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CHRIS KOSTOV
into North American culture. Thus, until the 1920s, Bulgarian parents were
suspicious, if not hostile, to the younger generation’s desire to get an English¬
language education. They believed that education in North American schools
would alienate their children from their parents’ native Bulgarian language
and culture. In order to preserve their language, the Bulgarian immigrants
in Toronto opened their Bulgarian-language school in 1915 in collaboration
with the existing Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox parish of Sts. Cyril and
Methody. They appointed Kuzo Temelcoff, a teacher from Aegean Macedonia,
as the school’s first instructor.” The Bulgarian community fulfilled its need
for a cultural life with a community theatre that held performances in the
Parish Hall of the Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox Cathedral of Sts. Cyril
and Methody. Bulgarian women also actively participated in the church and
community cultural and educational life. Lillian Petroff pointed out that,
women instructed “young ladies in the Bulgarian language school.”**
Founded in 1922 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Macedonian Political
Organization (MPO) and its newspaper Makedonska Tribuna [Macedonian
Tribune] became the pillar of Bulgarian ethnic identity in North America
throughout the twentieth century. It has been published in Bulgarian and
English since 1927. MPO was the North American arm of the Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), i.e. a Bulgarian nationalist
organization, very conservative and a natural right-wing ally of the Bulgarian
Orthodox church. In Toronto, as in the other cities of North America, the local
MPO chapter Pravda [Justice] worked closely with the Macedono-Bulgarian
Orthodox parish of Sts Cyril and Methody and almost all parishioners became
MPO members.*4
By the 1930s, Bulgarians had developed a strong loyalty and attachment,
not only to Bulgaria, but also to Canada. Ina speech to the parishioners of Sts.
Cyril and Methody Church in 1927, Dr Malincheff reminded his compatriots
that they should not forget their homeland and yet, they should be also
‘worthy citizens of Canada.” Lillian Petroff called this development a ‘double
loyalty,’ which ‘no priest fresh from Bulgaria or MPO ideologue dared to do
other than encourage." Ihe emergence of this double national identity was
a natural process. Initially, when Bulgarians were sojourners, their hearts
and thoughts were attached only to the Old World and Canada was merely
a land of opportunity for a temporary stay. However, once they decided to
settle permanently in Toronto after the Balkan wars and particularly in
2 Fiftieth Anniversary Sts. Cyril and Methody, 42.
33° Lillian Petroff, ‘Women and Ethnicity,’ Polyphony, Vol. 8, No. 1-2 (1986), 26.
34 Rev. Vasil Mihailoff, interviewed by Irene Markoff, 7 February 1977, MHSO Bulgarian
collection; MPO, Macedonians in North America, 7-10.
Petroff, Sojourners and Settlers, 173.
36 Ibid.
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