From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Hungarians/Nandor F. Dreisziger
A brief history of Hungary for the general reader is C.A. Macartney, Hungary: A Short History (Chicago, 1962). A somewhat more detailed, collaborative work is Peter F. Sugar et al., eds., A History of Hungary (Budapest, 1990). For information on Magyar-inhabited lands beyond present-day Hungary, see Stephen Borsody, ed., The Hungarians: A Divided Nation (New Haven, Conn., 1988).
The only English-language survey of the history of the Hungarian community in Canada is N.F. Dreisziger et al.,Struggle and Hope: The Hungarian Canadian Experience (Toronto, 1982), which is also available in French: Lutte et espoir: l’expérience des Canadiens hongrois (Ottawa, 1982). An earlier volume by John Kósa, Land of Choice: Hungarians in Canada (Toronto, 1957), is a sociological assessment of the inter-war immigration of Hungarians to Canada. The politics of this particular group are examined in Carmela Patrias, Patriots and Proletarians: Politicizing Hungarian Immigrants in Interwar Canada (Montreal, 1994). A monograph surveying an aspect of Hungarian-Canadian culture is George Bisztray’s Hungarian-Canadian Literature (Toronto, 1987).
On the beginnings of Hungarian settlement in Canada, see Andrew A. Marchbin, “Early Immigration from Hungary to Canada,” Slavonic Review, vol.13 (1934), 127–38, as well as Martin Louis Kovacs, Esterhazy and Early Hungarian Immigration to Canada (Regina, 1974).
A collection of papers relating the coming of the 1956 refugees to Canada can be found in Robert H. Keyserlingk, ed., Breaking Ground: The 1956 Hungarian Refugee Movement to Canada (North York, Ont., 1993). A short monograph on the experiences of the Sopron School of Forestry’s student refugees is Laszlo Adamovich and Oszkar Sziklai, Foresters in Exile: The Sopron Forestry School in Canada (Vancouver, 1970). On the same subject, see also Kalman J. Roller, “Hungarian Foresters in Canada,” in Sopron Chronicle, 1919–1986, edited by the Sopron Alumni, University of British Columbia (Toronto, 1986), 1–177, as well as sections of part 2 of the same volume.
A number of works focus on individual communities. One is by priest-historian Pál Sántha, Three Generations: The Hungarian Colony at Stockholm Saskatchewan (Stockholm, Sask., 1959). The beginnings of the settlement at Békevár, Saskatchewan, is detailed in M.L. Kovacs, Peace and Strife: Some Facets of the History of an Early Prairie Community(Kipling, Sask., 1980). Other aspects of the development and culture of this same colony are covered in Robert Blumstock ed., Békevár: Working Papers on a Canadian Prairie Community (Ottawa, 1979). The interplay of culture, religion, and politics in the development of early settlements is explored in M.L. Kovacs, “The Hungarian School Question,” in Ethnic Canadians: Culture and Education (Regina, 1978), 333–58.
The journal Hungarian Studies Review (Toronto, 1974– ) has frequently featured articles, documents, and sometimes special issues relating to the history or sociology of the Hungarian community in Canada. Its fall 1981 issue, for example, was devoted to the Hungarians of Alberta: Howard and Tamara Palmer, The Hungarian Experience in Alberta (Toronto, 1987). A special double issue of another journal, Polyphony: The Bulletin of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, vol.2, nos.2–3 (1978–80), ed. Susan M. Papp., is devoted to the Hungarians in Ontario.
A brief bibliography of studies related to the history of Hungarians in Canada is contained in Dreisziger et al., Struggle and Hope, 236–9. A more comprehensive list is John P. Miska, comp., Canadian Studies on Hungarians, 1886–1986 (Regina, 1987). A supplement to this work appeared later under the same title (Ottawa, 1992).
Archival depositories for information on the Hungarian-Canadian past include the National Archives of Canada; the Országos Levéltár (National Archives) in Budapest, Hungary; and some of the provincial archives in Canada, especially those of the prairie provinces. The oral-history collection of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario in Toronto is also informative, as are some of the manuscripts donated to the Society and now on deposit in the Archives of Ontario.
