The woman who had Grade 8 education said that her family bad left the old Doukhobor community. She felt education was very important and was proud of the fact that two of her sons were studying at university. The woman with the Grade 3 education also felt that she was apart from the community because she had lived in other cities in Canada for many years, but she and her family had come back to the area of her childhood.

In talking about how the older generation managed without literacy, one of the women made the following comments, "People learn through other senses. They memorize. The community life is based on the families, meetings, singing, spiritual values and Russian teaching. There is no need for reading, if you've never had it." This woman, however, said she herself read. She liked Harlequin Romances, Life magazine and reading about the religions of the world. She characterized her reading as fast but not always accurate," and writing “was a chore.”

Two of the women were working in Home Support Services, a third had been doing similar work, but was now on income assistance because of ill-health. The other women were active in the community - in fund-raising and singing, and in arts and crafts and baking. Many of them get requests to do catering for stores and for local events, and some exhibit their crafts, flower arrangements and preserves at country fairs. Many of the men are skilled carpenters and carvers.

How did these women become ABE dropouts?

In the early 1980s, the college mounted a literacy class at one of its centres. Many of these women were among the first enrollees in that class. They were all fee-payers at one time, but as some individual circumstances changed - unemployment or ill-health of their husbands -some of the women got sponsorship or grants. Three of them said the fees had presented problems for them. One of the women was a widow struggling to make ends meet and bring up her children. In the cases of the other women, their husbands lost their jobs or were only seasonally employed in construction, or in logging industries, so the fees were an added burden.