bully proof

…English words and Russian knuckles…

Steve and John Ivanovich Malloff – 1944

Osoyoos, BC

            ‘Vanya do you have an answer?’ asked Miss Northwoods. Standing a little straighter, turning her torso away from the chalkboard and directing her full attention to the students seated before her. Vanya shifted his confusion between the shyness in his eyes and the searching on his lips. He looked down not wanting to be disrespectful. Again, Miss Northwoods addressed him, yet this time with a more pointed inquiry.

            ‘What is the correct name given to a group of coyotes?’

            Vanya shook his head reluctantly, not wanting to disappoint her or draw embarrassment to himself, yet he did not understand the question, nor did he comprehend the answer. He was seven, but it was his first-time attending school as his mother had held him back to shield him from the challenges brought on by older boys.

            ‘When we are outside, here in the arid Okanagan desert hills we encounter wild life. Wolves run in a pack, rattlesnakes gather in a rumba, skunks belong to a surfeit, vultures loiter in a venue, and coyotes…?’ She held the silence of her prompt more insistently.

            ‘Volk?’ Vanya attempted. Thinking that the class was talking about wolves. He could only muster the Russian word for wolf. Miss Northwoods, strained to interpret his reply, then firmly shook her head.

            ‘No Johnny, the answer is band. Coyotes roam the desert and the forests in a band. They howl and attack as a band,’ she stated, providing examples.

            Immediately a few of his classmates snickered, one mumbled a slur to his friends as they fired sneers towards him. Vanya’s brow grew tense as he looked down more forcibly towards the ground. 

            ‘Teacher, he not understand,’ Stepan innocently supported his little brother from the side table where the third grade students sat. Stepan had already taken two years of school at Fructova[1] in Grand Forks, but his poor English was also laughed at by the other students. 

            ‘Well by grade one you best have your brother learn English Steven. Did they teach you nothing in Grand Forks?’ snapped Miss Northwoods, with a contempt that needed little translation.

            Soon after the morning lessons of vocabulary and grammar had concluded it was time for a break. The students were dismissed for a fifteen-minute recess. During which most of the students played various games. Typically, the boys would play baseball with sticks and bottle caps and the girls would play hop scotch. With coyotes fresh on his mind, Stepan grabbed Vanya by the hand and went outside into the yard. They walked around carefully observing the interactions of the other students. Stepan was ten years old at this time and Vanya was seven. They were the newest to enroll at the Osoyoos Elementary School and two of its younger students. As they did their best to both stay out-of-the-way and to fit-in a couple of the grade five boys approached them.

            ‘Look it’s the Doukies, they can’t even speak,’ a tall freckled boy exclaimed.

            Emboldened by their silence a few boys shuffled forward forming an informal horseshoe. They didn’t have the same style of pants or shoes as Stepan and Vanya. Another boy lodged his thumbs in his trouser pockets, spreading his torso out.

            ‘What do you call a group of Doukies?’ He snorted.

            ‘A pile.’ Another boy shouted out. ‘My pa’ says they won’t fight, but I’ll make ‘em fight.’

Just then Miss Northwoods appeared in the doorway of the school room. She looked across the yard and blew her whistle, which was the indication that the students were to return to their seats inside. Stepan grabbed Vanya by the arm and walked him into the classroom.

            For the rest of the afternoon lessons the tension mounted. The groups of boys would taunt Stepan and Vanya with long stares and animal sounds. They’d crack their knuckles and twist their feet into the floor, like a cowboy might extinguish a cigarette butt. The afternoon was a long and nervous one for the brothers. Finally, the class was dismissed at 3:00 pm. The students all gathered their books and belongings and headed outside to walk home or catch the school bus.

            Stepan and Vanya went to wait at the bus stop. The four boys from lunch arrived and continued the taunting. Stepan had about enough by this time. He pushed Vanya behind him and said, ‘Ok, who first?’

            The freckled boy shouted, ‘I’ll beat the shit out of you, yuh dumb Doukie.’ He lunged forward and pushed Stepan to the ground. He jumped on him and they began to toss around in the dirt. Stepan managed to push him off and punch him in the stomach. Then another boy jumped in and they began to fight. Stepan got to his feet and with a solid right hand, landed a hard punch right in his face. The boy fell down, out cold. Then another boy jumped in. This time Stepan threw him to the ground on top of his friend. Finally, after four attacks Stepan was tired and took a few punches to the head himself. The bus arrived as the group of coyotes began to slink away. The driver got out of the bus and broke up remnants of the tussle. He sat the boys on opposite ends of the bus.

            Osoyoos is located just over one hundred kilometers to the west of the Osatka Village in Grand Forks from where Stepan and Vanya had arrived. It was 1944 and their family had moved because of the better opportunities to find consistent work. Their father had worked in the Okanagan as a young man and had already established a reputation as a hard worker with the Kohler Farms. Canada was emerging from the clutches of the hardships brought on by the Great Depression. It was more challenging to prosper selling produce from Grand Forks as it was a small town off the well beaten path of the wholesale buyers. All the American buyers came through Osoyoos on their way to Kelowna, where the major packing houses were located. The Okanagan growing season gave an extra two to three weeks advantage on average over the Kootenay Boundary region. 

            Stepan and Vanya’s family moved here as their father got a job working as the orchard foreman on the Kohler family farms. They had a small two-room house a few acres south of the Kohler Orchards. They were surrounded by sagebrush and dessert. There was an irrigation ditch running from Skaha Lake which was just a few hundred meters from their house. They used the irrigation ditch to gather water for cooking and bathing. There was no indoor plumbing and no garden. Their property was unfenced so deer, skunks, rattlesnakes and coyotes were always nearby, waiting for a meal to seize upon. The land was dusty, dry and brown. The smells and flowers were much different than Grand Forks. Somehow it so happened that a friend from Osatka brought the Malloff family their cow from Grand Forks as a joke, so at least they had milk, cream, butter and cottage cheese to help them get by.

            Unlike Grand Forks there were no brethren across the field, up the hill or down by the river. There were no villages to walk to, no friends or cousins to visit, no common language to speak, no gatherings, no gossip to share. Instead of fitting-in to the green embrace of a communal village they stuck-out among the sagebrush and brown sweeping hills as an individual family. Their clothes were less tailored than their peers. They did not entertain or engage in the pecking order that the town had established. Everything was strange and people were not receptive to these agrarian intruders. Everybody had heard of the Doukhobors and they were suspicious. People were on edge due to poverty and hunger that prevailed across the province during the previous decade.

            Even the sons of Max Kohler, Fritz, Hans and Karl were anything but welcoming. Hans exercised a particular unfriendly greeting, he would piss and shit in the irrigation canal in front of intake pipe that fed the pump to the Malloff house. Often taking the time to ensure that Stepan and Vanya would witness.

            Most of the locals were of mixed European lineage. Many were German and Hungarian farmers, there were a few Dutch, English and Swiss farmers. Most farms ended up coordinating the products of their labours in some affiliation with the Okanagan Co-op and Packing House, which organized cucumbers, tomatoes, plums, pears and apples for sale out of Kelowna BC.

            Osoyoos was Vanya’s first exposure to public school. Stepan had already experienced Fructova school in Grand Forks. It was built for Doukhobor children and although the teachers were strict, it was much friendlier and more enjoyable simply because they were all Doukhobor students at that school. Stepan was not impressed with what Osoyoos was offering. This was their first sojourn away from the communal lifestyle at the Osatka village. The Osoyoos Elementary school was a spartan two-room building. It was run by the local sisters from the Protestant Church.

            Further to the economic tensions that various farms struggled with, the tides of World War II had begun to change trajectory and there were patriotic tensions that carried over from Europe. It was clear that the frontlines and offensives were changing. Germany had begun to taste defeat. The Kohler boys resented the Doukies because they were Russian and even though they were Canadian, Germany was familiar to them.

            These first months of school provided a culture shock that the boys carried with them on a daily basis. The Osoyoos Elementary school days were not easy for Stepan and Vanya. Vanya started grade one with two words, ‘yes and ‘no’. Almost on a daily basis Stepan would have to fend off physical challenges from more than one bully. They would often line up, each boy waiting his turn, trying to knock-out the Doukie to gain a badge of honour. Stepan grew to enjoy his reputation as the strongest kid in the schoolyard, but deep down he preferred the camaraderie of his own friends back in the Osatka village.

Stepan was older, but he had a harder time advancing through the language, perhaps by choice or perhaps due to his antagonistic surroundings. Often, he would sulk or rebel as he just did not seem to want to understand the grammatical workings. Some of his troubles could be attributed to the constant teasing he incurred due to his proximity in age to the schoolyard bullies.

            Vanya on the other hand appeared to pick-up English almost overnight through some unspoken osmosis. Vanya loved school and everything it offered, letters, numbers, words, facts, figures, problems and of course stories. They all presented themselves as tools in service of his quickly developing abilities of articulation.

            The following year they returned to Grand Forks and enrolled at Fructova school. These were to be the salad days when their education would be liberated from the confines of schoolyard bullies.

[1] Fructova was the first Doukhobor built public school for educating Doukhobor students. It was a joint project that received curriculum and teacher support from the BC government. It is located in Grand Forks BC.