They were bound together by language, prayer, and music. They were Russian Doukhobors, or the “Sons of Freedom”. From the time they arrived in Canada, the Sons of Freedom clashed with the government. “Mom burned her house when I was 2. She undressed and that was what she was arrested for, for nudity,” says Elsie...

More than half a century after hundreds of children were seized from their homes and forced into residential schools, the radical sect of Russian immigrants known as the “Sons of Freedom Doukhobors” are still fighting for an apology from the British Columbia government.

They were the children of a religious sect, settled in the Kootenay’s in BC in the 1950s, that scandalized the country with nude protests, bombings and arsons. Now, after half a century, the children of the Russian “Sons of Freedom” break their silence.