November 5, 2024
During the late 1950s, I worked alongside Steve as a draftsman at the Buildings and Grounds Department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Although we were recent Hungarian immigrants, we differed in our behavior in the office; he used to bring his breakfast to work unlike me, I ate at home. He spread some grease paper on his drafting table and ate his breakfast of smelly, garlicky sausage with a thick slice of brown bread. The powerful smell permeating the room bothered the rest of us working there, but nobody wanted to tell him to eat his breakfast at home and save us from the unpleasant smells. Eating a smelly breakfast at work was not Canadian, and still is not. I am not sure if that behavior was Hungarian. However, I heard Steve became a successful architect and integrated into Canadian society in a few years.
In contrast to Steve, some individuals never assimilate into the local culture and instead choose to return home. A Hungarian friend’s mother embraced women’s freedom in Canada and entered the workforce. Her husband was not as successful, and he felt he had lost his masculine dominance in the household, so he returned to Hungary, but the wife stayed in Canada with the children.
I do not know how others in Vancouver perceived my ethnicity when I arrived in Canada in the late 1950s, except that they noticed my English language skills and accent. I improved in record time and assimilated into local culture in many other ways.
One strategy I used was always to try to fit in and go with the flow; for example, I acquired a taste for beer when I drank with my classmates while finishing architectural projects at all-night sessions at the UBC School of Architecture. I was not too fond of beer then, but drinking with my classmates led me to develop a taste for it.
Other opportunities for cultural assimilation arose when I attended concerts with Elvis Presley at the PNE and Dave Brubeck at the old Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver. Later on, I acquired a taste for rock music. My father could not understand why I listened to The Grateful Dead, The Bachman Turner Overdrive, Credence Clearwater Revival, and their ilk; he thought music was only classical.
I further embraced local culture when we started camping and canoeing after marriage. Later, we traveled widely in a tent trailer across Canada with our children and a dog. After getting tired of hauling a tent trailer, we bought a cottage. And cottaging is a Canadian thing; only a couple of immigrants own cottages out of a hundred neighbors where our cottage is (I realize immigrants may not have the money for a cottage).
While I have been in North America since 1957 and consider myself part of North American culture, I am always intrigued when I hear Hungarian being spoken. My language abilities in Hungarian are equivalent to that of a sixteen-year-old, the age I was when I departed the country. While traveling in France last summer, I heard a group talking in Hungarian in Arles. I introduced myself to them, and we spoke about Hungary today compared to the one I left. I had to search for some words since my fluency in Hungarian was spotty, but it was a satisfying conversation.
A recent event drew me back to my ethnic background. Kathy met a Hungarian woman at a grocery store who recommended that we join the Hungarian Community Center in Ottawa. I followed up and decided to attend a social event celebrating the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. I hoped to listen to conversations in Hungarian and perhaps meet some people from Sopron from where we fled, so I looked forward to the event. I was somewhat fearful of how I would react to my countrymen and whether I could intelligently converse with them, limited by my sparse vocabulary and lack of practice speaking the language.
Upon entering the building, nobody welcomed us. We found our way to take a couple of seats and looked around. All age groups were there, from children to grey hairs, and they all seemed to know each other. And I heard only Hungarian spoken. There was a celebratory feeling in the air; some people were informally dressed, while others wore pin-striped suits. Nobody showed interest in us.
The MC asked the Hungarian Ambassador to Canada to speak. She spoke in Hungarian, and I whispered to Kathy and explained what was happening.
Although we were in Canada, curiously, there was absolutely no French or English spoken, and there was no acknowledgment of land rights by the Indigenous people of Canada, a custom in all public events now. That made me think that the Hungarians have a thousand-year history occupying the land of Hungary. The Ottomans took over the land at one time and the Germans at another time, but there had never been an acknowledgment of previous land ownership and compensation for taking the land. To my knowledge, the concept of compensation to earlier landowners has no currency in Hungarian thought. That made me think of how people interpret history in different parts of the world.
After the Ambassador’s speech, we enjoyed some poetry and dancing by third-generation Candaian-Hungarians, indicating that some families kept their culture intact. When the Ambassador asked people who came to Canada after the 1956 Revolution to stand up, I counted half a dozen out of fifty, including myself. So, most of these people were second—and third-generation Hungarians who maintained their native culture.
One of the celebration’s highlights was serving “langos,” a Hungarian breakfast food similar to doughnuts, fried dough covered with cheese, cinnamon, and/or garlic. I lined up to get a couple of langos and limited by my language skills, I ended up with two plain ones. There is not much taste to plain ones, so I returned for another one with cheese and garlic to enhance its flavor. I put on too much garlic that burned our mouths, and we took it home, not wanting to throw it away in front of the Hungarian crowd, showing our dislike of it.
Frankly, the event disappointed me because nobody welcomed or showed interest in us while we sat in the audience. Of course, we could have approached people, but they all seemed either to know and talk with each other or to be occupied with moving chairs around and other official matters.
The people were not unfriendly; they seemed to accept and ignore us. For some reason, I felt quite at home, understanding the language, although Kathy felt ignored. I felt as if I was on an island with my old countrymen. When I lined up for our langos at the kitchen, I heard the women working there talking to each other; one kneading the dough and cutting portions to fry, another frying, and the third putting the cheese and/or cinnamon on and serving it. The entire atmosphere felt homey. Based on our strange experience with this celebration, we decided to try again and attend a party next week with dinner, a concert, and dancing. I hope we won’t. be disappointed.
andrasthehun.ca 