Building a Better World - Sointula
Situated at the north-east end of Vancouver Island, Malcolm Island provides boaters a provisioning stop and a safe harbour to wait out weather. And, like most Pacific Northwest islands, it boasts beautiful geography -- gorgeous ocean vistas and majestic forests. But Malcolm Island, home to the village of Sointula, also has a rich and unique history, preserved and documented in the local museum and still evident in the local businesses and architecture.
Sointula - A Utopian Vision
Sointula, which is Finnish for ‘place of harmony’ was formed by a group of immigrants who fled Tzarist-controlled Finland at the end of the 1800s in the hope of finding a better life in B.C. Instead, they fell into brutal exploitation in the mines and lumber mills around Nanaimo. In 1901, they asked Matti Kurikka, a well-known Finnish journalist and utopian socialist, to help them form a new cooperative society, and he jumped at the chance.
Kurikka envisioned a community where men and women would be equal and work cooperatively to sustain themselves, sharing the fruits of their labour. At the heart of his utopian socialist vision was the idea that mankind would naturally evolve towards socialism as they evolved spiritually. However, many of his contemporaries in Finland were adopting more Marxist ideals, and were working toward the revolution they believed was necessary to create a fairer society. This ideological shift and the increasing power of the Russian Tsar over Finland motivated Kurikka to leave his homeland and to try and form communities that would develop according to his brand of socialism.
It was a Finnish miner suffering poor working and living conditions in the mines around Nanaimo that wrote Kurikka and asked him to create a colony in B.C. Kurikka was in Australia at the time, having failed in an attempt to form a socialist community there. He was eager to try again and arrived in Nanaimo B.C in 1900. Upon his arrival he formed the Kalevan Kansa Colonization Company and began working to recruit people for the colony and to find a suitable home for it. After meeting with government officials in Victoria, the company settled on Malcolm Island as it was thought to be suitable for agriculture and close to shipping. In exchange for the 28,000 hectares, the company, over a period of seven years, was to build a settlement for at least 350 people and to improve the land by 2.50 per acre.
In 1901, the Nanaimo Finnish community raised funds to buy a printing press and the Finnish-language socialist newspaper Aika was formed. Kurikka arranged for his friend Makela, the editor who had replaced him in Finland on the socialist paper he had worked on, to come help with the Aika and the colony. Makela arrived with his wife and became joint editor of the newspaper and secretary of the Colonization Company. By mid 1902, about 100 Finns had settled at Sointula. By June there was a saw mill under construction, a forge and a large common building.
A Dream Dies
Unfortunately, Kurikka’s talents were more political and ideological than practical and a series of bad economic choices and bad luck doomed the cooperative venture to failure. Much of the planning for economic ventures did not take into account the distance from markets. Sointula, remote by modern standards, was even more remote then without regular ferry service. The cost of shipping goods to market made any kind of service industry unviable. To make matters worse, Kurikka bid on a bridge building project in far away Vancouver, undercutting to get the bid, and badly underestimating so that the cooperative lost money.
A fire in 1903 destroyed the common building and killed eleven settlers. This tragedy and the economic struggles took a huge toll on the colony.
Compounding these problems were big differences of opinion developing in the community. Makela was a traditional Marxist with no patience for any form of religion. Kurrikka was a theosophist, and believed that mankind could evolve to become true children of God and in doing so, choose a socialist economic system. Eventually he denounced Marxism, arguing that the idea of class struggle led to hatred rather than to love.
And there was another more personal reason for the growing split between the two friends. Kurikka believed that marriage enslaved women, and that they should be free to take on lovers and become mothers without being possessed by men. Maekla did not support this radical ‘free love’ view. Adding insult to injury was the fact that his wife asked for a divorce, explaining that she was in love with another man in the colony. Although Kurikka denied that he was the lover, there is evidence that some people suspected he was.
The rupture between their political beliefs, the painful personal split between them, and the increasing financial difficulties of the colony led to Kurikka leaving with half the colonists. Soon after, in 1905, the bankrupt cooperative was dissolved and the land once again became the property of the B.C. government.
Sointula Post Kurrika
The settlers who remained at Sointula, purchased land and endeavoured to make the community a success. Sointula was no longer a utopian collective but the individuals who remained still held to some socialist beliefs and organized a number of cooperative ventures.
The first was the Sointula Cooperative Store Association which was founded in 1909. Given the lack of ferry access at the time, it was difficult for residents to get supplies. The cooperative allowed them to have easier access to supplies and provided a place to meet as a community. By the early twenties many community members had turned to salmon fishing and were struggling with their relationship with the canning companies that bought their catch and financed their boats and fishing gear. As a result they started a fishermans marketing cooperative. In succeeding decades, Sointula residents have developed other cooperatives including a credit union in 1940, a reforestation co-op in 1974 and the Wild Island Food Co op in 1999.
Sointula Today
Today Sointula boasts about 700 permanent residents, a number of them descended from the original colony, and some others later utopia seekers in the form of back-to-the landers and draft dodgers that arrived in the sixties and seventies. And like many of the Pacific Northwest islands, Malcolm Island is home to a number of artists, inspired by the beauty and tranquility of the geography. With the demise of the lumber and fishing industries, a number of the permanent residents work on the mainland, commuting to Port McNeil.
Thanks to the efforts of a group of Sointula residents in the 70s, today you can visit the Sointula Museum, on First Street between the ferry dock and Lion’s Bay Marina. The museum’s collection offers a fascinating glimpse into the past, with a collection of photographs of the original settlers and artefacts from their homes, as well as from the fishing, farming and logging industries most of them worked in.
The Sointula Store Cooperative gives a feel for the special history of the island. It also is a great place to provision—the store is licensed and has a great deli counter.
Also worth the effort are the hikes marked on the island. The Mateoja trail (which starts just above Third Street) is particularly interesting as it offers a glimpse of the past with its markers of original homesteads as well as agricultural and logging implements left on the land by the original colony members. The path winds through woods and cleared fields and by a couple of beautiful lakes.
Despite the failure of the original utopian community, the early residents of Sointula created a settlement that flourished and still held true to some of the socialist ideals that fuelled the original utopian vision. The history and the beauty of Malcolm Island make it a great boating destination.
Sidebar Information
If you go
There is transient moorage available at Sointula Harbour in Rough Bay.
Contact Malcolm Island Lions Harbour Authority 250 973 6544
www.sointula.com/harbour.htmlRecommended books
Sointula: An Island Utopia by Paula Wild