From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Czechs/Marek J. Jovanovic
Czech social and political organizations were slow to develop in Canada. Prior to World War I, some Czech together with Slovak communities in western Canada established small local fraternal benefit societies. For example, in 1912 the Bohemians of Esterhazy established a benefit society with about sixty members, whose primary function was to provide “help for the sick or needy, and [a] dramatic library and education work in their own language.” Czech workers do not appear to have formed any large-scale unions or brotherhoods, but instead sometimes joined those of other, larger, Slavic or eastern European groups, or more commonly the unions representing their specific occupations. The political organizations that Czechs joined before World War I were either Czech-American organizations or the Canadian chapters of such organizations. The most notable of these was probably the Bohemian (Czech) National Alliance of America, which figured prominently in wartime Czech-Canadian politics.
The first large-scale national association of Czechs in Canada was the Czechoslovak Benevolent Association, founded in 1913 in Winnipeg. It began as a fraternal benefit society but later added various service groups, including a women’s auxiliary. The outbreak of World War I changed the nature of the organization, which took on a political role. It joined with the Bohemian National Alliance in the United States to promote three major issues: recognition of Czechs and Slovaks as “non-enemy” or even allied peoples; military recruitment; and support for the Czech National Council in Paris, led by Tomáš Masaryk. It was successful in all three of its goals. Not only were the Czechs in both Canada and the United States recognized as friendly peoples, but after much debate they were allowed to enrol in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Specifically, Czechs together with Slovaks enlisted in the Bohemian Detachment of the 223rd Battalion (the “Scandinavian Canadians”), with its mostly ethnic Scandinavian officers and men. Most of these recruits listed “Bohemian” as their ethnic origin, and a few later listed their “Bohemian Army” experience, probably referring to their compulsory military training in the old Austro-Hungarian army. Some of the recruits included Czech Americans who joined the Canadian army in order to fight for an independent Czechoslovak state, because until 1917 the United States was not officially at war with the Central Powers. The Czechoslovak Legion, which was formed in Russia, and which fought with the Allies during World War I and the Russian civil war, passed through Canada on its way home from Siberia and stayed briefly at Valcartier, Quebec, in 1920.
The ultimate goal for some Czechs abroad was independence for the Czech lands, as championed by Tomáš Masaryk and the Czech National Council in Paris. Masaryk’s whirlwind tour of major Czech and Slovak centres in North America resulted in a proposal to create a common Czechoslovak state, formally presented in the Pittsburgh Manifesto of March 1918. Canada’s Czech and Slovak organizations approved the proposal. When the war ended, however, much of the organizational consensus disappeared and the Czechoslovak Benevolent Association’s unifying political role was significantly reduced. It was supplanted by smaller regional organizations that remained weak and fragmented until World War II. Among these successor organizations was the short-lived Czechoslovak Mutual Benefit Society, established in Montreal in 1924. Its membership was largely Slovak, although there was a significant number of Czechs as well. A branch was opened in Toronto in 1927, but it soon lost public confidence and collapsed.
The principal surviving Czech and Slovak organization, which replaced the Czechoslovak Benevolent Association, was the National Alliance of Slovaks, Czechs, and Subcarpathian Ruthenians, founded in 1939. It subsequently changed its name to the Czechoslovak National Alliance of Canada, and since 1960 it has been known as the Czechoslovak National Association of Canada. This organization was late in forming because of disunity and debate among the various Czechoslovak communities concerning the nature of their common goals and objectives. The Nazi annexation of Czech lands and the outbreak of World War II provided the impetus for its expansion into a successful political organization; it increased in size from eighty-six branches with 6,500 members in 1942 to ninety-one branches with over 10,000 members by the end of the war.
The fundamental goal of the Czechoslovak National Alliance during World War II was to “weld the Czech people of Canada into one organization in order to help rebuild, when peace is declared, the country of Czechoslovakia.” To achieve this goal, the alliance organized various fund-raising activities, most notably the Czechoslovak War Charities Fund, which raised over $331,000 for wartime aid to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London, as well as war relief for the anticipated reconstruction. In addition, the alliance established a strong political lobby to have Czechs and Slovaks recognized as allies, not supporters of the Nazi regime, a goal that it achieved in April 1941 with an order-in-council of the Canadian government.
During the war some Czechs joined the Canadian army, Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF), and the Czechoslovak army. The latter recruited in Canada on behalf of the Czech government-in-exile for soldiers to serve as an independent corps in the British army and to provide a nucleus for the future armed forces of the reconstituted republic. Recruitment for the Czechoslovak army was limited, and open only to Czech and Slovak immigrants who were not yet Canadian citizens.
After the war, the Czechoslovak National Alliance enlarged its agenda to include the promotion of good Canadian citizenship, the perpetuation of Czech and Slovak culture in Canada, and material assistance for the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia. The alliance also drafted a report proposing changes to the Canadian labour code, some of which were accepted, and in 1960 it formed a Women’s Council at Masaryk Hall, whose primary duties were dispensing charity and providing assistance to refugees.
Following the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Canadian Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees, established by the Czechoslovak National Alliance, was unable to meet fully the needs of the vast number of arrivals, but it provided some jobs, contacts, and general help to the refugees in 1948, as well as to those who arrived later, in 1968–69 and 1977. However, by the late 1960s there were many large-scale government-sponsored refugee programs that either supplemented or replaced the aid provided by many of the ethnic institutions. The Communist coup created a division within the Czechoslovak National Alliance between, on the one hand, the “crusaders” who wanted the organization to be primarily a political vehicle for the liberation of Czechoslovakia from Communist rule, and, on the other hand, the “non-crusaders” who wanted it to function as a Canada-first organization that looked after the needs of Czechs abroad. The division lasted until 1956, when a compromise was reached, but the issue was never fully resolved until 1989, when the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia collapsed.
