 William "Pufi" Kosaras is the host of the Magyar Kepek, the Hungarian- language magazine show on OMNI TV. (Steve Sandor, 24 hrs)
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Fifty years ago, nearly 38,000 Hungarian refugees came to Canada, as this nation decided to change its immigration policy so it could process a bulk number of entrants at a time.
Of that number, nearly 12,000 were assigned to Toronto; but thousands more flocked to the city after it had become apparent that Canada's second-largest city (at that time) would become the hub of Hungarian immigration.
Bloor West became "Schnitzel Row" and Kensington Market, once Toronto's Jewish hub, became a Hungarian centre.
So, if Toronto was a major centre of Hungarian refugees in the late '50s, why is there no Hungarian Village in Toronto today?
In 1956, Canada wasn't the multicultural nation is boasts it is today. We were still a nation of two solitudes. Hungarian refugees were instructed to learn the language as fast as possible and to be ready to assimilate. Hungarians took that to heart.
Tom Mihalik, owner of Tom's Place, one of the few remaining Hungarian-Canadian businesses in Kensington Market, says it was inevitable that Toronto's once vibrant Hungarian neighbourhood would disappear.
"The people that came over were very proud to be Hungarian, but were grateful to Canada for giving them the opportunities they had," says Mihalik. "But the second generation, they were almost ashamed to be Hungarian. So, they assimilated."
Mihalik, who came over to Canada in 1968, 12 years after his father had fled to Canada, remembers going to school in the Kensington Market area and being the butt of schoolyard jokes because he spoke Hungarian. Even though his classmates were all children of 56ers with surnames like Nagy, Toth and Kovacs, they mocked the fact he wasn't "Canadian."
So, when the first generation of 56ers retired, their children, who didn't speak Hungarian, were loath to keep the businesses going. People moved to the suburbs ~ and the neighbourhood was sold off, little by little. Even St. Erzsebet Hungarian church, once the hub of the neighbourhood, moved north to Bayview and Sheppard.
"It began when the Hungarian House moved away from College Street and the Hungarian Church moved away from Dundas and Spadina," says Mihalik. "After that, I felt sorry for the Hungarian people who stayed behind. By 1985 or '86 the full exodus had taken place, first to St. Clair and Bathurst, and then out north to the suburbs."
Vera Barcza moved Columbus Travel, her business that had been a mainstay on Spadina for 40 years, to Bayview and Sheppard a few years back. She says Spadina's history of being a home to immigrants made it impossible to become a permanent home to one group of immigrants.
"Spadina is always a hub of immigration," she says. "Before we came it was a Jewish area. Then it became Hungarian. Then it was Portuguese, then Chinese."
Author, publisher and officer of the Order of Canada Anna Porter, who came to Canada after her family first fled to New Zealand, says the Hungarian community simply got old.
"Remember that those who were intellectually at the level to challenge the government (in 1956) were likely 20 years old or more," she says. "Those people are all in their 70s now. Many of those people married people who weren,t Hungarian, so many of those children never learned the language.0/00
Porter sent her daughter to the Hungarian school at the old St. Erzsebet Church ~ and her child hated it.
William "Pufi" Kosaras, who hosts the Magyar Kepek show on OMNI TV, says he has been surprised how the Hungarian community has spread itself through Canada. He gets letters and donations from coast to coast.
"I get letters from Newfoundland, from P.E.I. and I have six members in Prince Rupert," he says.
There are still some scattered Hungarian businesses in Kensington Market, on Bloor West, Yorkville, Bayview and on St. Clair West, by the modern home of Hungarian House near Winona. But for proponents of multicultural Toronto, the loss of the Hungarian neighbourhood is a sober lesson from which all other ethnic communities could learn.
