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THE SHIFTING IDENTITIES OF THE BULGARIAN-CANADIAN DIASPORA, 1900-2015
The Macedono-Bulgarians initially lived at the East end of Toronto, around
King Street East, Eastern Avenue and Keele Street, finding jobs, such as meat¬
packing or on the railways. They lived in crammed houses sharing their living
expenses.’ Bulgarian migrants kept spending to a minimum while away
from home. A two-year stay in Toronto, for instance, if spent in a thrifty
manner, yielded roughly 400 dollars in savings, a vast sum when compared to
rates of savings in the Balkans, where they would not be able to save even half
of this money.” In order to illustrate the purchasing power of this money, we
should note that a house in a major Bulgarian city would cost 500 dollars in
1910 and a semi-detached house near Woodbine Beach in Toronto was worth
3,450 dollars in 1915, whereas a loaf of bread was about 7 cents.”
According to the internal community census, there were only eight
Macedono-Bulgarians with their families in Toronto in 1910. Such people
were usually political immigrants, former Ilindenci (participants in the
linden Uprising of 1903) or chetniks (guerilla fighters), who fought in the
Ilinden Uprising against the Ottomans. By 1915, however, there were forty¬
three families and forty-nine children. The political situation in Macedonia,“
and the economic opportunities in Toronto persuaded increasing numbers of
Bulgarians to settle permanently.’
During WWI some Bulgarians were treated as enemy aliens in Canada
and were interned, due to their Bulgarian or Ottoman passports and active
participation in ethnic Bulgarian immigrant associations. But some of these
early immigrants, who did not participate in any ethnic associations were
not discriminated and even served in the Canadian army during World War
I. Bulgarians were once again able to immigrate to Canada and to bring over
their families in the 1920s, when Canadian restrictions on immigration
started to be liberalized towards people from European origin. Many new
immigrants even wanted to live among English Canadians, not in boarding
houses, and to study English. Such immigrants faced the hostility of
their older compatriots, who thought that this way, young people would be
4° Vasiliadis, Whose Are You?, 170-171.
Lillian Petroff, Sojourners and Settlers: The Macedonian Community in Toronto to 1940,
Toronto, University of Toronto, 1995, 15.
18 Mary Mackinnon. “New Evidence on Canadian Wage Rates, 1900-1930.” The Canadian
Journal of Economics / Revue Canadienne D'Economique, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1996), 114-131.
In 1913, the geographic region of Macedonia was divided among Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria.
By 1915, both Serbia and Greece pressured the ethnic Bulgarians to abandon the Bulgarian
language, traditions and even names and surnames. Moreover, W WI had already started and
this would mean even more bloodshed after the two Balkan Wars which ended merely two
years earlier, in 1913. Hence, many ethnic Bulgarians in Vardar and Aegean Macedonia were
ready to leave the region and settle in Bulgaria or across the Atlantic, in Canada or the USA.
15 Petroff, Sojourners and Settlers, 10, 68.
1° John Grudeff, interviewed by Irene Markoff, 9 February 1977, MHSO Bulgarian collection.
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