Karikázó, 1983. július - 1984. április (9. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1983-07-01 / 1. szám

continued from p.J. ...his aims seem to find achievement when he is in the actual transition stage from one place to another and at no other time. At one time he is heard of as running a farm in the older settled parts of Manitoba. The next ye hear from him, he is busy getting a home-stead into shape in some remote part of the Territories... He does not wait for fortune to come to him. He goes in search of it...(6) ST. LUKE Among Hungarian settlers as well, there were men,who, either owing to inclination or under the pressure of circumstances, became true pioneers in the sense as presented in the above description. Such a very mobile person was James (Imre) Pinke, who lived on his farm on the Whitewood side of the Qu'Appelle Valley. Pinke had actually come from Passaic, N.J., to which place he had gone from the Transdanubian part of Hungary. In two articles(7) Pinke succeeded in inducing some Hungarian immigrants to leave the USA and settle in the vicinity of his own farm. In due course the settlers formed a community called, after its church, St. Luke(8)which as early as 1898 comprised 196 souls. Since the settlement consisted of both religiously and ethnically variegated elements, it did not achieve a high degree of communal cohesion: Catholic Hungarians were attracted by Kaposvár and the Protestants by the cultural activities of Békevár. In fact, St. Luke has sometimes been called "Little Békevár" because of some basic similarities in their identities. PLUNKETT Pinke got into contact with the immigration officials and became a freelance immigration agent, in which capacity he also went back to the old country. Although his activities as a farmer, agent, and cattle dealer should have been profitable, before long he began a new major enterprise with the initiation of the new settlement of Pinkefalva. While in his native village (Bodajk) he publicized (9) emigration to Canada, but only two families were willing to join him in his venture. The next source for settlers for Pinke was Kaposvár, which yielded two old settler families. It was early in the spring of 1906 that the families, including that of Pinke, selected their new homesteads northeast of Hanley railway station. At this stage the edge of one of the "frontiers" was Hanley station, which fulfilled the role of an immigrant distribution centre in precisely the same way that Whitewood had done earlier.(10) ADJUSTMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENT: IDENTITY CHANGES Individuals, moving from one place to another, will find different and sometimes contrasting conditions- physical, social and cultural- in the new environment. Whether they like it or not, they must adjust themselves, to some extent at least, to the new circumstances. Adjustment involves both the acquiring of new ways (assimilation) and the discarding of old ones (alienation); in other words, they have to change their identities consciously or subconsciously. The first major adjustmental task for the newcomer - in addition to the trials and tribulations of the emigration and immigration processes, as well as of becoming functional on a farmstead - would be posed by the physical environment, in the present case the Canadian prairies. Although in the romantic words of P.0. Esterha'zy, settling agent for the Esterház colony: During the winter months the country is blessed with that peculiarly healthful, elastic, bracing atmosphere so common to the higher latitudes, which gives a buoyancy and vigour to the mind and body..., (11) The reality of the climate proved to be trying, compelling the immigrants to make preparations, immediately on their arrival, for the prairie winter. In fact, their choice of homesteads was carried out in anticipation of cold weather and it became almost a precept not only for the Hungarian, but also for the other poor Eastern and Central European immigrants, to settle in the neighbourhood of wooded areas with a view to obtaining both firewood and logs for building purposes.(12.) Obviously, adjustment to the physical environment had to affect the manner of clothing. Thus, after a comparatively short while, the homewoven white, wide linen trousers of the men of the Hungarian peasant community were abandoned in favour of ones fashionable on the prairies, (13) explicitly demonstrating how sociocultural identities as well would often be greatly affected by the physical environment. SOCIAL IDENTITIES The most striking aspect of the Canadian environment for the Hungarian immigrants - the social environment, in any case - was that state of affairs usually designated as "freedom and individual rights". Most peasant immigrants, including the elders, had been treated in their native villages as socially inferior. They had never been spoken to by the landlords, the administrator and the clergyman in any other way than in the second person, and called by their first names. But they had to address the village elite as "honourable sirs", or at least "misters." The newcomers were amazed to find that they all had suddenly become "misters", for the nearest Hungarian equivalent, "urak" implies a high social status, involving the enjoyment of rights and privileges formerly denied the peasants.(14) This novel way, of course, was accepted most readily, but other social conventions that prevailed in the receiving society were regarded at first by the newcomers as odd and unacceptable. Conversely, many of the customs and other cultural traits of the Hungarian settlers would strike outside observers as peculiar or crude. Such a jarring note could be observed in the standing of women. In the Hungarian-Canadian community, women were expected to show deference to their fathers and husbands. (15) Yet the wife was perhaps the most important worker within the household. Not only continued on p.5.

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