From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Croats/Anthony W. Rasporich
As a relatively small group, Croatian Canadians have had a great deal of contact with other ethnic communities – in marriage, in Roman Catholic parishes, in workplaces, and in neighbourhoods. In the heated atmosphere of World War I they were considered subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was the official enemy of Canada. Along with Ukrainians, Czechs, Hungarians, and Slovaks, they had to report regularly to Canadian authorities. Some Croats were imprisoned in camps in British Columbia (Greenwood), Alberta (Castle Mountain), and Ontario (Fort Henry, Camp Petawawa, and Kapuskasing). Only active intervention by the National Croatian Society and its president, Joseph Mahronich, in 1915, in cooperation with the Serbian consul in New York, secured the release of several of those in Ontario. Serbian officials tried to capitalize on anti-Habsburg feeling among Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims and to raise volunteers in support of Britain. Between 300 and 500 Croats declared themselves Serbian or Yugoslav in order to serve. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was seen by some observers as partially instigated by the “hairy Bolshevists” and “cowardly Huns” in the city’s North End.
Negative perceptions of Croats continued. The imprisonment of Tim Buck and the “Kingston Eight” in 1930 and the deportation of the sole Croatian of this group, Tomo Čačić , in 1934 scarcely endeared radical Croats to Canadian authorities. Čačić’s successor at Borba, Petar Žapkar, was jailed and deported for his part in a lumber strike in Fort Frances, along with three other Croats involved in the Rouyn-Noranda goldminers’ strike of 1934. But images and perceptions gradually softened, even among such formerly hostile wartime witnesses as Stephen Leacock, who twenty years later was saying of Croat and other immigrants, “All these things we value, they value.”
Displaced persons and refugees formed a large human exodus from war-torn Europe, and a general prejudice emerged against eastern and southern European minorities searching for a home and employment. Even Croats themselves sometimes resented the newcomers. In double jeopardy were the 450 or so left-wing povratnici who had returned to Yugoslavia in 1948 and had received a chilly reception there.
Integration has been much smoother for the third generation than for prior arrivals because of the assimilation of the first and second waves and declining hostility to immigrants in general. Nevertheless, the activities of separatist and independentist movements in Toronto and Hamilton resulted in some tension. Single male migrants, who exceeded females by 200 percent in 1931, tended to settle and marry with other European groups, particularly South Slavs and eastern Europeans. Many Croatian women married men of British background. The proportion of naturalized Croatians increased from 19 percent in 1931 to over 66 percent in 1941.
Relations with other groups have varied. During World War I Croats and Serbs did cooperate in the attempts to have Croats released from enemy alien camps and to encourage Croats to enlist in the Allied cause. Croats, Macedonians, Serbs, and Slovenes worked side by side in the mines and lumber camps and fought together as Yugoslavs in the labour movement, particularly during the Depression.
The real divisions between Yugoslav immigrants from Yugoslavia came after 1945, with Communists divided against nationalists and Croats against Serbs. Urban tensions were apparent in community rivalries, particularly at soccer matches and in several violent incidents. Croatian nationalists were accused by the English-language press of “Ustasha terrorism” in the mid1970s for such acts as creating arms caches in Hamilton, and they were reprimanded by the Canadian government, which promised to control “right-wing groups opposed to the Belgrade government.” Croatian organizations argued vigorously that agitation for freedom and independence did not equal terrorism.
After 1991 tensions arose again as Croatia and Serbia were pitted against each other in war. Some isolated violence occurred in Toronto, and MLA John Sola was expelled from the provincial Liberal caucus in 1992 for comments on the war in Croatia and Bosnia which were considered offensive to the Serbs; subsequently, he sat as an independent. Similarly, the would-be federal Liberal candidate, Dr Mary Sopta, was accused of promoting “a foreign political agenda.” She did place a close second in the nomination meeting and her professional reputation remained intact, despite the smear campaign.
