Peter G. Makaroff, K.C. (1894 – 1970)
Early Years
Peter George Makaroff was born May 15, 1894 at Kars, Russia (possibly in the village of Tarpenia near Kars) into a community of largely illiterate but passionately religious peasants known as Doukhobors (spirit wrestlers). Because of their renunciation of war and their resistance to military conscription, the Doukhobors were cruelly persecuted by the Czar’s soldiers. Their plight came to the attention of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (“War and Peace”) who enlisted the aid of the Society of Friends (Quakers) to find them find a haven in the New World. The Friends negotiated with the Government of Canada for the emigration of the Doukhobors from Russia to Western Canada in 1898-99.
So it was in 1899 that Peter Makaroff’s family fled Czarist persecution to experience the joys and the hardships of pioneer farming on the great plains of the Canadian North West. Peter’s colony settled on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River west of Rosthern in what is now the Blaine Lake district. The Canadian prairie was a harsh and unforgiving a land and the move from Russia was no doubt difficult. But his family’s experience of Canadian political, religious and economic freedom – in contrast to feudal oppression and state persecution in Russia – instilled in Peter a deep appreciation for personal liberty and a life-long dedication to its defence and preservation.
The Society of Friends soon became interested in young Peter. They recognized his keen intelligence and his desire to learn. The Society helped him to receive a quality education, initially in Philadelphia where he was educated by the Quakers and then in Saskatchewan at the Rosthern Academy. At the age of sixteen Peter became a school teacher. With money saved from teaching and farm work, he attended the University of Saskatchewan starting in 1911. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1915 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1918. He thus became the first student of non-Anglo-Saxon parentage to graduate from the University of Saskatchewan. Most significantly, Makaroff became the first Doukhobor in the world to receive a university degree and to enter a profession.
After graduating from the College of Law in 1918 he established a law practice which later became the firm of Makaroff and Bates. On the death of Mr. Bates, Mr. Makaroff carried on the firm alone until he was joined by the Roger Carter in 1948 and Mary Carter in 1949.
Rewarded for his success as a barrister, Peter was made a King’s Counsel in 1932.
Peter Makaroff returned to the university scene in 1943 when he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the University of Saskatchewan. During this time, many fellow C.C.F. observers such as Makaroff saw a vision of the University as party of a educational system to be reformed and used as a means to a better life in Saskatchewan.
Mr. and Mrs. Makaroff resided at Poplar Crescent in the early years and later on Saskatchewan Crescent. Their son Robert and daughter Barbara both pursued careers in medicine.
The Veregin Case
One of the best known and most colourful episodes in Peter Makaroff’s legal career was his successful defence of Peter Veregin Jr., spiritual leader of the Doukhobors. Peter attracted international attention for his work in stopping Peter’s deportation to the Soviet Union in February of 1933.
Peter Veregin (“Veregin”) Sr. was elected leader of the Doukhobors and ruled the people as a king. Veregin, however, was assassinated in 1924, at which time the Doukhobors sent to Russia for his son, Peter, Jr. The younger son broke away from tradition and organized the radical Sons of Freedom sect.
In his much later guest appearance (in 1956) on the CBC television production Front Page Challenge, Peter Makaroff was quick to dispel the popular notion that the radical Sons of Freedom were part of the Doukhobors. Mr. Makaroff commented that he was a Doukhobor but definitely not a member of the Sons of Freedom for “It is a shame that most people connect the word Doukhobor with the Sons of Freedom. The Sons of Freedom today are not Doukhobors.”
Peter Veregin Jr. proved to be a steady client of Peter Makaroff, although the best known case involves the attempted deportation in February of 1933. As early as 1932, Mr. Makaroff was called to defend Veregin in an application for bail arising out of charges of perjury. Former partner, and now Saskatchewan Court of Appeal Justice, Nicholas Sherstobitoff recalls that Emmett Hall later used the Veregin case and Peter Makaroff as an example of how technology had played a significant role in the practice of law. In order to arrive in Halifax on time, Peter had flown in an open-air cockpit in February from Boston to Halifax across the Bay of Fundy. Howard McConnell in his book Prairie Justice details how the case started:
“After one of his weekend visits to Prince Albert, Makaroff received a phone call from a Star-Phoenix reporter advising him that Veregin had been unexpectedly whisked away under police guard, to be deported imminently to the Soviet Union from the east coast. The Minister of Immigration and Colonization confirmed that Veregin would be deported from Halifax in a couple of days. ‘You had better take a plane and catch them if you think it’s important enough,’ said the Minister.”
Mr. Makaroff had personally seen the “red scare” of the post Great War period and was convinced that Veregin’s deportation was being done for political purposes and was completely illegal. Upon his arrival in Halifax he began legal process to review the lawfulness of Mr. Veregin’s deportation order. He worked tirelessly on behalf of his client and arranged for distinguished Nova Scotia legal counsel J.J. Power, K.C. to appear on his behalf.
Mr. Power was to receive $500.00 but when the case was successful, he increased his fee and immediately had Veregin arrested for failure to pay. While Makaroff was taking additional pains to arrange for his eccentric client’s release, he was confidentially shown a telegram by Veregin’s secretary which read: “God, through the instrumentality of Judge Mellish, released me from jail, only to be re-arrested and lodged back in jail by my own lawyer Peter Makaroff. Send me $1,000.00 immediately in order to extricate me from the toils of the law again.” When he learned that his ruse was detected, the inebriated Veregin began raving once more, and Makaroff packed his grip and quietly departed. Veregin caught up with him in Winnipeg where he later apologized.
The Regina Riots
The hopelessness of the situation across the West during the Great Depression resulted inevitably in aggressive action by the unemployed. Discouraged by the relief camps and their inability to get work, British Columbia men organized and decided to march on Ottawa to demand work and reasonable wages from the federal government. The “On to Ottawa” march began in Vancouver June 3 and 4, 1935 with approximately 500 trekkers. On June 12, Prime Minister Bennett ordered the police to stop the railway trek when it reached Regina on June 14. He viewed their passage further east as a red revolution. The ranks had already swollen to 1,800 men by that time.
The men peaceably left the train and marched to the camp set up at the exhibition grounds in Regina where they were fed using federal funds. Their reception into the prairie city was warm. A local Citizens’ Emergency Committee had been organized to provide food and assistance. A public meeting held as a show of support for the trekkers on June 14, attracted five thousand people on the day after their arrival.
A small group eventually proceeded to Ottawa but their demands were rejected. When disputes developed regarding the disbanding of the men, Ottawa made plans to arrest seven of the trek leaders for “planning demonstrations that might result in an outbreak of violence”.
On the evening of July 1, a fund-raising meeting had been arranged on Market Square, just east of the downtown area. In Emmett Hall’s biography, (Dennis Greunding) it is stated that eight hundred people were attending one meeting where the leaders were to report on their latest meetings with government officials. A crowd of about 1,500 people eventually was gathered, composed of men, women, and children, many of them curious onlookers.
Inevitably, the crowd included a number of plainclothes policemen who were prepared to seize the leaders at a moment’s notice. The blast of a whistle initiated the action. Mounties and some Regina policemen charged into the crowd, and seven men were quickly arrested. As they were being led away stones were flung, sparking a riot. During the violence a detective of the Regina City Police was killed. His assailant was never established.
Premier Gardiner was furious that Bennett had chosen to make his stand in Saskatchewan and that he had not consulted the province at every step. However, Gardiner also sensed a political advantage and began to send angry telegrams to Bennett, accusing police of “precipitating a riot”. On July 5, Premier Gardiner had twelve hundred of the men packed onto trains and sent back west at the province’s expense. On the same day, despite Bennett’s objections that it was a federal matter, Gardiner named a commission of inquiry headed by the Chief Justice of the Courts of Saskatchewan.
Many were arrested for rioting. Victor Howard in his book, We Were the Salt of the Earth: The On-To-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot, states that over a hundred were arrested. In Hall’s biography, author Dennis Greunding states that one hundred and thirty of the trekkers were charged with rioting and assault while only twenty-four were brought to trial. In Howard’s book it lists this number as only 32 who were committed for trial. The trekkers agreed to release into police custody any men for whom there were warrants.
Shortly after the riot, the Citizens’ Emergency Committee in Regina reorganized into a defence committee. Saskatoon lawyer Peter Makaroff was approached to represent the men. Peter Makaroff was called in to defend the trekkers. In doing so he called upon a former law school friend Mr. Emmett Hall. It was somewhat of a surprise that Mr. Makaroff would call on Emmett Hall as Hall was not known as a sympathizers of left-wing causes. In fact, Hall once created pandemonium at a Saskatoon Kinsmen Club meeting by accusing a speaker sympathetic to the Republican side in Spain of being a communist. The man had been invited to address the Kinsmen by Makaroff and abruptly denied Hall’s allegation. As the Saskatoon paper reported the next day, the startled master of ceremonies quelled the disturbance by having the evening’s musical entertainer play “Moonlight and Roses” on the xylophone.
Emmett Hall recalls that the Regina Bar isolated him and Mr. Makaroff during the time of the trials. It seemed, he recalls with laughter, that he and Makaroff were defending the men who had “wrecked the city”.
The trials began in Regina on April 14, 1936. Most of the charges involved rioting and common assault. The prosecution presumed that a riot had occurred in Regina. Makaroff and Hall objected to any description of that day’s events as a riot. Their argument in the first, and subsequent trials, was that a group of citizens had been meeting in peaceful assembly when police waded into the crowd swinging truncheons. They argued that if it was a riot, it had been provoked by police.
In the first case, the judge agreed that the mere assembly of a crowd did not necessarily constitute an intent to act riotously but the judge did not accept the argument that the rioters were acting in their own defence when they injured a police officer. The first men were sentenced to seven months of hard labor on the assault charges.
Hall recalls that they won the first trial and lost the rest. In subsequent trials the prosecution, before dealing with the alleged assaults, first questioned its police witnesses about the crowd’s reaction when an attempt was made to arrest the strike leaders. Police testified they were pelted with stones and attacked with clubs. Requests by Hall and Makaroff that the judge again withdraw the rioting charges were denied.
Makaroff, in an interview years later, said that the atmosphere of the court was charged with hostility against the prisoners and that he had been threatened with contempt for drawing a parallel between a “peaceful assembly of trekkers…and a business meeting of a board of bank directors”. Hall recalls that on several occasions he was warned by Judge H.Y. MacDonald – “Mr. Hall, if you don’t control your colleague you’re going to have another client”. Hall adds that MacDonald and Makaroff “were a little bit annoyed at one another”. Dennis Gruending comments in the Hall biography that “the atmosphere prevalent at the time, at “least in legal circles, can best be gleaned from the report of a provincial commission, comprised of three judges, investigating the riot.
The commission made every attempt to discredit the trekkers. Peter Makaroff responded in the press to the commission’s allegation that the trek was the work of a few communist instigators: “… history proves that men do not trek because of few so-called agitators. The causes of treks go deeper into the economic forces of life.”
A Committed Socialist and Pacifist
Makaroff was a member of the Progressive party, which merged with the Conservatives, and later joined the Farmer-Labour party which became the C.C.F in 1933. He was a close friend of J. S. Woodsworth, founder of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.), whose socialist and pacifist convictions he shared. He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the CCF, first in the Saskatchewan provincial election of 1934 in the constituency of Shellbrook and again in the Canadian federal election of 1940 in the constituency of Rosthern. In 1940, he campaigned in support of Woodsworth’s stand in the Canadian Parliament in opposition to Canada’s entry into World War II.
A committed pacifist, Makaroff was a long-time member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Saskatoon chapter often met in his law office. He was especially dedicated to the peaceful resolution of domestic tensions and from the early fifties to 1964, he served as Chairman of the Saskatchewan Labor Relations Board, mediating disputes between employer and trade unions.
In later years, Makaroff was active in the World Federalist movement. He came to believe that after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, the best hope for peace was in the rule of law under a world federation of nation states. Accordingly, he endowed the World Federalist Prize “for the best annual essay relating to world peace through world law” and urged everyone he knew to join the movement.
The peace essay prize was provided for in the will of Peter Makaroff. Former partner, Roger Carter,Q.C. was established as trustee of the fund . The fund provided an annual prize for an essay dealing with the attainment of world peace and the eradication of war and violence, through a system of world law. The funds provided by Mr. Makaroff at his death and subsequent contributions would provide for an annual prize of $500.00. The prize was open to any students or faculty members in any Canadian university.
Roger Carter observes that Mr. Makaroff was, throughout his life, devoted to the ideals of world peace and non-violence – a devotion which on many occasions, made him the champion of causes opposed by social and political establishments. After a five-week trip to his native Russia he pronounced that Russians don’t want war. He said that, “the whole situation is very tragic. The people have seen so much of war that they don’t want anything to do with another one. It’s really pathetic.” He felt that communism was there to stay and that most people seemed happy with their social set-up. Makaroff felt that the mistaken belief that Russians wanted war was a contributed by poor publicity and he felt poor publicity was the fault of the tourist who was “misinterpreting everything as a confirmation of their suspicions.”
His Colleagues Remember Him
Former partner of Peter Makaroff, now Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench Justice, Paul Hrabinsky, attributes Peter Makaroff’s success to his industry and dedication. As an example, he recalls an automobile accident where a husband and wife were seriously injured. Peter retained the services of a pilot to fly him over the area where the accident occurred so they could take photographs of the terrain.
Mr. Justice Nicholas Sherstobitoff recalls Peter’s sheer force of personality. He recalls along with Roger Carter an incident when Makaroff, who “had a voice of rolling thunder”, began singing to a jury in Russian.
Roger Carter had this to say about Peter: “He was just a delight. Best sense of humor. The most courteous person. Just…one of the great people that I have met. Excellent lawyer. We enjoyed practice together very very much. In all kinds of ways; personality, and other ways, Peter was one of the best.”
The Case that Best Demonstrates Who He Was
Peter Makaroff and Justice C.S. (Hully) Davis were not on the best of terms to begin with. In a case in the 1960′s, towards the end of his litigation career, Peter Makaroff became quite “hot under the collar” as Roger Carter remembers when Davis continued to descend into the forum and run Peter’s case.
Roger Carter found that there was authority for a judge disqualifying himself in those circumstances. Overnight Roger tacked together a brief for Peter’s use the next day in court. Roger was in court the next day and observed the events. He remembers Peter saying in that voice of rolling thunder “which made me sound like a boy soprano”, “My Lord with every respect, I wish to move that you should disqualify yourself on the footing that you have descended too far in the forum, fairly to continue this case.”
Davis just went through the roof! “MAKAROFF (he never pronounced his name correctly) YOU ARE FINED FOR CONTEMPT!! $500.00!!!.” Peter stood there, the brief didn’t even shake, and he stared at Davis and said, “Cash or by cheque, my Lord?” And then dumped his brief.
Mr. Justice Nicholas Sherstobitoff recalls that on the day of the fine, Peter was returning to the office and saying that he wasn’t going to pay the fine, that he was going to go to jail. “And the problem with this for all of us was that we knew that he would. It was typical of his personality. If he thought he was right he simply wouldn’t back down.”
This caused quite a stir in the legal community. By this time, Peter was a well known lawyer of fifty years. Roger and Peter attempted to illicit the help of Prime Minister Diefenbaker who happened to be in town in his own private railway car. However, there was no love lost between Diefenbaker and Davis arising from an incident occurring in Prince Albert where a round in the library between the two resulted in Diefenbaker receiving a black eye. Diefenbaker was concerned for Peter and offered his support, but given his relationship with Davis, he did not think he could be much help.
In the end, the late Mr. Justice Clarence Estey recalled that Dr. Arthur Moxon was called in by Mrs. Makaroff to speak on Peter’s behalf. Emmett Hall also made a presentation. In Hall’s words, “Davis…God knows what he was going to do to him. But, Moxon put in a word for him and I did too. We cooled Davis off.
Mr. Justice Nicholas Sherstobitoff recalls the apology on Mr. Makaroff’s behalf was grudgingly accepted by Davis. His word were, “coming from you Mr. Moxon, I’ll accept it”. Davis withdrew the contempt finding.
Peter Makaroff died on December 5, 1970 of cancer. Mr. Justice Nicholas Sherstobitoff recalls the last thing he did for Peter was to pay some minor fines of Robert Makaroff so that he could return from jail to be with father Peter before he died. His son, like Peter, refused to back down from what he thought was right and often ended up in hot water for his views.
