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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 meatpacking 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 fortythree 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. .57 +
