Hungarian Heritage Review, 1990 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1990-01-01 / 1. szám
for the appropriateness of starting this study with a survey of the Hungarians of Canada is the fact that, apparently, Hungarian-Canadian society was more “afflicted” with the Trianon syndrome than its American counterpart. The explanation for this seems to lie primarily in the Hungarian-Canadian immigrant community’s tender age. A large majority of Hungarians in interwar Canada were new arrivals. As much, most of them had experienced the shock of Trianon before their departure to Canada, that is where it was most dramatically felt, in East Central Europe. It is not surprising then that the impact of the peace settlement was more keenly ingrained into the minds of these people than it was imprinted in those of their compatriots living in the United States, most of whom were pre-1914 arrivals. According to Canadian census statistics, in 1931 Hungarians in Canada numbered 40,582. Approximately three quarters of these had come to the country (or were born there) during the preceding ten years. Many of these recent arrivals had come via the so-called successor states: Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia. This suggests that for a large number of Hungarian-Canadians the Treaty of Trianon was not only some kind of a national humiliation, but a traumatic and often tragic personal experience as well. Having seen their homes transferred from their native country to a foreign one, the found conditions in the new political environment unpleasant enough to seek refuge in overseas emigration. Furthermore, not only did many Hungarian newcomers come to Canada via the successor states, but many who came from “trunkated” Hungary, were originally refugees from lands that had been detached from the country as a result of the peace settlements. Copsidering all this, it would probably not be an exaggeration to suggest that between a third and a half of Hungarian immigrants to Canada in the interwar period (nearly all of whom came between 1924 and the onset of the Depression years), stemmed from the territories assigned by the Treaty of Trianon to Hungary’s neighbours. Wherever they came from, the thousands of Hungarians who arrived in Canada in the mid- and late-192Qs, brought new vitality to Hungarian ethnic life in many parts of the country. This general revival of Hungarian-Canadian community life manifested itself in the birth of new centers of Magyar ethnic life, in the growth erf others, in the appearance of a great many community institutions, both secular and religious. Included among these institutions were a few Hungarian-language newspapers and, after protracted preparations, an umbrella organization to serve as a nation-wide lobby of all Hungarians in Canada. This body was the Canadian Hungarian Federation /Kanadai Magyar Szövetség/, not to be confused with the present-day Hungarian Canadian Federation /Kanadai Magyarok Szövetsége/. It existed for a few years after 1928; its life spanned the gestation period of the “Justice for Hungary” ocean flight. Consequently, its history is quite relevant to our topic, and will be examined in some detail. There is some historical evidence which makes it possible for us to gage to what extent the Hungarian-Canadian institutions that emerged in the mid- and late-1920s were imbued with the “spirit of revisionism,” as the demand for the alteration of the terms of the Treaty of Trianon was known. The record of one influential institution from this period, the Kanadai Magyar Újság /Canadian Hungarian News/ is well known. The News was established in the winter of 1924-25 in the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan. Although Hungarians constituted the largest ethnic minority in Kipling, the paper’s publishers found it advisable to transfer operations to a larger urban center, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, a city of thriving immigrant life in the mid- and late-1920s. In its new home, the News prospered. In a few years it became a large, semi-weekly publication with subscribers in many parts of Canada. It even managed to absorb a couple of Hungarian language papers started in Central Canada. Within a decade-and-a-half of its founding, the News became one of the two viable Hungarian Newspapers in Canada. Its rival was the leftist paper, the Kanadai Magyar Munkás /Canadian Hungarian Worker/. Significantly enough, in 1941 an official erf Canada’s External Affairs Department described the Worker as the organ of Canada’s Hungarian Communists, and the News of Winnipeg as the voice of the “Magyar-speaking refugees from the old Hungarian provinces that had been turned over to Jugoslavia (sic), Roumania and Czechoslovakia.” Indeed, the ardent revisionism erf the News is also noted in a study that was done on its editorial policies by a young Canadian scholar a few years ago. It is not a mere coincidence that for much of the time under consideration in this paper that the guiding spirit behind the News’ operations was an intelligent, energetic young man. Béla Bácskai Payerle, who hailed from the region that had been transferred by the Treaty of Trianon to Yugoslavia. Other refugees from Hungary’s “old provinces” made it to the leadership of other contemporary institutions,-continued next page 26 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW JANUARY 1990
