Hard Day’s Work

My Baba, Polly, only went to school for three years. When her younger sister was born, it was expected that she stay home to look after her younger siblings. Without even a complete elementary school education, finding work could be difficult, but as a young woman Polly did many jobs that allowed her a degree of independence.

When she was fifteen, Polly went to Grand Forks where she worked for her Uncle and Aunt, picking apples and later working as a potato digger. She used this money to buy herself clothes. Although this was hard physical work, she recognized that many other women were not able to work and buy things for themselves with their own money. She also would look after children or did sewing work to supplement her income.

Grand Forks is right on the border of the US and Canada and at the time, this was simply a barbed wire fence. Polly would often order material from the US, cross the border to pick up her package and then throw it over the fence to her waiting Uncle. When she would arrive at Canadian Customs, she would have nothing to declare. She often ordered materials for sewing, and made things such as purple satin pillows with pink bows.

Many Doukhobor men went to Saskatchewan to work in the wheat fields on the prairies. My grandfather Pete tried this work, but it was tough, making his hands bleed, and he was small and undernourished. The work was more than he could handle at his young age, and he ran away, making his way back to the Kootenays on his own. Pete also worked in the Okanagan, pruning and spraying fruit trees in the many orchards that line the valleys there, and in the Doukhobor-run jam factory in Brilliant.

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