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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. + 56 +
