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CHRIS KOSTOV Society Tarsie, Bitola Bulgarian Mutual Benefit Society, Macedono-Bulgrian Progressive Club Christo Botev, Balkan Star and Makedonska Tribuna [Macedonian Tribune] newspapers. As many as 90 per cent of the first Bulgarian immigrants were peasants and they worked as laborers or as small business owners, primarily in meatpacking and small shops.*? Most of them had a very strong village identity and associating with others from the same village or region was common among them. Hence, soon after their arrival in Canada, Bulgarians started to organize benevolent associations and mutual benefit societies named after their villages, such as Banitza, Oschima, Zhelevo, Zagorichane, Tarsie, e.g. Banitza Benevolent Society, Oshchima Benefit Society, Zhelevo Benevolent Society, Zagorichane Mutual Benefit Society, and Bulgarian Economic Mutual Benefit Society Tarsie. This fulfilled their need for a social safety net in the new land. The mutual benefit societies were also a focal point of informal communication, as well as for community campaigns to raise money for a cause or to plan social events like dances, banquets, and picnics. All charity organization founding documents and other organizational documents were written in standard Bulgarian as late as the 1960s but the Bulgarian language was gradually replaced by English in all organizational documents after the 1960s. Some immigrants, such as Nasto Jigeroff and Toma Petroff, who came from small Macedonian villages could not boast a university education, were, nevertheless, very active in organizing the Bulgarian ethnic community. Nasto Jigeroff was born in the village of Oshchima, near Kastoria, Aegean Macedonia in 1879. He participated in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 and settled in Toronto in 1912. Jigeroff was among the founders of both pre-W WII Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox churches in Toronto (Sts. Cyril and Methody and St. George) and an active participant and co-founder of the Macedonian Political Organization (MPO) Chapter ‘Lyuben Dimitrov’ in Toronto. He died in 1975, at the age ninety-six. Toma Petroff, another Ilinden rebel from Aegean Macedonia, was one of the founders of the Bulgarian Mutual Benefit Society Homeland in 1935.*° In fact, as Peter Vassiliadis acknowledged, the devastating outcome of the Balkan wars for Bulgaria prompted an increasing number of Macedono-Bulgarians to settle permanently in Toronto and to preserve an even ‘greater loyalty to Bulgarian institutions.’ Once they settled permanently, Bulgarian Canadians also needed welleducated intellectuals, who could publish books and newspapers and organize Bulgarian schools and churches in order to preserve their Bulgarian culture and ethnic identity. Such highly educated leaders of the Bulgarian Canadian ”® Gurdev, Bulgarskata emigraciya, 58. 24 Ibid., 117-144. 25 Ibid., 77-78. 26 Vasiliadis, Whose Are You?, 196. * 60 °
