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CHRIS KOSTOV
The Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, brutally crushed by the
Turks, added serious political reasons for migration. In fact, Dincho Ralley
also noted during his interview with Irene Markoff that his father’s reason for
migrating from the Balkans to Canada was a flight from oppression.*
The data provided by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and
Biculturalism indicated that there were only seven Bulgarians in Canada in
1900-1901. A decade later, this number rose to 6,638. In 1913, however, the
number of Bulgarians dropped to 1,270, most probably due to the Balkan
wars.” Kostadin Gurdev estimated that at least 500 Bulgarian immigrants
from Bulgaria proper and geographic Macedonia left Toronto to volunteer
in the Bulgarian army during the Balkan wars (1912-1913). It is difficult
to estimate the exact number of Bulgarian Canadian volunteers who joined
the Bulgarian Army, but census data suggest a much larger number than 500.
These immigrant soldiers were exclusively Macedono-Bulgarians.” Both
church records and historians recognized the fact that 80 to 90 per cent ofthe
first Bulgarian immigrants to Canada came predominantly from the region of
Macedonia in the first half of the twentieth century.®
The first Macedono-Bulgarians came to Canada from the Aegean part of
Macedonia, (present-day northern Greece), from villages around the cities
of Kostur (Kastoria) and Lerin (Florina). Foto Tomev, who immigrated to
Toronto in 1915, was able to find the names of the first migrants from the
village of Zhelevo in 1903, and these included Elia Tanasov, Dimitar and
Vasil Sidorov, Petko Andonov, and Trayko Florov.? Foto Tomev aimed at
reconstructing the history of the immigrants from his native village Zhelevo
by gathering information and original documents from the descendants of
these immigrants in Toronto. These first temporary migrants came to Canada
as guest workers to earn money and returned to their home villages as soon
as possible. Over half of them were from the Castoria (Kostur) area of Aegean
Macedonia with the vast majority of the rest coming from Florina, Prespa,
Ohrid, and Bitola.! They concentrated largely in Toronto.
‘Ibid.
Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, The Cultural Contribution of the
Other Ethnic Groups-Book IV, Ottawa, Queen’s Printer, 1969, 238-245.
Kostadin Gurdev, Bulgarskata emigraciya v Kanada |The Bulgarian Emigration to Canada],
Sofia, Marin Drinov Academic, 1994, 44.
Bulgarians from Macedonia.
Lillian Petroff, ‘Macedonians,’ in Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Canada’s
Peoples, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1999, 289; Gurdev, Bulgarskata emigraciya, 21-40;
Lilian Petroff, Fiftieth Anniversary Sts. Cyril and Methody Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox
Cathedral: (1910-1960) Fiftieth Anniversary Jubilee Almanac, Toronto, Sts. Cyril and
Methody Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox Cathedral, 1960, 30-5.
° E.S. Tomev, Short History of Zhelevo Village, Macedonia, Toronto, Zhelevo Brotherhood in
the City of Toronto, 1971, 75.
1 ES. Tomev, Fiftieth Anniversary Sts. Cyril and Methody, 35.
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