From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Gypsies/rom/Matt T. Salo
Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Rom began to migrate to other parts of Europe and, after the 1880s, to both North and South America. Today, most Gypsies in Canada are Rom. Although no systematic research has been conducted on their arrival in this country, on the basis of available data, it is reasonable to estimate their first appearance as having been around the turn of the century. Passenger lists record Rom arriving at New York in 1899, 1900, and 1901 who claimed either to have been in Canada or to be headed here. Border-crossing records show Rom entering the United States from Winnipeg and Montreal in 1903, and a photograph exists from the following year of a band of Rom camping at Innisfail, Alberta.
The Canadian Rom are divided into two main tribes – the Machwaya (from the Mačcva region of northern Serbia) and the Kalderash – of which there are numerous branches. According to the Rom themselves, most belong to the Mineshti clan of the Kalderash tribe, a group of related families claiming descent from a common ancestor, Mina, who is variously identified as a man or a woman. If the latter, she is described as a large, strong woman who travelled across Russia with her seven sons and a pig. The majority of Canadian Rom trace their ancestry to four brothers, Zlatcho, Grofia, Wasso, and Bochi, the sons of Zurka, a descendant of Mina. According to oral tradition, they first came to the United States in the 1880s or 1890s and thence to Canada. Other clans arrived at about the same time and were probably associated with one another through marriage ties. They include the Papineshti (geese clan), the Supeshti, a clan of Russian Kalderash, and the Goneshti, who claim to be members of the Churara tribe, a group distinct from both the Machwaya and the Kalderash. Since 1970 there has been a steady influx of Lowara Rom from Europe, and if police reports are any guide, they now constitute the largest Gypsy group in Canada. The Lowara are closely related to the American Rom but have diverged from them to some extent in dialect and customs as a result of their longer stay in Europe.
Regardless of nomenclature, all these groups are Rom with almost identical speech and customs. They apparently interact and intermarry freely; for all practical purposes they should be considered variants of a single ethnic entity. In addition, several other Gypsy groups have arrived in North America and subsequently sojourned or taken up residence in Canada. The Rom were preceded in this country by the Romnichals from the British Isles (1870s) and the Ludar from Bosnia (1890s). Hungarian musician Gypsies, or Romungros, are found in the bigger Canadian cities, but their history in Canada is largely unknown. As well, several Irish and Scottish traveller groups, who are not of Gypsy origin though they are commonly so regarded by non-Gypsies, have immigrated to this country.
The early years in North America appear to have been marked by squabbles over territory in both the United States and Canada. The first families camped in tents and wagons and moved from place to place as they had for centuries in Europe. They must have seemed exotic and possibly threatening to the settled populations with whom they came in contact. Accounts of their earlier days indicate that the Rom were subjected to considerable prejudice and discrimination. Members of one family recalled that they were not allowed to buy groceries or to get feed for their horses at some settlements and instead were chased away. They reported that they got on better in western Canada because they spoke Slavic languages. Many families had moved to the west in the wake of other east Europeans, who were lured there by the promise of free homesteads for those who would clear the land and farm it. The Rom also established homesteads at several locations, such as Le Duc and High River in Alberta, but instead of working the land themselves, they hired farmhands to do so and used the farms as camp sites while they travelled throughout the western provinces.
By 1920 most Rom families in Canada had abandoned their farms and begun circulating through the cities, as they continue to do today. They moved into empty stores, using the front as a booth for fortune-telling (ofisa) and living in a curtained-off area in the back. In the first two decades after they gave up their homesteads, they still travelled extensively, camping in rural areas. These trips would take them back and forth between United States and Canada, as they practised their metalworking skills or worked the carnivals. Today, most of the Kalderash reside in Toronto or Montreal, making brief stays in smaller urban centres such as Sarnia or Hamilton, Ontario. A few families circulate among the western cities, and the small Machwaya contingent lives on the west coast, primarily in Vancouver, where their numbers remain small. Most estimates by the Rom themselves place the size of the community, excluding recent arrivals from eastern Europe, at between four and five hundred.
In 1997 a few hundred Gypsies from the Czech Republic, wishing to escape the increasingly harsh treatment they were receiving at home, migrated to Canada after hearing glowing reports on Czech television about how well Gypsies were doing there. They were not warmly welcomed by authorities but it is still too early to know whether any of them will be allowed to remain in Canada. These types of periodic long-distance migrations are typical of overall Gypsy history and provide still another example of the readiness with which even settled Gypsy populations will move when sufficient opportunity arises.
