East and Central Europeans
by Jacqueline Wood
As a young boy in Romania, Spiro Floresco enjoyed playing in the shadows of the castle that once belonged to Vlad the Impaler--fictionalized as Dracula. But as a young adult, the shadows were cast by communism and Floresco dreamed of his freedom. In 1968 he risked his life and defected. He slipped through Yugoslavia to Austria, and eventually got to Toronto. There he quickly found work in his field of chemical engineering. Five years later he became a Canadian citizen and finally obtained what was to Floresco the ultimate symbol of freedom, a passport. Today Floresco has two sons and lives with his wife in North Vancouver. He is the producer of East European TV, including the program Teleromania, for Rogers’ multicultural channel.
Many East Europeans came to British Columbia during the days of the Iron Curtain, and many of them have similar stories to tell.
THE ROMANIANS The Romanian community in the Vancouver area was small before the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989. But there are now anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 people of Romanian origin living in the Lower Mainland. Most of the new immigrants are highly educated, says Floresco, but unlike the days when he came to Canada, they are finding it hard to find jobs without Canadian work experience.
THE HUNGARIANS When Soviet tanks rolled towards the University of Sopron in Hungary on November 4, 1956, it was only by a quirk of fate that students from the school of forestry didn’t die that day, and instead ended up in Vancouver. About 200 students had been guarding the road to Sopron when it became apparent that a saboteur had removed the firing pins from the Soviet 76 mm guns. One of the Russian soldiers suggested they go home, but instead the students crossed the border into Austria.
After meeting in Europe with the head of the Sopron forestry school, Canada’s immigration minister Jack PickersgilI secured the acceptance at UBC of 196 Hungarian students and 24 faculty members. On January 24, 1957, they arrived in Matsqui, then were moved to Powell River. In September 1957 the Sopron Forestry School resumed at UBC, only closing its doors in 1961, when the last of its 140 students had graduated.
Of course, forestry students were not the only refugees to flee the Soviet invasion. At one point in 1957 there were 1,500 Hungarians housed at a camp at the Abbotsford airport. Throughout the province, however, more than 7,000 refugees came at that time. By 1961 there were 2,200 Hungarians living in Vancouver alone.
Immigrants from Hungary first began arriving in the 1880s; most were laborers and farm workers who got jobs in the province’s mines or on the railroads. World War I resulted in some immigration, but in 1921 there were still only 343 Hungarians scattered about the province. The Depression saw another migration of Hungarians, mostly from other parts of North America. This group included factory workers, loggers and many farmers. Many worked at the dairy farms of the Abbotsford-Huntington area, the orchards of the Okanagan valley or did industrial jobs in Trail and Vancouver. The numbers grew yet again following World War II, but it took the events of 1956 to significantly alter the development of the Hungarian community in the Lower Mainland. There are now about 8,000 Canadians of Hungarian origin living in the Vancouver area.
THE POLES The first significant wave of Poles arrived in British Columbia early this century--though they came directly from Japan, not Poland. They had been serving with the Russian forces and taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Most of them were economic immigrants who didn’t want to return to Russian-occupied Poland, and instead settled on farms in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, or got jobs as railway workers. Combined with a small number of immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s, there were about 1,300 Poles scattered about the province by 1921. In 1926 seven friends started the Polish Friendship Society in Vancouver to maintain the Polish identity, preserve the polish language and help new arrivals. In 1959 the association opened the Polish Community Centre on Fraser Street.
World War II brought about the second significant wave of Polish immigration. Under Canadian government regulations at the time, Polish war veterans were required to work on a farm for two years--despite the fact that many of them were highly skilled and would later go on to teach in universities or practise other professions.
In the 1970s many Polish seamen abandoned their fishing and grain ships docked in Burrard Inlet and sought asylum. Then in December 1981 Poland’s Communist government began its crackdown on the Solidarity trade union and more seamen jumped ship. About 1,000 demonstrators, chanting “Solidarity Forever” marched from Robson Square to Pier B.C.
But Canada’s huge refugee backlog in the late 1980s had serious consequences for several hundred polish refugees in the Lower Mainland. While waiting for a decision on their claims, which were based on being a member or supporter of Solidarity, the Polish government fell and Canada rejected most of the applicants. Even so, today there are at least 20,000 Poles living in the Lower Mainland.
THE CZECHS AND SLOVAKS Brother Pater Pandosy, an oblate, was one of the earliest settlers to arrive in British Columbia from Bohemia, and helped found the first permanent settlement in the Okanagan in 1959. But the first significant migration occurred at the beginning of this century when laborers, artisans and shopkeepers left underdeveloped areas of Slovakia and Southern Bohemia. Their integration was slow: most were single men who had little education and found English difficult to learn. By contrast, those who came to the province from other parts of Canada were already comfortable in the new society and prospered.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Czechs and Slovaks who were not citizens of Canada and therefore subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were declared enemy aliens. They refused to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army, however, and joined the newly formed Czechoslovak National Association in America, which worked for an independent Czechoslovakia.
The new, democratic Czechoslovakia thrived following the war, and as a result few immigrants arrived here between 1919 and 1938. The Nazi invasion of the country in 1939 changed all that-- political leaders, business people, professionals and intellectuals fled. Theodor, Otto, Leon and Walter Koerner were among those who came to British Columbia. Using their background in forestry, the four brothers formed the Alaska Pine and Cellulose Company. Today the Koerners are well known for their generous contributions to our intellectual and cultural institutions.
The next influx of Czechs and Slovaks occurred after August 1968, when the Soviet army invaded the country and put an end to what is known as the Prague Spring. About 1,200 professionals, students, writers, artists and service industry workers, among others, arrived. Today there are about 10,500 Czechs and Slovaks in the Lower Mainland--the majority being Czech. With the end of communism, Czechs and Slovaks come to Vancouver mostly as visitors now. In January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
THE CROATIANS, SERBS, BOSNIANS AND SLOVENES It goes without saying that the people of the former Yugoslavia are not a tightly knit group in the GVRD. And since the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, they have became even more divided.
Over the past few years, about 70 per cent of all government sponsored refugees to the province have been from the former Yugoslavia. Following the outbreak of war, a small group of Bosnian Muslims came to the province, but since then most of the refugees have been Bosnian Serbs-- coming at the rate of 200 to 400 a year. (Though others are arriving from the region as independents or though family reunification.)
In earlier migrations Croatians, Serbs and Slovenes came as laborers, farmers and fishermen whose ethnic activity was based on their distinct national cultures and not that of a united Yugoslavia.
The Croatians make up the largest group in the province. In the 1890s a few families from the U.S. settled in the Ladner area and near Ladysmith at Oyster Harbour. A few hundred laborers and fishermen also arrived from the U.S. at the beginning of this century. In the 1920s and 1930s more came, this time directly from Croatia. In 1935 a Croatian Cultural Hall was built, but it closed in 1946. A large number of political refugees entered Canada following the war, including some professionals, business people, and many political activists who opposed the communist influence of Tito. In 1969, with the help of Croatian Muslims, a church was completed on East 1st Avenue in Vancouver.
The first Serb migrants, mostly single laborers, were also small in number and came via the United States. But after 1923 they chose to come here directly instead of going to the U.S. After World War II many Serbian political refugees arrived, some from German POW camps. A little later, once the communist government was installed, people from the skilled, professional and business classes largely settled in Vancouver. The small community’s cultural life is centred around the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Early Slovene settlement was disrupted by World War I, for like the Croatians, Slovenes were treated as enemy aliens by Canada. Despite considerable hardship, a few hundred people settled here and by 1929 a branch of the Slovenian Society was opened in Vancouver. After 1945 the community changed slightly with the addition of artists and professionals. Today Slovenes rarely migrate here.
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