Culture

Church communities became social centres as well, sponsoring concerts, dramas, lectures, exhibitions, folk dances, national gatherings, and official celebrations. As early as 1926 Pravda, the theatre group of Toronto’s MPO, was producing plays, and Balkanski Unak’s youth folk choir was performing. Choirs and theatre groups at SS Cyril and Methody and St George churches have played a leading role in the group’s cultural life. According to the theatre instructor at SS Cyril and Methody, more than thirty comedies, tragedies, and dramas were performed between 1960 and 1985. Folkdance groups and folk orchestras were formed as well. At Metro Caravan in 1969 folk-dance groups from the three Toronto churches performed Bulgarian dances from Macedonia, Miziya, and Thrace.

The Ladies’ Auxiliaries have prepared many events at the churches. The auxiliary at St George organized exhibitions of folk and modern clothing and also published a cookbook of Bulgarian dishes. The one at SS Cyril and Methody regularly holds vecherinki – social, educational gatherings. Holy Trinity’s auxiliary holds monthly meetings for educational purposes and conducts dances.

At the Expo ’67 world fair, Montreal’s community organized a Day of Bulgarian Culture and published a brochure about the origin and traditions of the ethnic group in Canada. Churches set up exhibitions of national costumes and crafts.

Celebrations of historical events and people include 24 May, the day of SS Cyril and Methody, who created the Cyrillic alphabet. Since 1927 branches of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization (MPO) have organized remembrance days for the Ilinden (Elinden) uprising of August 1903; in 1958 3,500 people attended. All three churches in Toronto together celebrated the eightieth anniversary of Ilinden, for which the three local MPOs in Toronto, Pravda, Pobeda, and Luben Dimitrov, abandoned their political differences.

Every 3 March the group marks the date in 1878 when Bulgaria and other parts of the Balkans were freed from Ottoman domination. Church services in Toronto are followed by concerts, folk dances, speeches, and programs prepared by children. Cultural evenings in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, and other cities also mark the event. The 1300th anniversary of the establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom was celebrated in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto on 18 October 1981, organized by the Bulgarian National Front in Canada.

Ignat Kaneff sponsored a radio program directed by Veneta Ilieva for twenty-five years until the 1980s and recently revived on station CHIN-FM, Toronto, every Saturday morning.

Hieromonak Theophilact, founder of SS Cyril and Methody, published Balkanska zvezda (Balkan Star; Toronto, 1912–13), which was concerned with events in the Balkans and in North America and the activities of the Macedono-Odrinska Bulgarian People’s Organization in Canada. The monthly newspaper Zora (Dawn; Toronto 1918–19) dealt exclusively with religious issues. The first issue of Makedonska tribuna (Macedonian Tribune; Indianapolis, 1926– ) came out on under editor-in-chief Boris Zografov; it was and still is the official publication of the MPO in Canada and the United States. In the early 1930s it started to include an English supplement for the second and third generations. It has gradually expanded its coverage to include literature, entertainment, caricatures, and regular columns.

Promotion of socialist ideas was the main purpose of Proletarsko delo (Proletarian Action; Toronto, 1931–33) and its successors, Edinstvo (Unity; Toronto, 1933–41) and Novo vreme (New Time; Toronto, 1941–57).

Bulgarski naroden glas (Bulgarian People’s Voice; Toronto, 1950–56) was strongly anti-Communist, as was the magazine Svoboda (Freedom; Toronto, 1970– ), the official organ of the Bulgarian National Front, which started in Germany in 1959. Since 1970 it has been published in Canada. It contains materials in Bulgarian and English and covers Bulgarian history and foreign policy, current events, and the Bulgarian community in Canada. Two thousand copies are distributed all over the world.

The monthly Krugozori (Horizons; Toronto, 1980s– ) focuses on the cultural life of Bulgarian Canadians in Toronto. Chitatelski forum (Readers’ Forum; Toronto, 1988– ), successor to Horizons, appears four times a year, supported by the Mladenov Investment Corporation. It deals with political life wherever Bulgarians live and is distributed at no charge in Bulgaria and Vardar Macedonia (Republic of Macedonia).