Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada

1945–1989

Jan Raska

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780887555701
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

During the Cold War, more than 36, 000 individuals entering Canada claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship. A defining characteristic of this migration of predominantly political refugees was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. Diplomats, industrialists, politicians, professionals, workers, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity.

Jan Raska's Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada explores how these newcomers joined or formed ethnocultural organizations to help in their attempts to affect developments in Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech refugees' anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. In turn, these organizations supported Canada's Cold War agenda of securing the state from communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the cultivation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech refugees' socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada.

By analyzing oral histories, government files, ethnic newspapers, and community archival records, Raska reveals how Czech refugees secured admission as desirable immigrants and navigated existing social, cultural, and political norms in Cold War Canada.

CHAPTER 1

Interwar Farm Labourers, Wartime Enemy Aliens, and Allied Citizens

Martin Bursík and his sister arrived in Quebec City on 22 August 1930. They had made the twenty-two-day journey from Moravia, in what was then Czechoslovakia, in order to work as agricultural labourers. Like many Czech immigrants to Canada at the time, they did not intend to stay in Canada; their original plan was to work for a time and then return home with their accumulated savings. The Bursíks chose Canada as a destination primarily because they already had a brother and sister-in-law there able to pay for their transatlantic journey, which, as Bursík recalls, included other young adults from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. He settled in Blenheim, Ontario, where his brother worked, and immediately began picking tomatoes and doing general farm labour for three to six dollars a day. He communicated with others in German. Bursík recalls that a typical 100-acre farm in the late 1920s and early 1930s cost between $6,000 and $10,000. Like many other Moravian Czechs, he found his plan of accumulating money and returning to the old country thwarted by the Great Depression and decided to stay in Canada. By the early 1940s, after a decade of working as a farm labourer, and with the effects of the Depression gradually lifting, he was able to purchase a farm.1

After resettling in interwar Canada, Czech immigrants had to navigate existing social and cultural norms. They resettled across the country and were often employed in agriculture and industry. During the 1920s and 1930s, many of these newcomers struggled in a difficult economic environment to obtain employment and acquire enough savings to bring their families to Canada or to secure a property mortgage. In order to integrate into Canadian society, Czech immigrants had to demonstrate that they supported so-called democratic values, were not politically subversive, and remained gainfully employed. During the growth of Canadian Czechoslovak community institutions in the 1930s, Czech immigrants faced questions about their loyalty to Canada. With their old homeland under German occupation beginning in March 1939, members of the Czechoslovak community later demonstrated their support for the Allied war effort by lobbying Canadian officials for political support, raising funds, collecting clothing, and donating cigarettes to Allied troops and their fellow compatriots overseas in an effort to display their allegiance to Canada. For politically active Czech immigrants, these wartime efforts served as a mechanism by which they could become good Canadians and attain social and cultural citizenship in Canada. Ultimately, their shared experiences during the Second World War set a precedent for future Czech refugees who also sought to become engaged citizens in Cold War Canada.

Early Czech Immigration

There were good reasons why the Czech refugees of Cold War Canada drew on their ethnocultural past. Czech immigration to Canada had already begun in the decades before the turn of the twentieth century. A majority of these newcomers to Canada were agriculturalists and industrial labourers who settled in areas already inhabited by other Eastern European immigrants. The abundance of available land drew Czech immigrants to western Canada, where they were joined by compatriots who had initially settled in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas and now moved northward. In 1884, a Czech community was established in Kolin, Saskatchewan, and later there were settlements at Derdard, Glenside, and Dovedale; the majority of settlers in these areas were Czech immigrants from Europe. In 1900, a Czech colony was established at Prague, Alberta, by Czech immigrants from the United States. Meanwhile, in Edmonton, a small community was established that included a number of professionals and artisans.

The 1911 census gathered information on 7,204,838 persons and indicated that approximately 1,800 Czechs and 851 Slovaks resided in Canada. These numbers might be misleading, however; later records, from the interwar period, show ethnic Slovak immigration to Canada from both the United States and Austria-Hungary significantly outnumbering Czech immigration, so the 1911 census might have counted some Slovaks as Czechs or Hungarians.2

Prior to the First World War, a large urban Czech population in Canada resided in Winnipeg. In 1913, Czech and Slovak immigrants there founded the Czecho-Slavic Benevolent Association. After the First World War, the organization was renamed the Czechoslovak Benevolent Association to reflect the establishment of a Czechoslovak state in Central Europe.3 By the late 1920s, Winnipeg had become the largest settlement for immigrants from Czechoslovakia, with over 400 families residing in the city. Czechoslovakia’s consul general, F.V. Květoň, observed that Winnipeg’s Czechoslovak community was largely comprised of tailors and shoemakers and that the city served as a “winter station” to which agriculturalists would retire once the farming season was over.4 Farther east, in northern Ontario, small communities of Czech miners were established at Haileybury, Fort William, and Kirkland Lake. Meanwhile, industrial workers settled in cities, including Windsor, Kingston, and Toronto. Throughout the 1920s, Czech immigration patterns continued, with agriculturalists in search of available land settling in western Canada, while labourers in search of industrial employment moved to central Canada. Czech immigrants from Moravia joined a labour scheme agreed upon by the Sugar Beet Growers Association of Canada and the Czech International Institute (Česká Zahraničová Instituce), which brought over farm labourers to work in the sugar beet industry in Lethbridge, Alberta, and Chatham, Ontario. With the rise of industry and urbanization, Czechs increasingly migrated to Ontario and Quebec looking for employment and opportunity. In Montreal, most immigrants from Czechoslovakia joined either the Czechoslovak community or the nationalist Slovak community. Together these communities numbered some 3,700 individuals, while Toronto attracted close to 2,500 individuals. Czech immigrants also settled in the southern Ontario communities of Hamilton, Kitchener, Oshawa, St. Catharines, Welland, and Windsor, where many were employed in industry.5 Czech immigrants continued to arrive in small groups from the United States, typically settling outside urban areas and seeking employment in industry, mining, and railway construction. Unlike Czechs from Europe who hoped to return to their homeland after a few years, these immigrants came to Canada with hopes of accumulating enough capital to purchase land for agricultural work.6 Often the heads of households were forced to journey to Canada alone since they could not afford to bring their spouses and dependants during their initial resettlement.

Finances were even more problematic for immigrants from Czechoslovakia, who often could not fund their journeys to Canada without substantial bank loans. Martin Yankovic, who arrived in Halifax on 1 March 1927 and came to Canada because he could not find work at home to feed his family, had acquired a 7,000 Czechoslovak crown bank loan—on top of his personal funds of 500 Czechoslovak crowns—to help pay for his transatlantic journey. Once the bank loan was paid, Yankovic brought his wife and children to Canada. Similarly, Joe Choroš, who came to Alberta from Czechoslovakia for work in the mid-1920s, had, with his father’s help, received a bank loan of 6,000 Czechoslovak crowns or approximately $500 Canadian.7

Once resettled in Canada, Czech immigrants quickly sought existing compatriot communities across the country. In the interwar period, Canada was home to three distinct groups of immigrants from Czechoslovakia. The first and largest group comprised Slovak nationalists, who permitted only Slovaks to join their organizations and advocated for Slovak autonomy in a federalized Czechoslovakia. The second group consisted of Czechs who joined with Slovaks and other smaller ethnic minorities, including Subcarpathian Ruthenians, to form a “Czechoslovak” community that advocated for a single Czechoslovak national identity and defended the existence of a Czechoslovak Republic. The third group, influenced primarily by their political ideology (a small group of Slovak leftists that included communists and socialists), established their own organizations.8

Such distinctions were inadequately reflected in official Canadian records. Census figures prior to 1920, for instance, recognized all immigrants from Czechoslovakia as citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and labelled them simply as “Austro-Hungarians.” From 1920 to 1923, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics classified both ethnic Czechs and Slovaks as “Czecho-Slovaks” for the purpose of recording immigrant admission by ethnic origin. For the years 1923 to 1926, with only the hyphen between their designations removed, the two ethnic groups were classified as “Czechoslovaks.”9 However, the inadequacies of the record-keeping notwithstanding, we know that, from 1918 to 1945, individuals and families who identified themselves as historically belonging to an ethnic Slovak nation accounted for approximately four-fifths of all immigration from Czechoslovakia to Canada; figures illustrate that 35,358 Slovaks came to Canada during the 1920s and a further 4,294 up to 1937. From 1926 to 1945, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics identified 5,716 immigrants as having Czech “racial” origins upon entering Canada.10

Ethnic divisions mattered in community institutions, as illustrated by the case of the Czechoslovak Mutual Benefit Society. Formed in Montreal in 1924, it was for many of the Czechs in the city simply a sociocultural association in which they could meet other individuals who shared a belief in a common Czechoslovak identity.11 However, the society’s membership, according to its official organ, Nová vlasť (New Homeland), was over 90 percent Slovak. Initially, the few Czechs in the society attempted to establish a pro-Czechoslovak organization. However, the majority of Slovak members did not support a Czechoslovak identity and political ideology and left to join or establish independent nationalist Slovak groups.12 But the instability of the society was the result of more than the ideological divisions within it. Unemployment was widespread among its members in Montreal, and many of them were transitory, moving to the city to look for work and leaving when they could not find it. As a result, the organization ultimately failed, and the paper ceased to exist a few years later because of financial difficulty and lack of membership.

The Moravians

Although interwar Slovak immigration substantially surpassed the small group of Czechs arriving in Canada from Czechoslovakia, a substantial increase in Czech immigration did occur, and it stemmed from the province of Moravia. A group of approximately 3,000 newcomers came to Canada in search of work and eventually settled in the Chatham area of southern Ontario.13 Like Martin Bursík, many Moravian Czechs created an image of hardworking, honest sojourners who initially came to Canada to work as sugar beet farm workers with the intention of signing short-term labour contracts, saving their wages, and returning home after two or three years of work. They received no government assistance and were left to depend on themselves and their compatriots for financial and social assistance.

One of them was fifteen-year-old František Všetula, who arrived 11 June 1925 and, as an inexperienced agricultural worker, went to work with other Czechs in the fields. Another was Frank Konečný, who arrived in 1930 at the age of twenty-two. He chose to come to North America because he already had a sister in Canada and one in the United States. In describing his initial view of Canada, Konečný noted that as a child he had been a fan of Jack London’s books, which in his eyes romanticized the country. Apart from literature, Konečný could only recall that Canada was a large country. He spoke no English and used his understanding of Polish in an attempt to communicate with fellow farmers from Central Europe.

In fact, a majority of the Moravian farm labourers arrived in Canada without any previous knowledge of English. With a sizable community taking shape in the region, a meeting was held in December 1928 at Chatham’s St. Joseph’s Hall for all interested “Czechoslovaks.” Approximately 350 people were in attendance to discuss the future of their community. Subsequently, a Czechoslovak band named after Saints Cyril and Methodius was created and later played traditional Czech and Slovak music across southern Ontario and the United States. Meanwhile, in Chatham, Moravian parents organized their children ...