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COMING TO CANADA |
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Not long ago, a Canadian
Slovenian woman found a letter when she visited relatives in Slovenija.
Examining it more closely, she realized that her mother had written
it. In part this is what the letter said: Toronto,
22 maja 52 Dragi Joško in ostali,
Je že precej časa ko smo vdobili tvoje pismo pač
nisem še odgovorila, se ne morem pripraviti za pisat...
Mi se imamo po navadi Jože zmiraj dela ima dobro delo ali ne
pustijo delat več kot 8 ur 5 dni na teden. Jaz tudi še zmiraj
toliko zaslužim da ni treba stanovanja plačat in tako gre naprej.
Tukaj so lepe prilike za hišo kupit se plača nekaj naprej in se
potem splačuje na rate, ali niti do tega kapitala ni lahko priti...
Tam je lepo sedaj vse cvete in zeleni, se ključite po
njivah če bo kaj zrastlo... Tukaj v aprilu je bilo vroče
sedaj pa bolj mraz... Pomlad tukaj je ni nč_... Toronto,
22 May 1952 Dear Joe and family,
It has been a long time since your letter arrived but I haven't
answered; I just can't get in the mood to write.
We are all as usual; Joe is always working; he has a good job
but they don't let him work more than 8 hours per day five days per
week. I'm also earning enough that we don't have to pay rent and so
things go on. There are great opportunities here to buy a house, you
pay some money down and then you pay a mortgage, but it is not easy to
get a down payment together...
There at home everything is in bloom and green, you bend
looking over your fields to see if anything is growing... Here it was
hot in April but now it is colder... There is no spring here... This letter was written by Frances L. during her first years in Canada. She had arrived in Halifax in April of 1949; as her train chugged through Quebec, bringing her closer to her new her new job, her new home and her new life, and taking her further and further from her own family and her husband in Slovenia, Frances L. was rather disappointed by what she saw around her. Later she would write: "It was the end of April, with no sign of spring in sight. Nothing green or blooming yet. Not the way I remembered spring back home". Frances finally arrived in Ottawa; she became the babysitter for a family with five small children. Frances spoke no English and her employers, although kind, could not communicate with her.
Ottawa became Frances L's new life: working, learning English,
meeting other newcomers, among them Slovenians. All her money was saved
to bring her husband to Canada. This meant that during that first hot
summer, Frances L. could allow herself only one summer dress; every
penny was saved to reach the magic number of $200.00 that was required
as security to sponsor a relative to Canada. Frances L now remembers
those months: "The summer of 1949 was very lonely and depressing
for me. I was very homesick. And I had a constant toothache. There had
been no dental care where I had come from. That July, the dentist pulled
out eleven teeth. Of course, I had to pay him." Her dental work
took a big part of her savings.
Christmas 1949 brought with it hope and a sense of belonging.
Frances L celebrated with her new friends, with laughter, memories,
tears, and, thanks to the generosity of her employer who provided the
ingredients, a real potica. And Frances had other reasons for
being happy: her husband, Joe, was finally coming to Canada to join her.
A few months after he arrived in the spring of 1950, Frances L was able
to set up a home of their very own in Canada: "We got a bed sitting
room and I found a job at the nearby hospital in the laundry room. I
bought the cheapest aluminium pot and pan. Only two sets of cutlery. Our
dishes were a couple of plates from [another family's] cupboard. One set
of bedding and an iron. Those were all our possessions, plus a few
clothes. Where I worked a nice French girl offered that her sister could
get flannelette for me very cheap. For $4 I had enough material for a
layette, as the baby was on the way. I was sewing by hand as I had no
machine..."
By the time Frances L wrote the letter her daughter found by
chance, she and her young family had moved to Toronto where there was
more work for her husband. Today a widow and a grandmother, Frances L
lives in Toronto still, still Slovenian and now also Canadian.
Do you have a story to share about your arrival to Canada, or the
arrival of you parents and grandparents? The Canadian Slovenian
Historical Society would love to hear from you, and see your letters,
cards and pictures as we build up the history of Slovenians in Canada.
You don't have to be famous to be important to
our archive. Contact us at
cshs@look.ca Dr.
A. Urbancic
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Stan Kranjc’s story of his arrival to Canada |
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Abbreviated from his speech at unveiling of the plaque at Pier 21 on 21st of November, 2003 After 10 days of voyage across stormy Atlantic on American ship General Sturgis from Germany, I heard people screaming, “We can see the land”. Shortly after the arrival to Pier 21 in Halifax, we were told to stay overnight aboard the ship. Next morning after disembarkation the friendly Canadian officials started to call us by name and we were given landing cards and tags for our destination, with train and meal tickets. My tag was marked “Edmonton, Alta”. I have never heard of this place before. After clearing medical and immigration checkpoints we had to wait for the train for several hours. Few hours on the train the conductor came and said something, I could not understand. He repeated the same words “boys go and eat” and pointed to the dining car in front of us. One of the boys understood and told us to go and eat. We followed him. We were flabbergasted over the luxury of the dining car. On our table we noticed a basket full of bread buns as well as butter, jam and sugar. Coming from refugee camps and assuming that this was all we will get to eat, we cleaned it all. Waiter came by and noticed that all was gone, he brought another basket of buns and gave us the menu, which we did not understand. The waiter just collected all the menus and left. Shortly after he returned with a bowl of soup and later with salad, roast beef and blueberry pie with the second glass of milk. My first four words I learned in Canada were “boys go and eat“. As we traveled across this vast country, we noticed how unpopulated it was, that each house we saw had a car in its driveway, even if it was just a little wooden shack. In Europe only rich people owned cars. As we traveled across the prairies all wheat farms looked like golden sea with golden waves, as wind was gently moving the wheat crops back and forth. I remember saying to my friend “one thing we can be sure of, there will be plenty of bread in this country”. |
Remembering Hurricane Hazel
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When he arrived in Canada, Mr. Mihevc worked as a farmhand, as did many of the recent immigrants. As soon as his contract was fulfilled, he looked for other work and by 1952, he was hired as a mechanical apprentice by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) after answering an ad in a paper. Since Toronto was expanding in all directions, the public transportation system rapidly had to adapt itself. To his credit, and to the benefit of the TTC, he remained with the Commission until he retired. By that time, his section, the Heavy Units 5 H 2, had logged over 1 and a half million hours of injury free work. Mr. Mihevc is proud that this record still stands to this day, and has never even been equaled. Credit for this goes also to his ingenuity and foresight as an inventor. On the night of October 15, 1954, Mr. Mihevc had been an employee with the TTC for about 2 years. He reported for work, as usual, for the afternoon shift, which began at 3:30pm. From the news bulletins on the radio, he was well aware that Hurricane Hazel would hit Toronto sometime that evening. The rain that had been falling in Toronto, off and on for days, had become much heavier and as he traveled to the TTC garage, Mr. Mihevc noted that many people were leaving work earlier than usual in an attempt to avoid the full force of the storm. Groups of people, some already soaking wet, huddled at the bus stops. As the rains became heavier, and the winds increased to over 150km per hour, some buses began to break down. Mr. Mihevc’s shop in Toronto’s west end was called upon without a break to deliver replacements for the broken down vehicles, and to bring these back to the garage for repairs. The crew of about eight men worked tirelessly all evening. Mr. Mihevc himself remembers that soon after he passed over it in one of the replacement buses, the Humber bridge was washed out. The Weston Road Bridge was also gone. Similarly for the gas station that stood at the corner of Hwy. 7 and Islington, which he passed at 6 or 7 pm that evening, and which barely existed in the morning. He also recalls the rerouted buses, because the Malton Road was still a gravel one and vehicles could not pass at all. He remembers the tired, hungry, soaked passengers, whom he picked up wherever he could on the route to get them closer to their homes. Along the way, he could see emergency crews from several agencies in the city trying to rescue people from flooded houses. Tickets, transfers, regular bus stops were forgotten as night fell and more and more people crowded on to the buses. The winds and the rain were unrelenting. The shift seemed endless. Because Grey Coach Lines were a subsidiary of the TTC, Mr. Mihevc’s duties included rescue and repairs of those buses as well. In addition, the emergency buses lent by the city of Hamilton as a result of the crisis, also kept breaking down, and Mr. Mihevc and his colleagues were called out yet again to fix them. Furthermore, by 8 am the next morning, when the rains had subsided and the flooding had started to recede, Mr. Mihevc was back on the job making sure that all the buses, TTC, Grey Coach, and Hamilton, were in working order as the city slowly returned to normal. Part of the road-calls crew at the time of the hurricane, Mr. Mihevc transferred to the engine building section of the TTC in 1965. This was the area in which still today the TTC recognizes him for his finest work. His inventions have saved the Commission countless hours and dollars, and many are still in regular use today. Among his contributions to making the Toronto public transit system one of the safest in the world are the following: the Universal puller, Cylinder head working stands, cylinder head pressure testing equipment, block pressure testing equipment, camshaft changing equipment, thermostat seal installer, parts wagons, hydraulic fan tester, piston installer, cylinder head conveyor, fuel testing in dyno room and the camshaft regrinder. Although he is retired from the TTC now, Mr. Mihevc keeps up a busy pace. He has volunteered at the Ontario Science Centre and at various elementary schools, showing his inventions to young children and encouraging their interest and curiosity in science. Their letters to him demonstrate their gratitude. He drives patients to hospitals. At home he is still building and inventing, as well as gardening. He is also writing his memoirs and has several contributions in both Slovenian and English. His children and grandchildren are particularly lucky to have in their dad and grandfather one who happily and generously shares his stories with them, teaching them the importance of their Slovenian Canadian heritage and roots. Do you have a story you’d like to add to the archives of the Canadian Slovenian Historical Society? Your stories are important to your family, to your community and to us as we work to conserve the history of Slovenian immigration to Canada. Contact the society at cshs@look.ca. Become a member. |
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Bled, September
1875 In the spring of 1996, when Mrs. C. of Toronto noticed that some pesky squirrels were regularly invading her garage, she began to think about doing away with some of the items stored there. Since the death of her father, the boxes of papers that had been in his home had been deposited there. Mrs. C. knew that they contained letters, articles and artifacts and that some of the boxes contained the correspondences of a long deceased relative, Mario Pratesi. Mr. Pratesi was a Tuscan, born near Grosseto in 1842. During his lifetime, his stories and novels were admired and read by many, but now, 75 years after his death (he died in 1921), few remember him. Unsure of how to proceed, but hesitant to throw the boxes out, Mrs. C. asked for advice, and was eventually led to the university where I teach. She knew that I was a 19th/20th century Italian literature specialist and asked me to look through the contents of the boxes. The treasures contained in these boxes cannot be described in this brief article. Of the almost 1600 pieces of correspondence found, several were from a number of outstanding authors, artists, philosophers and other notables of the day, including opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. Among them was also a letter with a Slovenian connection. In 1875, Jessie Laussot wrote to her good friend, Mario Pratesi, describing to him her vacation with her then future husband, Karl Hillebrand. Jessie (1829-1905), was an upper class English lady whose father, Edgard Taylor, was a friend of many English writers and poets. She had married a French wine merchant named Laussot and subsequently moved to France with him. Their marriage was a disaster. Jessie was also a musician and a great promoter of music and of composers. She eventually fell in love with the composer Richard Wagner, but her relationship with him also failed. By the time Jessie met Mario in the late 1860’s or early 1870’s, she was deeply involved with historian and essayist Karl Hillebrand. They eventually married in 1879. And as the fairy tale goes, they lived happily ever after until Karl died in November, 1884. Their 1875 vacation took Karl and Jessie to various parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but nothing enchanted Jessie more than a little town named Veldes, which we all know today as Bled. Below is her description of the area as it was in 1875. It has been translated from the Italian, but I have left the names as Jessie wrote them. Her phrase "Mr. Mario" is considered a form of endearment. Veldes, 7 September, 1875 My Dear Mr. Mario, .....Here are
some photographs of Lake Bled, a truly enchanting place, and I’d There probably is no Slovenian, or anyone of Slovenian background, who does not recognize the beautiful Bled that Jessie describes. What a rare description of the area this is at the beginning of the tourist industry, which continues to attract people from far and wide. The letter is original and has never been published. How regrettable it would have been if Mrs. C had thrown it, and the rest of the contents of her boxes, away. The Canadian Slovenian Historical Society is interested in your letters about your life in Canada, or the life of your parents or grandparents. Their feelings and thoughts, their happiness and regrets about their first years in Canada deserve to remain as a testament to Slovenian-Canadian immigration history. Please contact the society before discarding any documents or artifacts that you may have in your possession. We will be glad to add them to our Archives. You can help carry
on the important work of the CSHS by becoming a member or by
donating documents and artifacts of your own, or your family’s,
immigration history to the Archive. You do not have to be
"famous" to be important to us and to Slovenian-Canadian
history. Historic pictures of Bled
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Almost half a century has passed since Hurricane Hazel tore through
Toronto, devastating the area around the Humber Valley. On October 15,
1954, eighty-one Torontonians lost their lives. The Humber Heritage
Committee, chaired by Madeleine McDowell, is planning a commemorative
video/DVD and booklet to mark the 50th anniversary of the event in 2004.
The committee has interviewed many of the tireless workers who were on
rescue duty that terrible night. Among them is a member of the Toronto
Slovenian community, Mr. Jo`e Mihevc.
