Esmé Iverson is 14 years old and lives in Duncan, B.C. She often visits her grandmother in Sointula and enjoys having saunas with her cousins.

By the late 1890s, a group of Finnish immigrants working in coal mines on Vancouver Island were looking for a better life. They had worked hard but now the mine owner was forcing them to leave behind the homes they’d built and move somewhere else if they wanted to keep working for him. They dreamed of a place where they could live in freedom and equality without bosses, alcohol or churches. So in 1901 they collected money to bring Matti Kurikka, a well-known Finnish writer and thinker, to Canada. They set up a colony on Malcolm Island, off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. They called it Sointula, which means “place of harmony” in Finnish. The idea was to work together and care for each other. They started a company that would run fishing boats, harvest logs, farm and operate shops. They even published a newspaper in Finnish, Aika which means “time.” But although they had a wonderful vision of a peaceful, happy colony, the reality was very different. People arrived expecting somewhere to live before houses were even built, and the homes for the first families weren’t good. The company didn’t charge enough for its work, so the colony ran out of money. A terrible fire in 1903 killed three adults and eight kids, and burned many supplies. Kurikka, who was a dreamer but not a great leader or businessperson, left late in 1904. Many of the colonists went with him. Another leader named A.B. Makela stayed on. By 1905, the Sointula colony had fallen apart, but many of its ideas have lived on. There is still a town named Sointula on Malcolm Island. You can see its Finnish past in the people’s names, and in the pulla (a Finnish sweet bread) in the bakery and saunas (steam rooms) around the island.