Migration and Arrival

Until the nineteenth century, emigrants from the kingdom of Hungary usually settled in neighbouring lands in central or eastern Europe. From the 1880s onwards, the chief destination became the New World, especially the United States but also Canada. Hungarian immigrants to the dominion arrived in five waves: the “pioneers” (1885–1914), inter-war arrivals (especially 1924– 31), post-war displaced persons (1947–53), 1956 refugees (from late 1956 to about 1959), and the post-1960 newcomers.

Hungarians emigrated for diverse and complex reasons. Migrant workers wanted to earn – and save – money. Parts of pre-World War I Hungary, particularly in the north (now Slovakia and Ruthenia in Ukraine), had a tradition of people migrating to available work. Such sojourns had been seasonal, over short distances. Crossing the ocean for a few years of work in North America became an extension of this tradition, undertaken first by a few enterprising Slovaks and Carpatho-Rusyns (Ruthenians), and soon by their Magyar neighbours. The first agrarian settlers on the Canadian prairies from Hungary were Magyar and Slav migrant workers who had gone to western Pennsylvania’s mines and iron foundries and then decided to move to the Canadian west, where land was abundant and free. Having established a few settlements, the colonists sent glowing reports home, which persuaded kin or co-villagers to follow suit, thus initiating chain migration.

Factors inducing emigration were both general (“push” and “pull”) and personal. Poverty was prevalent in much of the Hungarian countryside. Large estates of nobles and the Roman Catholic Church employed millions of landless or land-poor peasants. During the late nineteenth century rapid economic change and mechanization transformed many estates. Industrialization impoverished many petty craftsmen. Nationwide, population growth aggravated economic distress. In some regions, emerging or expanding factories absorbed the surplus; in stagnating areas – such as the northeast (eastern Slovakia and Ruthenia) – overpopulation became a problem. Trained or trainable people could move to more prosperous regions or to big cities in Hungary or in neighbouring lands. For many agricultural workers, overseas migration seemed the only solution. Knowledge of conditions in North America spread rapidly. Better wages, availability of cheap land, and the possibility of social betterment proved irresistible.

Personal factors also influenced decisions to emigrate. Curiosity about the New World, disagreement with family elders, fear of being drafted into the army, lover’s quarrels, incidents affecting personal honour, or conflicts with members of the village elite could trigger or reinforce a decision to leave the homeland – usually to work overseas and return “rich” in a few years, but occasionally to emigrate and start life anew.

Canada was attractive to would-be immigrants. Before 1914 the west offered cheap or even free land for homesteading, if the immigrant and his family were willing to clear the land, build a home, and undertake other chores. After 1900 Canada also offered work on the mining and lumber frontiers and in factories in growing cities, and it was known as a place of peace and order and seemed well removed from the military conflicts endemic to Europe.

Since contemporary immigration statistics provide only country of origin, it is difficult to determine the number of Magyar immigrants to Canada before 1914. A reasonable estimate would be 8,000, with the peak years between 1900 and 1912. The vast majority were poor peasants and agricultural labourers who settled in the west, often as homesteaders in Hungarian colonies, which became magnets for more Hungarians until free or cheap land was no longer available.

War interrupted immigration from Hungary: emigration became impossible, and Canada did not welcome immigrants from “enemy” lands. After the war, many Hungarians were anxious to emigrate but had to wait until the gates were once again opened to immigrants. The United States curtailed mass immigration from eastern Europe, and so many Hungarians chose Canada or South America – Argentina or Brazil, for instance.

In 1924 Canada reopened its doors to Hungarians, and “immigration fever” soon struck some Hungarian villages. Hungary had endured four years of total war and had lost two-thirds of its territory, including some of its richest provinces, in the peace settlement. It became land-locked and impoverished, surrounded by “successor states” determined to keep it diplomatically isolated and militarily impotent. Moreover, political convulsions had discredited leftist radicalism, and even some progressive ideals, so that hopes for agrarian and social reform soon faded.

Many Hungarians, driven from the lost provinces, tried to re-establish themselves in what was left of Hungary and, failing, decided to seek a more secure existence overseas, usually in Canada. Other Magyars from the detached territories moved to Canada directly from the sometimes-inhospitable successor states. Many – in some years, close to a fifth – of all Magyar newcomers came from Czechoslovakia, Romania, or Yugoslavia.

Between 1924 and 1931, before Canada’s gates were once again closed, nearly 28,000 Magyars arrived. Most were agricultural workers, but there were middle-class emigrants, some of them members of the dispossessed landed gentry or former employees of the Hungarian civil service from the successor states. Most newcomers found themselves admitted as agricultural labourers.

Only towards the end of the 1920s did the immigration include a few hundred young women, admitted to work as domestics in the Canadian west. Young men who left wives or girlfriends behind worked hard to pay for their passage. Some succeeded, but the Depression shattered the dreams of others.

The vast majority of newcomers were Roman Catholics. Greek Catholics were proportionally more numerous than in Hungary’s population. Protestants were under-represented, and Jews were few. These statistics reflect the religious composition of Hungary’s poor agrarian population and Canadian desire to exclude non-agrarian people, especially Jews.

The Depression restricted the flow of Hungarians to Canada after 1931, and the immigration that subsequently did occur involved family members. Settlers wishing to sponsor relatives had to demonstrate that these newcomers would not become public charges. Some Hungarian immigrants managed to accumulate the requisite savings on their own; others borrowed money. Many, however, had to give up the dream of family reunion. Hundreds who could not find employment and became public charges were returned to Hungary, as stipulated in the contracts that the immigration and settlement agencies had signed with the Canadian government.

Though Hungary managed to stay out of the war until the summer of 1941, the conflict virtually terminated emigration from east-central Europe to Canada. When Canada declared war on Hungary in late 1941, it categorized Hungarians as “enemy aliens” and banned their entry. Only a handful of people – some of them fearing Nazi persecution – reached Canada, often via third countries and with other than Hungarian passports.

After the war, Canada opened itself again to Hungarian immigrants. The influx resumed in 1947, and within a few years over 10,000 arrived. The new wave was made up of peasants, agricultural labourers, and middle- and even upper-class elements. At the end of the war, as the Red Army advanced through Hungary, thousands of Hungarians fled westwards, hoping to avoid mistreatment by Soviet troops. Many were professionals: managers, educators, doctors, and engineers. Others, ranging from military officers to bureaucrats worried about being denounced as Nazi collaborators, joined them.

Most of these people ended up in Austrian or German refugee camps awaiting admission to a new land. Hungarians who during the war had fled to places where they could not or did not want to stay (such as North Africa or the Caribbean) began the long wait for admission to a country such as Canada – especially Jews who had escaped before 1944. Jews who had survived the Nazi concentration camps also considered emigration.

Wartime refugees were soon joined by escapees from post-war Hungary. These were people who feared persecution by the Communists or who were unwilling to participate in the new experiment in totalitarian socialism. They proceeded to the Western-occupied districts of Austria and Germany. In refugee camps established for displaced persons they applied for admission to a country still accepting immigrants.

Most post-war Hungarian immigrants were true refugees, or displaced persons. They had been well-off in their native country until political events forced them to leave. Once they were in the camps, however, they saw Canada as a good, safe choice, distant from Soviet-influenced Communist Hungary.

In the camps the post-1945 emigration launched its organizational work, and members became imbued with a political ideology of their own, which included the concept of a collective return to a liberated Hungary. Their stay abroad was to be temporary. By 1989, however, it was too late for many of them to return home.

In October 1956 an uprising in Budapest swept away Communist rule throughout the country. Soon, however, twenty additional Soviet Army divisions invaded the country, crushed the Revolution, and installed a puppet government. A huge wave of refugees crossed the border to Austria and Yugoslavia. The members of this exodus were all political refugees, and Canada opened its doors to them. Within weeks of the crushing of the Revolution, Hungarians began arriving in Canada; by the end of 1957 over 30,000 had entered, and more would come later. Among the young immigrants were the students of a forestry school, who had fled Hungary together and were admitted as a body, complete with some of their professors.

The 1956 refugees were predominantly young adults, with more men than women. Most were city dwellers with a good education or training in a trade or industry. Jews were outnumbered only by Roman Catholics. Never before or since have so many Hungarians had so sudden and traumatic a departure, come in such a short time, and received such a warm welcome.

In the decades following, Hungarians kept arriving in Canada in the thousands. Many joined their families already living here. Some – especially children, spouses, and parents – left Hungary legally; others departed illegally.

Hundreds of the refugees from Czechoslovakia in 1968 were ethnic Hungarians. As the regime in Romania became more totalitarian, members of the nation’s Hungarian minority began escaping and sought temporary refuge elsewhere in east-central Europe. Indeed, in recent years a substantial proportion of Hungarians arriving in Canada have been from Romania (Transylvania). Since the early 1990s, the flow of Magyar refugees from Hungary, but not from neighbouring countries, has stopped.

Today, Hungarian Canadians can be found in all walks of life. They constitute an established community, the vast majority of whose members have adjusted to Canadian reality. Indeed, many of them belong to the second and third generations. Their community has changed from predominantly rural to largely urban. Poorly educated peasants and miners have given way to people who have the skills needed for the complex life of modern cities. The community’s demographic centre has shifted from rural Saskatchewan to urban southern Ontario. Most first-generation members are now old and are dwindling in numbers. Indeed, a community that was once dominated by immigrants, and possessed a vibrant Hungarian culture, is now threatened with loss of much of its cultural identity.

In the 1991 Canadian census, over 213,000 people identified themselves as either exclusively (100,725) or partially (112,975) of Hungarian ethnic origin. Of this total, 101,130 lived in Ontario, 32,610 in British Columbia, 31,380 in Alberta, and 14,810 in Quebec. The large majority lived in cities – Toronto had 36,955, Montreal 13,170, Vancouver 15,930, Calgary 11,770, and Hamilton 9,720. In all, 57,010 were immigrants, and 72,905 reported their mother tongue as Hungarian (and gave no additional mother tongue). Some 26,240 Hungarian Canadians use Magyar at home. More than half of immigrant Hungarians are aged fifty and over.

Clearly the dynamic centre of the Hungarian-Canadian presence lies in Ontario. In 1991, of all Hungarian Canadians born outside the country, 58 percent lived in Ontario; and of those who reported Hungarian mother tongue, 57 percent lived in the province. British Columbia had fewer than 10,000 people with Magyar as their (only) mother tongue. Of the 26,240 people who used Hungarian in the home, 16,040, or 61 percent, were in Ontario.

Within Ontario, greater Toronto and its environs – in particular, the Golden Horseshoe region – have about one-third of Canada’s Hungarian population. Toronto’s community long ago surpassed Winnipeg’s in size. In the early 1940s Toronto and Montreal vied for first place, but by 1991 Toronto surpassed Montreal by almost three to one.

Saskatchewan, home of most of the first settlements, has hardly any first-generation Hungarians left. Nearly 15,000 residents report a multiple ancestry that includes Hungarian, but those with Hungarian-only origin number 7,920, and fewer than 350 people use Hungarian as the only language in the home. Most members are third- or fourth-generation Canadians.