Across Alberta's fertile grainlands, no farmers work their soil with greater diligence or more fruitfulness than the Hutterites, the bearded and devout descendants of German-speaking immigrants who fled Russia in 1874, seeking freedom to practice their austere faith. But Alberta's 4,000 Hutterites have been increasingly cramped by a provincial law restricting their land purchases and urgently want room to expand. Last week some of them seemed to have found their promised land in the Big Bend country of the Columbia River in the state of Washington.
Spiritual followers of Jacob Hutter, a 16th...