Two other Freedomites, Tina Zmaeff, 59, and Mary Braun, 63, continue hunger strikes. Correctional Service spokesman Tom D'Aquino said they are "in much better shape" than was Astaforoff in her final days.

The Doukhobors came to Canada from Russia just before the turn of the century, settling first in the Prairies before many moved on to British Columbia. The radical splinter Freedomite group - originally large, but now a tiny minority among Doukhobors with about 50 adherents - adopted arson as a form of protest against authority in the early 1920s.

Joel Vinge, B.C. corrections branch regional director in Cranbrook, recalled Astaforoff's warmth when he visited her at her home in Gilpin.

VANCOUVER (CP) - Prison authorities were right not to try to force-feed a Sons of Freedom Doukhobor woman dying at the end of a hunger strike, says Eike Kluge, a biomedical ethicist and professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria.

Even Peter Astaforoff, the dead woman's son, has "no squabble or contention" with the way the authorities handled his mother.

Mary Astaforoff, 71, had been on a hunger strike for about seven weeks when she died Sunday. Prison officials say her hunger strike in Matsqui Institution lasted 48 days, but her son said it began six days earlier.

Kluge said that "if it was clear there was 'informed refusal' (to eat) by the individual, they (prison authorities) acted quite correctly."

Dr. Doug Roberts said the last time he tube-fed Astaforoff and two other women in 1983, he realized that in their case it was wrong to act against their wishes.

"It was a very personal decision, a very emotional decision," said Roberts, a medical officer at the William Head Prison and the Wilkinson Road Jail in Victoria. "I started loving those women."

Peter Astaforoff said his mother "was born a Freedomite, so that was the start. She died a true soldier for what she believed in."

Astaforoff had served about seven weeks of a 10-year term for a Sept. 8 arson fire at the Castlegar Doukhobor Museum.

Two other Freedomites, Tina Zmaeff, 59, and Mary Braun, 63, continue hunger strikes. Correctional Service spokesman Tom D'Aquino said they are "in much better shape" than was Astaforoff in her final days.

Astaforoff's death was the first in 22 years by a prisoner on a hunger strike in a federal prison.

The Doukhobors came to Canada from Russia just before the turn of the century, settling first in the Prairies before many moved on to British Columbia. The radical splinter Freedomite group - originally large, but now a tiny minority among Doukhobors with about 50 adherents - adopted arson as a form of protest against authority in the early 1920s.

Joel Vinge, B.C. corrections branch regional director in Cranbrook, recalled Astaforoff's warmth when he visited her at her home in Gilpin.

"She was sitting on a couch embroidering or something, holding a child on her lap," Vinge said Monday. "It was a warm, pastoral scene, yet we were talking about her going back to jail.

" If you had never seen her before and only heard of her you would be surprised. She was a frail little old lady . . . with piercing, attentive eyes. "