SOINTULA

The intriguing history of Sointula was always Canadian, yet it was considered important enough to be recorded in Finland. In the Helsinki archives of the labour movement you can read the story of Matti Kurikka, Austin Makela and the socialist commune they founded almost 100 years ago. In a tiny island paradise off the British Columbia coast stubborn Finns practiced self-sufficiency, envisioned equality for all and subsisted on a diet of salted fish and potatoes. As a romantic utopia Sointula lasted a mere 3 years. But the settlers who stayed had a sincere interest in the labour movement and its benefits for a harmonious society and they made Sointula’s dubious reputation as a grassroots communist centre last well into the 1940’s.

Two years after Austin Makela’s death in 1932, the Vancouver Province newspaper noted "...for 30 years the Finns have maintained a communist state on Malcolm Island. Today they probably know less about what’s happening in Canada than the Soviet Union. They seldom leave the island but keep in touch with Russia, their spiritual home."

Descendants of the original Sointulans still make Malcolm Island their home, but unless your interest is in immigrant history or in how British Columbia was settled, you may never have heard of Sointula. For many aging Canadian Finns, and Canadian-Swedes too, Sointula on Malcolm Island is nonetheless a very special place.

There was fiddle music and comradeship in the rugged logging float camps off the island, and bountiful catches of herring and salmon for Sointula’s unionized gillnetters and seiners in Queen Charlotte Strait. And after hard work there was a safe and sheltered harbour to come home to, on the west side of the island. Sointula’s window panes would glow fairytale golden, as the sun set across Broughton Strait, behind Port McNeill and the mountains on Vancouver Island.

The window panes still glow in the sunset and Sointula seems magically ageless, bathed in the mild climate of a soft Pacific Ocean, where chocolate brown giant kelp moves lazily and loftily in the water and black-and-white killer whales shoot out of the waves for a ballet performance of ancient, and perhaps mythical, origin.

The simply timbered homes and boat sheds have a barren, Nordic look and their placement around the harbour feels equally Scandinavian. This could be a fishing village on the Gulf of Bothnia coast, even if the building lumber isn’t spruce, and rarely pine, but the giant yellow cedar, which covered the virgin island in 1901, when the first Finnish settlers arrived.

Today’s Scandinavia-rooted observer feels nostalgia, wandering the few narrow streets and roads of Sointula, past weatherworn porches and gates in sparse gingerbread style, and overgrown backyards of rowanberries and apples, now and then interspersed with a roughly hewn sauna.

In 1996 the postmaster is a woman of Finnish background, Finnish is spoken in the village and faces of young and old reveal that third and fourth generation Sointula Finns make up the backbone of this close-knit community of about 700, which until fairly recently had neither church (by choice) nor medial facilities. Oldtimers like Meralda Pink and Irma Jarvinen faithfully meet for lunch once a week at the local pub and afterwards visit the co-op store, which carries fresh cheese, magazines and other items flown in from Finland.

Sointulans are proud of two historical accomplishments. One is the fishing boat gillnet drum, invented by local fisherman Lauri Jarvis in 1931. Before its debut, the heavy and wet nets were set and hauled by hand. Jarvis took out a patent and ran a drum manufacturing plant in Sointula. His drum concept was revolutionary for the fishing industry, but the invention was too simple to be protected by a patent. Other fisherman soon copied and improved upon Jarvis’s product.

The second accomplishment and still the heart of Sointula is the large Co-op Store, built in 1909 and said to be the longest continuously operating cooperative in western Canada.

HOW SOINTULA CAME TO BE

The reason Sointula came to be was first of all Matti Kurikka, born in St Petersburg in 1863 and a Helsinki University student, who was as fascinated by Tolstoy and the women’s equality movement as he was opposed to the Lutheran Church. But he preached the concept of Christianity together with love and justice as the foundation for a perfect new world order. In Finland he worked as a journalist and playwright and was very active politically before he emigrated to Australia in 1899. He had then just divorced his first wife, Helsinki socialite Anna Palmqvist, with whom he had one daughter, Alli.

Returning to Finland after the Sointula fiasco (and another unsuccessful all-male commune attempt in the Fraser Valley, close to Vancouver) the 43-year old Kurikka married the 20-year younger Hanna Raivo. They also had a daughter, Auli Annikki, and moved to the United States, homesteading in Penker, Connecticut, where Kurikka in 1914 one day collapsed and died during work on his farm.

When Kurikka emigrated to Australia, 180 Finns followed him to be part of his promised utopia in Queensland. It never came off the ground. Instead Kurikka continued to Canada with his experimental theory, on a boat ticket sent to him from a politically active group of unhappy Finnish coalminers on Vancouver Island. They wanted to create their own colony, far from the labor-management strifes of mining and the evils of the outside world. They felt that Kurikka would be the ideal leader and begged him by letter to join them.

Kurikka arrived and chose Malcolm Island off the map. On behalf of the Finns (he made them paid share members of the Kalevan Kansa Colonization Company) he negotiated the 28 000 acre lease from the B.C. government in Victoria. At the same time he also managed to talk the Finns into funding a newspaper, the first printed Finnish-language newspaper in Canada. The editor and main writer of "Aika" was of course Kurikka. The paper soon had subscribers in both the United States, Finland and Australia and eagerly promoted Kurikka’s latest utopia, Sointula.

To help with "Aika" and the settling of Sointula, Austin Makela, a marxist and old friend of Kurikka’s arrived from Finland. History has it that while Kurikka had the charisma and ideas, his dreaming and money squandering almost wiped out Sointula in less than 2 years. Makela, on the other hand, was a decisive and methodical man and sincerely wanted the community to advance and grow.

A nasty fire struck the village in 1903. At the same time Kurikka practically bankrupted the colony, by bidding far too low on a contract to build two bridges in North Vancouver, with Sointulan workers and prime island lumber. When the leader’s increasing preaching of "free love" caused Makela to suspect that his wife had an affair with Kurikka, things came to an end and Kurikka resigned. Makela took over the leadership and was the "godfather" of Sointula until his death there in 1932.

Matti Kurikka left Sointula in October 1904. He never returned. Half the colonists left with him. The 36 families who stayed tried to earn a living from the island’s sawmill operation. The publishing of "Aika" ceased, as the printing press was sold to raise money. By 1907 the sawmill had been sold, dismantled and moved off the island as well. Then the remaining forest was sold for five dollars an acre. It was all done to pay off the colonization company’s debts. The company folded and none of the Finns were paid for their shares.

With nothing but their "sisu" left, the Sointulans began rebuilding their community. Work was found in the logging float camps up and down the Mainland and Vancouver Island coasts, in the salmon fishing and canneries and in farming on Malcolm Island. John Honkala’s blacksmith shop survived until 1922. Mink trapping was another income source.

Long before the Finns arrived, Malcolm Island was an important stopover for the nomadic Kwakwaka’wakw Indians, who used it as fishing, clamming and berry picking grounds. Franz Boas, the famous ethnologist, made several research trips to the area. Today’s tourist can easily walk to interesting petroglyphs and shell middens. A Kwakwak’wakw band lives on the 480-acre Pultney Point reserve, just north of the harbor, since 1916.

A couple of ranchers along with a small British temperance group and a Danish hermit also lived on Malcolm Island before the Finns. And in the 1960s a new kind of settler immigrated from the US. They were free spirits, opposed to the war in Vietnam and they wanted to cultivate various crops in a peaceful environment. The new hippies bought old farms cheaply, or camped in tepees, and the majority still resides at Mitchell Bay to the south.

Sointula will not stay a secret for long. The charming old homesteads are being bought up by outsiders. Some of them come for the summer, others commute to work in northern Vancouver Island centres. The ferry at Port McNeill offers 6 to 7 daily runs and a 25-minute ride brings you to Sointula. Tourism is catching on fast and there is currently a decent selection of B&Bs, fishing, whale watching and other water wilderness excursions. There is also art for sale by local artists, an interesting museum and a library. The old cemetery, the co-op and the Finnish Hall are heritage sights. Walking across the island is easy almost anywhere and the ocean vistas are magnificent and varied. In late August the well-known Salmon Day is a main weekend celebration. And if you are interested in music, the Sointula oldtimers claim that the local fiddling and accordion playing is of rich and genuine quality. You may have to contact them for information about the informal gatherings.

Part of the historical information above comes form Paula Wild’s recently published book "Sointula, Island Utopia", which is a thorough account by a former Malcolm Island resident, filled with interesting photographs.

Ann-Charlotte Berglund