James Mavor (1854-1925) was a professor of Political Economy and Constitutional History at the University of Toronto: „Mavor started a publicity campaign about the desirability of having the Doukhobors as immigrants, as they were people who had suffered for their faith, hard-working and on the whole quite respectable, and he began to lobby the Canadian government to let them into Canada.“ (Sergey Tolstoy)

It was the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) who after corresponding with Leo Tolstoy and during his stay in England proposed to James Mavor in 1898 that several thousand Doukhobors be settled in Canada. Kropotkin argued that three conditions needed to be fulfilled:
  • The pacifists should be exempted from military service;
  • The internal organization (principally educational matters) of the immigrants should not to be interfered with;
  • Lands should be allocated to the Doukhobors in their own reserves so that they could till the soil collectively.

James Mavor
(1854-1925)



Peter Kropotkin
(1842-1921)