Frederick Mokiewich Dunaenko

c. 1850 - 1947
Patriarch and preacher

Frederick Mokiewich Dunaenko was born in Russia, c. 1850. More specifically, he was born in the Kyiv gubernia (province) of the Russian Empire. Several sources suggest that he was from Chesnopol, near the town of Uman, in central Ukraine. He married Olga Kopik. They had nine children (seven boys and two girls) before they immigrated to Canada in 1910. He came to Canada after enduring years of exile for religious dissent.

Frederick M. Dunaenko. Detail from an undated photo in his autobiography, "Endureth to the End."

Although he was born in present-day Ukraine, Frederick Dunaenko identified with ethnic Russians; and although he was born into a peasant class, he was relatively prosperous. He held tenure to land and owned a grist mill in his village. He was educated and could read and write proficiently in Russian. He could also read Church Slavonic, a liturgical language used in religious services of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was raised in the Russian Orthodox faith and was devout within it, but when he was about thirty-five years old, he joined an evangelical Protestant denomination whose members were called Stundists

Originally a term of derision, the name Stundists was embraced by adherents. Stundists rejected the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the domination of local priests. They emphasized salvation through personal piety and study. (The name ‘Stundist’ was derived from the German word for ‘hour’ – stunde – and referred to their devotion and daily study of the New Testament in the Bible.)

Stundists did not comprise a radical or seditious sect; rather, they were conservative in outlook and were closely related to mainstream Baptists. Even so, in the 1890s Stundists were persecuted by the Russian Orthodox Church and many Stundist teachers were exiled to the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire. Frederick Dunaenko was one of the exiles.

Dunaenko was banished for nearly ten years, beginning in May 1894. He recounted his exile in a memoir entitled Endureth to the End: A Chapter in the Life of Frederick M. Dunaenko, [privately printed, n.d.].

Initially, he was sent to a prison-camp near Tbilisi in Georgia. He was then transported to a prison camp in Erevan (now called Yerevan) in Russian Armenia. When he was released from the prison, he was still confined to the town and required to report regularly to the local police department. After a time, his wife and children were permitted to join him. Thanks to a kindly Russian official, their situation in Erevan was tolerable; but when the official was replaced by a functionary from Georgia, they suffered. The "Georgian Chekezova," Dunaenko recalled in his memoir, "was without mercy and hated all Russians" (p. 34). Eventually, Dunaenko was transferred to a railway work camp in Alexandropol (now called Gyumri) in Armenia.

Dunaenko’s punishment was traumatic to him and his family. The descriptions of his exile are harrowing. His term of exile was supposed to end in 1899 but inexplicably two more years were added to his sentence and a few more years passed before he returned “to my old district and … to a house of my own with my wife and my children” (p. 37).

But he was unable to resettle comfortably. During his absence, his brother had taken over his property and he continued to have trouble with local church and government officials. He resolved to leave Russia and go to Canada. In 1910 he was given a passport and permission to emigrate with his wife and family.

A picture from "Endureth to the End: A Chapter in the life of Frederick M. Dunaenko." The girl who is identifed in the caption as Julia is probably Eva.

Two of his children, Eva and Alexander, had already gone ahead. They left Russia for Canada in 1907 or 1908.

In 1910, Frederick and Olga emigrated with their youngest children: Sam, who was 16 years old; Paul (age 14), Mary (6), Peter (4), Jack (2), and Nicholai, who was 4 months old. They made their way to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and sailed for Canada aboard the S.S. Uranium on 25 August 1910. They landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 3 September 1910. They headed west to Vegreville, Alberta to meet Eva and Alexander Dunae, who had preceded them.

Almost immediately, Frederick Dunaenko applied for a homestead. His application was filed on 26 September 1910 at the Dominion Lands office in St. Paul-des-Metis (St. Paul, Alberta), only a few weeks after he had arrived in Canada. He obtained entry for a homestead near the hamlet of Flat Lake, Alberta, about 130 kilometres (85 miles) northeast of Vegreville.

The legal description of the Dunaenko homestead was the southwest quarter of Section 3 in Township 60, Range 8, west of the 4th Meridian. Its abbreviated and common description was SW 3-60-8, W4. Alexander had filed for a homestead on an adjacent quarter section of land at NW 3-60-8, W4. The nearest village was Glendon, about 13 kilometres (8.5 miles) north.

To earn money, Frederick worked as a labourer on the Canadian Northern Railway [CNoR], a transcontinental line that was later part of the Canadian National Railway system. A subsidiary of the CNoR owned the S.S. Uranium, the ship that brought Dunaenko and his family to Canada. Frederick may have entered into some kind of agreement with the railway company before embarking in Rotterdam. He was away from home for long periods of time, working on the railway, during his early years in Alberta.

Frederick Dunaenko, about 90 years old, stooking wheat near Rife, Alberta, 1941
Photograph taken by his grandson, Paul Dunae

Dunaenko was also a preacher. He was a leader among Slavic Christian Evangelicals, a religious group that flourished in some Russian-Ukrainian communities in Western Canada. His pastoral work took him away from home frequently. He enjoyed religious tolerance, which he had not experienced in the Old Country. In his memoir, he remarked: "The police here [in Canada] were totally indifferent, and there were no jealous priests. There was freedom. You could say whatever your conscience told you to say." "And so the Word of God began to spread" (p. 41).

He began his ministry near Glendon by holding religious services in the homes of local homesteaders. A diary from this period indicates that he baptized nearly eighty settlers, including some of the most prominent pioneers in the district, between 1915 and 1925. Entries from his baptismal diary, and reminiscences of his preaching, are included in So Soon Forgotten: A History of Glendon and Districts (Glendon Historical Society, 1985).

He was the founding pastor of the Evangelistic Christian Church of Glendon, which was incorporated on 24 December 1927 under the Religious Societies’ Land Act of Alberta. The church building was located in the hamlet of Beacon Corner, near Glendon. In the mid-1940s the building was moved to the village of Glendon and the congregation is known today as the Glendon Evangelical Church. He also assisted in establishing the Glendon Pentecostal Church.

The large stone marks the grave of Frederick Dunaenko in the cemetery at Beacon Corner, near Glendon, Alberta. The inscription is written in Russian and was made by the deceased before he died.
Photograph taken by his great-grandson, Larry Marchand, in May 2020.

Frederick Dunaenko died at Glendon, Alberta on 6 March 1947. The Registration of Death certificate records his age as 96 years and 1 month, but he may have been a few years older when he passed away. His profession, as recorded on the death certificate, was "preacher." He is buried in a small cemetery at Beacon Corner. His grave is marked by a large stone, which he inscribed in Russian and placed before his death.

He was predeceased by his wife, Olga Doonanco, who died in an Edmonton hospital on 22 June 1937. She too is buried in the cemetery at Beacon Corner.