Tolstoy and The Doukhobors: The Halifax Quarantine
Dr. Ian Cameron
After reaching an accord with the
Russian authorities for the Doukhobors to emigrate to Canada, Russian
novelist Leo Tolstoy asked his eldest son to accompany one of the first
boatloads. On January 4, 1899, Sergey L. Tolstoy sailed from the Black Sea
port of Batoum aboard the SS Lake Superior bound for Halifax, escorting some
2,300 Doukhobors to their promised new land. Twenty-three days later, the
ship arrived at the mouth of Halifax Harbour and underwent quarantine inspection. After one
case of smallpox was discovered, passengers and crew were ordered into quarantine for twenty-seven days to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
permission from CMAJ (May 23, 2006;
174 (11)), the following
article by Dr. Ian Cameron of the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie
the 1899 winter quarantine of Sergey Tolstoy and the Doukhobors at Lawlor's
I went deep into the woods on the island along a
frozen path, among the fir trees. The firs are not the same here as in Russia.
The ground was covered with light snow, it was quiet, there was no one to be
seen or heard, the night sky was clear. For the first time after two hectic
months in a crowd I was alone with nature; for the first time after a month at
sea I was on dry land; for the first time I was walking on the shore of the New
World. I felt a strong emotional sense, but one difficult to put into words. I
also felt a sense of relief after the voyage, as well as concern for the future,
and an awareness of being separated from my customary living conditions and
people close to me.
Count Sergey Tolstoy, 1899, on first setting foot in
Jan. 4, 1899
The S.S. Lake Superior leaves the Black Sea Russian port of Batoum carrying 1998
Doukhobor immigrants on a 6000-mile voyage to Canada. In charge of the venture
is Count Sergey Tolstoy, the eldest son of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.
The ship arrives in Halifax Harbour and hoists the yellow quarantine flag from
its mainmast, a signal that a quarantine inspection is required. Ten days
earlier a six-year-old child from the Sukhachev family had presented with a high
temperature and rash. Sergey Tolstoy had heard that it was measles and described
the little girl as being in an excited state and chattering on without stopping.
The ship's doctors diagnose smallpox and off she goes along with her family into
isolation. Her symptoms progressively worsen and she dies on Jan. 23, 4 days
before the ship is to arrive in Halifax. The incubation period for smallpox is
fourteen days. This means that the passengers, crew and materials on board the
ship are potentially infectious. Sergey Tolstoy describes the events that
followed in his diary (See Sergej Tolstoy and the Doukhobors: a
journey to Canada (Ottawa: University of Ottawa; 1998):
First of all the quarantine boat approaches, and
our doctor calls out: "One case of smallpox! other boats approach but
immediately turn back; all others are sent away, and two doctors come on
board with expressionless, clean shaven faces, and we sail into quarantine.
The quarantine site is on the uninhabited Lawlor's Island, roughly six miles
from Halifax. It turns out that a case of smallpox means three weeks
detainment in quarantine. Everyone is very alarmed; they keep asking me, but
I myself know nothing. The captain and his crew are not in a good mood,
nothing is being done as it should. Finally we put in to a wooden dock on
Lawlor's Island, but the doctors will not let anyone ashore, and it is only
from the ship that we see the low-lying shore covered by a grove of young
fir-trees. It is cold, frosty and windy. The night promises to be very cold.
The cold weather is a problem but there are other more pressing problems for the
port health officials. Accommodation at the quarantine station on Lawlor's
Island is limited to 1400. Carpenters have been working on a new second-class
detention building on the Eastern Passage side of the island, but it isn't
completed. Preparations and provision of food is anticipated to be a costly
major undertaking. The logistics of fumigating the ship and its contents,
disinfecting the immigrants and their clothing and ensuring they are properly
vaccinated is daunting enough. To accomplish all this with a group who speak a
foreign language and, for over a century, have opposed any outside authority, is
a formidable task.
The story of the Doukhobors' 1899 winter quarantine in Halifax had its
beginnings far earlier in Russian history. The Doukhobors were one of a number
of sects that broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century.
Opposed to the ritual, sacraments and the intermediary role of priests in the
Orthodox church, they taught that the Spirit of God resides in everyone and that
to violate a human being in any way is to defile the Spirit of God in him. The
expression of this belief was pacifism and the conviction of the equality of all
human beings, regardless of their station in life. Inevitably this position led
to conflict with government, and over the years the Doukhobors were persecuted
and exiled to the expanding frontiers of the Russian Empire.
In 1895, Doukhobor communities in the Caucasus infuriated Tsarist authorities by
refusing conscription and burning arms they had been issued years before to
protect themselves. This act of defiance provoked brutal repression from the
The plight of the Doukhobors was brought to the attention of Leo Tolstoy, who
admired their Christian communal agrarian lifestyle. Through his extensive
network of contacts and the British and American Quakers, he organized and
helped finance, in part with royalties from his novel, Resurrection, the
immigration of a large group of Doukhobors to Canada, including the group on the
S.S. Lake Superior.
|The quarantine wharf
on Lawlors Island, c. 1899.
Anticipating a major undertaking, Dr. Frederick Montizambert, the superintendent
of the Grosse Ξsle quarantine station, and since 1894 the head of quarantine
services for Canada, has come to Halifax to personally oversee the quarantine of
the S.S. Lake Superior. He and Dr. Guy Carlton Jones, the assistant quarantine
officer in Halifax, join the Doukhobors in their quarantine.
To satisfy quarantine regulations the ship and its contents have to be
evacuated, sealed and fumigated with sulphur under pressure. The Doukhobors and
the ship's crew must all be vaccinated against smallpox and disinfected in a
bath. Their clothing had to be adequately treated, and finally, 14 days have had
to have passed without any exposure to potentially infected material. However,
with the inadequate accommodations on Lawlor's, not everyone can leave the ship
and so the whole process was delayed.
This delay is compounded by problems with the carpenters from Halifax who are
slow in completing the second-class detention building. Tolstoy thinks they are
dragging their feet because they are being paid $1.50 a day (3 roubles) an
excellent wage. The carpenters leave the island during the quarantine, and the
building is finished by the Doukhobors.
Communication is also a problem, as Sergey Tolstoy is the only person who can
speak both English and Russian. This situation is improved when Joseph Burnstein
joins the quarantine as an additional interpreter.
The authorities are relieved to find the Doukhobors are vegetarians and have a
supply of food, which Sergey Tolstoy replenishes using communal funds. The
Doukhobors are eagerly awaiting the arrival of cabbage. Tolstoy records that
"everybody is dreaming about cabbage." Unfortunately, that is the one vegetable
Tolstoy forgets to order. DeWolf & Son must have sent cabbage in the next order
there is no further mention of cabbage dreams. Eventually the Doukhobors take
over their own cooking, mainly in the ample kitchen in the third-class detention
building, where they use iron griddles to bake their tasty churek a bread
Tolstoy describes as being made from the "splendid" Doukhobor wheat flour. The
men are given permission to cut firewood and begin whittling wooden spoons. To
the amazement of the people in Halifax the Doukhobor ladies begin doing their
laundry in subzero temperatures in Halifax Harbour. This is probably due in part
to the fact that water on the island is at a premium. There are no natural
springs on the island, and the well water has been exhausted after only six
days. For the rest of the quarantine fresh water is brought to the island by
boat and pumped into the dry wells.
Despite the cold weather and other inconveniences good things began to happen on
the island. On Feb. 4 a baby boy was born to the Bondarev family not only the
first recorded baby born on the quarantine station but also the first
Canadian-born Doukhobor. Tolstoy records in his diary that a committee of women
from Halifax sent out several barrels of apples, a box of sweets, Christmas
cards and copies of Chatterbox, a children's magazine. This gesture makes the Doukhobors feel welcome as settlers, and as they feel more at home on the
island, they begin plying Tolstoy with all sorts of questions about Canada: What
is the soil like? How does the government work? Tell us about the Canadian
people. They want to get books to learn English, and two of them, Savely
Khudyakov and Fyodor Podovil'nikov, who have learned English numbers, begin
jotting down English words.
Sunday Feb. 5, 1899
It was bright and sunny. The Doukhobors get washed up, put on their best clothes
and hold a service on the deepwater wharf, where they sing psalms, bow and
embrace one another. Tolstoy records that the English look on in amazement but
with a certain respect.
unit on Lawlors Island, c. 1899.
Everything is not completely cozy. There are some crisp exchanges between
Tolstoy and Drs. Montizambert and Jones when the last Doukhobors are ordered out
of the comparatively warm ship, so that it can be fumigated, and moved into the
new second-class dormitory. Here it is so cold that wet shirts hung up the
previous night become stiff with frost. When the fumigation process is delayed
the doctors won't allow the Doukhobors back on the ship. A truce is reached when
Dr. Montizambert comes up with additional stoves and insulation for the new
The fumigation delay is bureaucratic. The engineer responsible refuses to begin
the process until he has clearance from his superiors in Customs. Ottawa grants
permission, and the fumigation of the ship proceeds.
Once the Doukhobors have all been vaccinated the process of bathing and
disinfecting clothing begins. Groups of 60 are brought to the bathhouse where
they are bathed in steam-heated water with a disinfectant solution. While they
are bathing, their clothing is exposed to dry heat to a temperature of 180 °F,
followed by steam heating to a much higher temperature. Then the clothing is
rapidly dried and returned. Complete drying is difficult to achieve, and so
there are some frosty trips back to the quarantine buildings.
Despite this health peril, there is only one case of pneumonia.
The sheepskin coats would not fare well with the steam treatment and so they are
specially treated with formaldehyde.
On February 17 the quarantine regulations have been fulfilled. There are no
cases of smallpox. Before allowing passengers and crew to reboard the S.S. Lake
Superior, Dr. Montizambert requires them to present a red ticket if they have
been vaccinated and it has taken. A white ticket indicates the first vaccination
has not taken and they have been re-vaccinated, and a yellow ticket indicates
the disinfection process has been completed. Tolstoy records that the labelling
of disinfected luggage did cause problems. The label attached to the luggage
displays a red cross, the Canadian coat of arms and the word "disinfected." The
Doukhobors object to the red cross. The cross, to them, is the instrument of
Christ's execution and they don't want it on their property. Sergey Tolstoy
Dr. Jones was irritated and began saying that the Doukhobors look as if they
want to run the country, that they don't obey the quarantine laws very well,
etc. Dr. Montizambert, who is much milder than Jones, said with a condescending
smile only that the quarantine regulations must be heeded, that the sign of the
red cross is used throughout the world, and that he was not able to grant the
Some of the Doukhobors attempt to scrape off the cross, but the majority ignore
Afternoon Feb. 17, 1899
The Doukhobors leave Halifax Harbour singing psalms at the ships rails, bound
for Saint John and their new homes in Western Canada.
Sergey Tolstoy recorded many wonderful and insightful impressions of his time in
quarantine. Toward the end of the quarantine he gives a description of what
happens to rats after the ship had been fumigated with sulphur dioxide.
Yesterday and today they fumigated the whole ship with sulphur dioxide, except
for the first-class cabins, for which they used formalin. This evening, around
ten o'clock, I was sitting alone in the ship's dining-room, writing letters and
reading newspapers. Almost always around this time the ship's rats begin
scratching and scurrying about; occasionally one of them darts across the floor;
today, however, with the fumigation, they all gathered at the stern and raised a
real ruckus; first one darted past, then two, then several, and then a whole lot
of them began scurrying all over the dining-room and even jumping up to the
table where I was writing. I fearfully gathered up my papers and fled to my
Just prior to the S.S. Lake Superior's departure for Saint John, Sergey Tolstoy
went into Halifax to settle the Doukhobors' accounts. Here is what he said:
Halifax, at least in its outward appearance, is nothing out of the ordinary.
There are a lot of pot-holes on the streets; the snow is hardly cleared away at
all; I saw several large double sleighs outfitted with buffalo rugs. People wear
knitted caps in the shape of a stocking and fur coats with fur on the outside.
He wrote his oldest sister Tanja about his time on Lawlor's Island. Aside from
the sea and the biting winds he says the landscape is very Russian like Moscow
Province. Then he says:
The experiments conducted by the autocrat Dr. Montizambert and his Grand Vizier
Dr. Jones are coming to an end. They have (1) inoculated everyone against
smallpox, (2) checked the inoculations, (3) dry-cleaned underwear and clothing,
(4) fumigated the sheepskin coats; (5) been washing everyone in a bathhouse.
Everyone is healthy, more or less ... the journey is almost over.
Sergey Tolstoy stayed with the Doukhobors through the rest of the winter until
they were well launched in their new homeland. At the end of March he returned
to Russia via Toronto, Montreal and New York.
For additional information about the Doukhobor
connection to Lawlor's Island, see
The Doukhobors Quarantined at Lawlor's Island, 1899
by Koozma J. Tarasoff as well as
Lawlor's Island Revisited
New Book Explores Lawlor's Island Quarantine Station
by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.