Politics

Pre-1914 Slovak immigrants to Canada were not active in politics at home or in Canada. After World War I, representatives of the Czechoslovak consulate in Montreal (founded in 1920) sought to influence the Slovak-Canadian immigrants, but in the late 1920s the Czech consuls began to view them as elements opposed to the newly created Czechoslovak Republic because they were unwilling to be considered members of a “Czechoslovak” community in Canada.

The second wave of immigrants who came to Canada between the wars had a well-developed national consciousness, and most had some political experience in Czechoslovakia, which is reflected in the political differences that informed their Canadian organizations. They adapted the political system of Slovakia to their own community and thus formed a base for future political activity. Their associations and their press were focused primarily on resolving the status of Slovakia and the Slovaks in the homeland. In time they also began to take an interest in the political affairs of their new home, but only the second generation took part in Canadian political life.

The Canadian Slovak League advocated self-determination for the Slovak people. The Canadian Slovak Benefit Society stressed patriotic, democratic, and Christian principles and endeavoured to organize Slovak immigrants, regardless of religious and political convictions; it opposed communism in general, and socialism in Slovakia in particular, and stressed the right of the Slovak people to govern themselves. An attempt in 1970 to unify these two organizations proved unsuccessful. The Slovak Benefit Society of Canada, part of the Independent Mutual Benefit Federation, is made up of workers’ organizations founded during the Depression. At that time it gained many supporters and developed a wide range of activities. After World War II, the society welcomed the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic and maintained contacts with what it viewed favourably as a country “building socialism.”

Exiles arriving in Canada after 1945 were supporters of an independent Slovak state. The Slovak-Canadian community accepted these individuals and elected many as officers of the Canadian Slovak League and the Canadian Slovak Benefit Society, thus enabling them to spread their political ideas. The most active political exiles gathered around Karol Sidor (former diplomatic representative of the Slovak Republic at the Vatican) and the new Slovak National Council Abroad. Other smaller groups of political exiles, who came to Canada after 1948, founded the Permanent Conference of Slovak Democratic Exiles. This body’s close relations with the Council of Free Czechoslovakia, considered to be representative of Czechoslovaks in exile, prevented it from cooperating with the Slovak National Council Abroad. In this period, although the political life of the Slovak community in Canada was oriented towards the homeland, there was also an interest in Canadian politics. The Slovak press, leaders of Slovak organizations, and postwar immigrants helped to stimulate interest on the part of the Slovak community in the Liberal and Conservative parties in Canada.

The arrival in Canada of more Slovak immigrants in 1968–69 brought new life to the Slovak community, even though most of the newcomers showed little interest in politics. Efforts to unify organizations, institutions, and individuals into a single organization for all Slovaks living abroad led in 1970 to the creation of the Slovak World Congress. The founders of this Toronto-based congress and its most active members were Stephen B. Roman and Jozef M. Kirschbaum.

The most serious division among Slovaks in Canada continues to be political, and it is centred on the politics of the Old World. As we have already seen, Slovaks tended to divide themselves into Slovaks and Czechoslovaks in the 1920s after the creation of the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1918. This division heightened after World War II when two groups of political émigrés came to Canada – supporters of the wartime Slovak Republic, and supporters of a non-Communist Czechoslovakia. The former organized themselves into the Slovak National Council Abroad, which became the Slovak Liberation Council in 1961, and, with the support of several fraternal-benefit societies, the Slovak World Congress in 1970.

Meanwhile, the Czechoslovaks, had organized themselves in 1939 into the Czechoslovak National Alliance in Canada (re-named the Czechoslovak National Association in Canada in 1960), and they opposed the activities of the nationalists right up to, and even after, the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The most prominent Slovak member of this Czechoslovak group after World War II was Rudolf Fraštacký, who was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Trust Company in Toronto in 1962. As a result of the activities of these two groups, the Slovak community in Canada is still divided into “Slovak nationalists” and “Czechoslovaks,” even though this division is no longer relevant in the light of the changed situation in the homeland.

The rivalry between the Slovak nationalists and the Czechoslovaks has also played itself out in the Canadian scholarly community. In 1967 and 1968, on the occasion of Canada’s centenary, two very different books, both subsidized by Canada’s Centennial Commission, appeared. The first was J.M. Kirschbaum’s Slovaks in Canada (1967), which presented the Slovaks as a distinct nation; the second was John Gellner and John Smerek’s Czechs and Slovaks in Canada (1968), which stressed the closeness of the two groups. As an additional centennial project, the Czechoslovak National Association in Canada tried to raise the funds necessary to establish a chair in Czech and Slovak literature at the University of Toronto, but it failed in its efforts. In 1990 Slovak nationalists, who are members of the Slovak World Congress, succeeded in establishing a Chair in Slovak history and culture at the University of Ottawa; the holder of the post lectures both to enrolled students and to interested members of the community. The chief fund-raiser for this project was Kirschbaum, and the largest single donor was the Stephen B. Roman Foundation; Anthony Roman was also instrumental in the founding of this Chair.

Because of their small number, and also because of the preoccupation of their leaders with Old World politics, only a few Slovaks in Canada have been elected to public office. The first Slovak Canadian to hold an elected office was William A. Kovach, who sat as a Social Credit member in the Alberta legislature from 1948 to 1966. George Ben was elected to office first at the local level as a Toronto alderman and in 1965 as a Liberal member in the Ontario legislature, while Peter Kormos was elected to the Ontario legislature in 1987 as a member of the New Democratic Party. Anthony Roman was elected to the federal Parliament in 1986, where he served one term as an independent, and Paul Szabo was elected to the federal Parliament in 1993 as a member of the Liberal Party. None of the Slovak-Canadians politicians was elected on the basis of a Slovak vote because Slovaks do not dominate any federal, provincial, or local ridings.