Hungarian Studies Review Fall 1981 [antikvár]

Introduction Hungarians comprise the third largest central and eastern European ethno-cultural group in Alberta. Their presence extends back to the earliest establishment of coal mining in the southern parts of the province. Hungarian coal miners came to southern Alberta from Saskatchewan and Pennsylvania in 1886; since then, four successive waves of immigration—prior to World War I, during the late 1920s, following World War II, and after the 1956 Hungarian revolution—have maintained the rate of growth of Hungarian-origin people at approximately the same level as the general rate of population growth in Alberta. Since the 1930s, Hungarians have comprised about one percent of Alberta's population; in 1971, there were 16,240 people of Hungarian origin in the province. In addition, they have been sufficiently dispersed to have had an impact on almost every region of the province. The settlement pattern of Hungarians differs from that of other central and eastern European groups. While nearly all other central and eastern European groups formed rural clusters in the central and northern areas of the province, with their city dwellers concentrating in Edmonton, Hungarians formed pockets of settlement throughout the province and settled in large numbers in southern Alberta, with their urban people coming largely to Calgary- Unlike the Ukrainians, Poles or Romanians whose largest wave of immigrants came to Alberta prior to World War II, the largest wave of Hungarian immigrants came during the 1920s. The Hungarians have also been one of the most mobile groups in a society characterized by mobility. Hungarians in Alberta were particularly affected by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The depression years were difficult for almost everyone in Alberta, but especially for newly-arrived immigrants who did not speak English, had few possessions, had little time to establish themselves economically and had few fellow-countrymen to depend on for aid and support. The Depression irrevocably altered their lives and exacted an enormous and tragic personal toll in broken dreams and broken families. The newcomers from Hungary were usually among those who were the last hired and the first fired; consequently they faced unemployment and poverty as well as social discrimination based on their uncertain status as "foreigners."