 Tom Mihalik stands in front of Tom's Place in Kensington Market. (Steve Sandaor, 24 hours)
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Italians have Little Italy and Corso Italia, there are two Chinatowns, there
are Portuguese and Korean villages. But there is no Little Hungary in Toronto,
despite that thousands of Hungarians came to this city in 1956-1957, in the
wake of the revolution.
But that wasn't always true. In the late '50s, Hungarian culture thrived on
Bloor West and Spadina. As Jewish merchants moved out of Kensington Market to
the north, Hungarians moved in. The St. Erzsebet of Hungary Catholic Church,
at the corner of College and Spadina, was a hub of activity and house a
Hungarian school.
"There are stories of 14 couples getting married at one time at St. Erzsebet,"
says Susan Papp-Aykler of the Rakoczi Foundation, a backer of the Hungarian
Exodus exhibit that will be remounted at City Hall on Oct. 23. "When they came
to Toronto, Hungarians found in Toronto a cold, unsophisticated city. They
brought a real sense of cosmopolitanism."
Bloor West, between Spadina and Bathurst, was affectionately nicknamed
"Schnitzel Row" because of the number of Hungarian restaurants and delis which
could be found there. Hungarian coffee houses, trying to mimic the famous
"sugar houses" of Budapest, cropped up on Bloor and in Yorkville.
You were as likely to hear Hungarian spoken on Spadina as you would English.
"Kensington back then still had a lot of Jewish stores, and a lot of
Hungarians," remembers Tom Mihalik, proprietor of Tom's Place, one of a
handful of Hungarian-Canadian businesses that's left in Kensington Market.
"Most of the stores were small family businesses, and you lived on the second
floor. You went downstairs to go to work. We had a real Hungarian community
here. We had our own church, theatres, butchers and grocers. Kensington Market
was a haven for me."
Mihalik was born in '56, the year of the revolution. His father fled the
country and began a used-clothing business on Baldwin Street, and Tom and his
mother Magda followed 12 years later, when Hungarian culture was thriving in
Kensington.
The clothing store was a gathering place for Hungarians in the market; William
Mihalik would cook breakfast right in the store and loved to play Hungary's
unofficial national pastime, chess, with the men who came by in the morning.
Anna Porter was a child when she fled Hungary in 1956. Now an Officer of the
Order of Canada, recognizing her career as a publisher with Key Porter Books
and author (her memoir of Hungary, "The Storyteller, a Memoir of Secrets,
Magic and Lies," has just been reprinted), she says Hungarians were quick to
embrace Canada as their new home because many knew that they were here to
stay.
,I think it was because the regime that came after the revolution was so
repressive, most Hungarians who left the country knew that there would be no
going back. I think it made it easier for them to accept their new country."
Vera Barcza ran Columbus Travel on Spadina for four decades before moving to
the Bayview/Sheppard area recently, following the move of the Hungarian
Catholic Church from Spadina to Bayview.
Her parents came over in 1958, and her mother started the business. Vera took
it over when her mother passed away.
"It took me many sleepless nights learning what I had to do. I don't think I
did anything extraordinary," says Barcza of learning to survive in a new
country.
"It was like a small Hungarian village," she says of Spadina. "I was never
homesick because I had my Hungarian village around me."
Mihalik says the Hungarian immigrants had to work hard because the communists
in Hungary wouldn't release their paperwork or degrees, so they could not back
up claims that they were lawyers or doctors. So professionals were taking
whatever work they could.
"Even by the early '70s a lot of Hungarians didn't have their paperwork
reconciled, so you had doctors and lawyers still working as waiters and
waitresses."
If you look closely on Spadina, Bloor and in Kensington Market, you can still
find traces of the Hungarian settlement. There are a couple of surviving
restaurants on Bloor, the old Columbus Travel sign can still be found on
Spadina, and some stores, such as Kensington Market's Sas Mart, have kept
their Hungarian names despite new ownership. But, for the most part, "Little
Budapest" has disappeared.
Tomorrow, we'll explore why that happened.
