Veregin owes its existence to the Doukhobors and the railway. The future townsite lay in the middle of the Doukhobors' 1899 block settlement, known as the South Doukobor Colony, and in 1904 the Canadian Northern Railway's new line between Kamsack and Canora crossed the reserve. The spot chosen for the station was the closest point on the line to Otradnoye, about 10 km north, where Doukhobor leader Peter Verigin had his residence and headquarters.
The station, first called Veregin Siding and known as Veregin station from 1908, took its name from Peter Verigin. The railroad misspelled the surname, though Veregin is a common variant among the Doukhobors. A village began to grow beside the station, and Verigin moved his residence and headquarters there in 1904. Brickworks, grain elevators and a flour mill were built, and Veregin became an important Doukhobor settlement in the region. It hosted the community's annual meetings by January 1910 and was incorporated as a village in 1912.
When the Doukhobor community was incorporated in 1917 as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, its headquarters were in Veregin, and they stayed there until moving to British Columbia in 1931. After the organization's bankruptcy in 1937–38, its facilities were sold or destroyed.
Verigin's mansion, built in 1917, was restored in 1980, and in 2006 it and a few other Doukhobor buildings were designated a National Historic Site of Canada as "Doukhobors at Veregin." Two major fires in January 2004 threatened the village's future, and on December 31, 2006, it became a special service area within the Rural Municipality of Sliding Hills No. 273.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Veregin” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.