into the impeccably lit theatre. It was a tight, well-choreographed performance which made use of the theatre balconies and about a dozen performers.
Palme Studios was founded in 1997 by Oleg Palme, a professional actor from Ukraine who, among other things, played a doctor in an episode of the TV show, The X-Files.
Palme’s is currently in its 11th season of putting on Russian language plays. In recent years they’ve been expanding to the English market, thanks to the headphone-enabled simultaneous translations.
“We put on the play By the Lake, by Anton Chekhov recently, and we had over 100 people,” said Andrey Ahachiasky, who is Palme’s son. “In May we’ll be putting on a performance of [Nikolai Gogol’s] The Inspector General, which will involve over 50 people behind the stage.”
Russia may never reclaim BC, but BC may well reclaim some of its Russian heritage through culture and art.
“Today, to speak of old territories, it’s difficult to be objective. History rules,” said newspaper publisher Alexander Kulyashov. “It’s difficult to go back and acquire old lands. All of Russia was not always Russian land. It’s like Canada with Native people.”
When Kulyashov is asked what it means to him, as a Russian, that these were once Russian shores, he replies simply and succinctly.
“It means that we, as a Russian nation, lost it.” RL
* Since the 1917 Revolution, Orthodox Churches outside Russia have been split over how to relate to the Church in Moscow. In May of 2007, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) agreed to be in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, though not all individual churches have agreed with the move toward unification. The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) includes not just Russian churches and is in communion with Moscow.
Russian settlements in North America once stretched almost as far south as San Francisco. In 1822 Russia claimed ownership of all islands above 51° latitude, eventually settling a treaty with the US that delineated the boundary at 54° 40’. Russia ceded its claims on the American continent in 1867, when it sold its holdings (Alaska) to the U.S.
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