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“THE NEw MECCA OF IMMIGRANTS”...
to recruit settlers both from Europe and the United States. To continue
the arrival of a large number of settlers, improvements in conditions were
needed, primarily in terms of travel opportunities. The above-mentioned
railway brought about such improvement, and the railway companies
continued to play a central role in the settlement of the western provinces
with immigrants. Yet, despite such developments and the activities of the
agents described below, no large-scale settlement took place, in part due to
an economic crisis between 1873 and 1896 and the fact that Canada could not
compete successfully with the United States.”
This was also the context for the arrival of the first Hungarian settlers.
Hungarian “migration to Canada began as an off-shoot of mass migration to
the United States”, as previously noted, with the first settlers to the Canadian
west arriving from Pennsylvania.” Paul Esterházy, employed by the Canadian
government, played a key role in bringing the first settlers to the region
(see his activities below). Ihe first colony, Huns Valley was established in
Manitoba in 1885, however, it proved to be short lived. Eszterház, established
in 1886, was more successful with its status consolidated by the turn of the
century and was followed by several other Hungarian settlements (including
Otthon and Bekevär). By this time, new settlers had come directly from the
native country.”* In his study, Martin Louis Kovacs even refers to this area
prior to 1914 as “little Hungary.”” By the time of World War I there were
half a dozen Hungarian colonies in Western Canada, the majority of which
were in Saskatchewan, and Hungarians had also settled in ethnically mixed
areas." It is difficult to say (due to the lack of accurate census data) how many
Hungarians lived in Canada when the Great War started and immigration
stopped, but the 1920 census gives us an idea of the size of this group:
according to the documents, there were 13,181 Hungarians in Canada, most
of whom were rural inhabitants in the prairie provinces.”” More than twice
this many people arrived in just 5 years in the 1920s.
Between 1896 and 1914, 3 million people settled in Canada and between
1901 and 1911 the population increased by 43 percent. Such a transformation
did not happen without conflicts and this affected Hungarians as well.
With the increasing number of immigrants arriving in the country, voices
emphasizing the need for stricter immigration control became stronger,
Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates, 82.
Patrias, Hungarians in Canada, 4-5.
Nandor Dreisziger, Rose-Gardens on Ice-Floes: A Century of the Hungarian Diaspora in
Canada, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2000), 239-258,
241.
Dreisziger, Struggle and Hope, 61.
Patrias, Hungarians in Canada, 6.
27 Ibid. 6.
This paragraph is based on Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates, 107-124.
* 107 +