Girl #85: A Doukhobor Childhood

Helen Chernoff was born into a Freedomite Doukhobor family in Oliver, British Columbia in 1947. Shortly after her eighth birthday Helen was taken from her family and held with other children of Freedomite Doukhobors in a residential dormitory in New Denver, B.C. as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

Told with drama, compassion, and humour, Girl #85 – A Doukhobor Childhood is the intensely moving account of Helen’s experience of this ordeal - one she describes as a living hell. Her powerful testimony provides an invaluable perspective on a little-known and deeply disturbing event in British Columbia’s recent history.