Rita Moir's The Third Crop (Sono Nis) is much more than a tribute to her home of thirty years. This pictorial history of the Slocan Valley illustrates the process by which disparate immigrant groups work through natural disasters and bitter conflicts to forge a coherent community.

Moir has taken her title from the annual harvest: It produces an anticipated first crop, then, with luck, a second. Rarely, it yields a third crop, one that ensures livestock will prosper through the winter.

For Moir, that's "a metaphor for what happens when a group of people work hard enough and long enough, go that extra mile, and celebrate together, too: somehow they get to that third crop-a strong culture.";

Moir's metaphorical third crop of Slocan Valley people includes the younger generation who want to stay, continuing the hard work of those who have gone before, celebrating their varied heritage.

The earliest inhabitants of the Slocan Valley were obviously the First Nations, who lived unhindered by Europeans until the late 1800s when the precious metal galena-containing silver and zinc-was discovered. The subsequent boom brought immigrants, mines and railways, sending the Ktunaxa and Okanagan tribes west to the East Kootenay, and the Sinixt south to Washington State.

The next wave of immigrants consisted of six thousand Doukhobors, aided by Leo Tolstoy, who fled Russia to escape from orthodox churches, secular governments and militarism. Conflicts in Manitoba and Saskatchewan dispersed them further west to the rich agricultural land of the Slocan.

Tensions with the larger community severely strained the Doukhobor pacifist creed. They resisted public education for their children and refused military conscription in keeping with the Christian-based philosophy of Adamite simplicity.

Doukhobor means 'spirit wrestler."; It was first a derogatory term applied to them by the Russian Orthodox Church. They embraced it. In mid-1920s, Doukhobor protests in Canada took the form of nude marches. The Canadian government responded by criminal-
izing public nudity. Mass arrests ensued, resulting in three-year jail sentences on Piers Island, situated off Sidney, B.C.

As tensions arose within the Doukhobor movement between those adhering strictly to traditional values and 'modern' Doukhobors open to change and new customs, a radically fundamentalist splinter group, the Sons of Freedom, dynamited the post office in Crescent Valley. When the orthodox Doukhobor leader, Peter Verigin, was mysteriously killed by a bomb blast in 1924, suspects included members of the Doukhobor community. The culprits were never found.

In the early 1940s, the Slocan Valley became the site of the Lemon Creek camp, one of the infamous internment camps in which, following the War Measures Act, thousands of Canadians of Japanese descent (among them David Suzuki), stripped of their homes and possessions, were held as "enemy aliens.";

Moir illustrates the historical record with photographs from archival collections and from private memorabilia buried in the shoeboxes, trunks and attics of local families-a painstaking search, since few families in the early days owned cameras. Many of the items she unearthed, like the pictures and sketches of the since-demolished Lemon Creek camp, depict scenes that, either through shame or neglect, have otherwise been long forgotten.

A friend advised Moir to make the photographs large enough to show the clothing, hands and faces. In other words: "Let the pictures do the talking."; Enlarged and elegantly reproduced, these images are woven in and around the text, confirming the narrative, or casting surprising, unexpected light on it.

The faces say so much-such as the anxiety etched on the faces of Japanese-Canadians being deported at the end of the war to Japan, a country they had never known. At the same time, the faces of interned children in class with other schoolchildren in the Slocan are surprisingly cheerful.

Without exception, the groups of galena miners and Doukhobor brick-makers look dour and suspicious. Were they angry at having their work stopped, being lined up for such a frivolous purpose? In contrast, 68-year-old Molly Stoochnoff, the head cook, presiding over the borscht (fold, don't stir) for a traditional Doukhobor wedding, looks proud and contented.

Many pictures depict orchards, fields of produce, and baskets of fruit that testify to the abundance of the land; others give details of celebrations and occupations. A white sturgeon, caught during a blasting operation (the largest one ever caught in the area, it weighed 462 lbs) appears to be seven feet long. A rare First Nations picture shows three fishermen in a sturgeon-nosed canoe used by the Sinixt and Ktunaxa.

There is one photo that illustrates the third crop of the title. In order to preserve their yield, the farm family cut down hundreds of small trees, planted them in potholes, cut off most of the branches and hung the green hay on the remaining ones to dry. The family recorded their feat in winter when their handiwork was covered by several inches of snow.
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[BCBW 2011]