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THE SHIFTING IDENTITIES OF THE BULGARIANCANADIAN DIASPORA, 1900-2015 —t1o> CHRIS KosSTOV: ABSTRACT The Bulgarian-Canadian diaspora in Canada is concentrated primarily in Toronto and Montreal, even though smaller numbers of Bulgarian immigrants could be found in Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and Newfoundland. This paper argues that over a period of almost 100 years, the BulgarianCanadian diaspora was transformed by a number of identity shifts, which were strongly influenced by complex political processes in both the Balkan Peninsula and Canada. Also, due to the 45-year communist regime between 1945-1990, the Bulgarian immigration to Canada as well as the interaction between the Bulgarian diaspora and the mother country almost ceased to exist. The economic situation in the Balkans was critical during the nineteenth century. Many families lost their small patches of land, and men of working age left their farms to go to big cities on the Balkan Peninsula and in Central Europe in search of work. Perfectly aware of the conditions in the region, Canadian steamship companies launched promotion campaigns for immigration to Canada and they offered fares for the trans-Atlantic journey for about twenty dollars at the beginning of the twentieth century.” Canadian immigration officials welcomed contract labor as a way of ensuring that immigrants would not rely on charity, but would help populate Canada’s vast western reaches. Dincho Ralley, a Bulgarian immigrant, whose family migrated to Toronto in 1907 from the Aegean Macedonian village of Zagorichane, recalled an English-speaking labor agent in the Geeek city of Florina who arranged for several men from Ralley’s village to emigrate. Within a few years, most of them had railroad or factory jobs near Toronto’s heavily-industrial Eastern Avenue.’ ! Schiller International University, Madrid. ? Peter Vasiliadis, Whose Are You?: Identity and Ethnicity Among the Toronto Macedonians, New York, AMS Press Inc., 1989, 154-156. We need to bear in mind as well that twenty dollars in 1910 would be equivalent in purchasing power to at least 500 dollars in 2020. 3 Dincho Ralley, interviewed by Irene Markoff, 26 May 1977, MHSO Bulgarian collection.
