My Russian is a little rusty, and I just remembered that my husband just hired someone at his office that has a degree in the Russian language. I will verify with her tomorrow about the pronunciation/word, biegun.

Were you aware that during WWI, Ukrainians in particular were escaping to Canada, only to be held in concentration camps? Some of these people said they were Russian, but in actuality were Polish. There have been a number of Bieguns since 1888 that I've traced that were citizens of Canada. This naturalization didn't seem to matter around 1914-until 1920. They were impounded into the camps, anyway. The Canadian government didn't want anyone who seemed to be sympathetic with the Kaiser having any freedom. There was at least one Biegun that I know of in the camps. I have more research to do on that, too, so I have limited information right now on that individual. Will keep you posted.