The children, 150 of them, were scooped up by police and taken to a former sanitorium in British Columbia's Kootenay mountains. They were forbidden to speak their native tongue and could visit with their parents only twice a month, through a barbed-wire fence.
For years they were held there, like prisoners of war, they say. They were the children of the Sons of Freedom, a minority sect of Doukhobors originally from Russia. Known as Freedomites, their forebears fled to British Columbia in the early 20th century in the hope of practising their pacifist culture unhindered.
Instead, their customs raised the ire of the provincial government and their children were seized. Today, 48 of those children -- now well into their middle age -- want an apology for their incarceration and have launched a lawsuit against the government. But the Liberal government has refused to say sorry, likening the Freedomites of 1950s British Columbia to terrorists.
The children were seized for their own good, the government argued in a recently filed statement of defence. Their parents were unfit and the only reason they were placed in a compound in New Denver, B.C., was because no other Doukhobors would take them in.
A long, bitter trial is expected.
Today, 42 years after she was chased across a mushroom field by Mounties, Linda Essex said the government's treatment of Freedomite children was far worse than her parents' unorthodox customs.
"They took us from our parents because they said they wanted to protect us," Mrs. Essex, 50, said in an interview in her sister's kitchen in Surrey. "But our protectors abused us. There was no love, no warmth, just fear.
"We had meals and crafts, but no hugs, no love. If you were hurt, tough. If you cried, you got strapped."
She and her sister, Irene Stushnoff, 55, said the sanitorium was more like a jail than a school. Children were identified by numbers and they were separated by age groups and gender. Mrs. Essex and Mrs. Stushnoff saw their brother, Bill Perepotkin, only during the walk to school.
Mrs. Essex spent six months at New Denver before it was permanently closed in 1959. But Mr. Perepotkin was kept there for five years from the age of 5. Mrs. Essex said her brother was permanently traumatized by the experience. He was bullied by the older boys and abused by sanitorium staff. Once, he feigned appendicitis because he heard he would be treated well after the surgery.
"Billy was always sad," Mrs. Stushnoff said. "When our parents came to see us, he cried the whole time. He has never known a moment's peace."
The worst times were visiting days, which occurred two Sundays a month. Children would line the fence, pushing their fingers through the diamond-shaped holes. Often, parents and children would stand and weep the whole visit.
"We were like monkeys hanging on a wire, kissing our parents through the wire," Mrs. Essex said.
The Freedomites first settled in the Kootenays in the late 1890s with financial assistance from Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and U.S. chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who believed in their cause.
In addition to being pacifists, the Sons of Freedom sect was also antimaterialistic. Adherents believed people were born with no belongings and died with nothing. Some of their eyebrow-raising customs included going nude in public and burning buildings to demonstrate their disdain for possessions. They kept their children out of school because they believed public schools taught children about war, battles and killing.
But the premier of the day, W. A. C. Bennett, had no time for Freedomite customs. He considered them anarchist criminals and said their children were truants. In 1953, the government acted. For the next six years, police routinely rounded up the children of Freedomites and sent them to a disbanded New Denver sanitorium that was once used for Japanese interns. The government said the goal was to force the children to go to school and learn Canadian customs.
The grown children say the government's goal wasn't that lofty. They say the government punished the children to subdue the parents, a move they consider reprehensible.
"We were kids," Mrs. Stushnoff said. "We didn't know anything. If they had a problem with our parents, they should have dealt with our parents."
Mrs. Stushnoff said her parents customs weren't harmful. They were taught to read in Sunday School and led happy, simple childhoods.
"We were taught about God. We learned Russian. We were pacifists and taught not to hurt anybody."
Their father worked at Safeway, stocking shelves, and their mother was a homemaker who raised six children.
She conceded her parents once burned their own house. Asked if she agreed with her parents' customs, Mrs. Stushnoff shrugged her shoulders. Mrs. Essex cut in and said: "That is not the point of our complaint. The point is, the government used us as pawns to punish our parents."
Their lawyer, Drew Schroeder, said the government's statement of defence concedes that the incarceration of the children had a subduing effect on the parents.
"Following implementation of the school enforcement program, less difficulty was experienced with the Sons of Freedom generally," the government's argument says.
Today, neither sister adheres to Freedomite custom. Both married outside the movement and sent their children to public schools.