Hungarian Studies Review Vol. 1., 1974
WATSON KIRKCONNELL: A Canadian Meets the Magyars
A Canadian Meets the Magyars Watson Kirkconnell My acquaintance with things Hungarian dates from my acceptance in 1922 of a professorial post in Wesley College, Winnipeg. Born of largely Scottish ancestry in Port Hope, Ontario, and educated (Primarily in classics) at Queen's and Oxford, I had had no previous contact with any Magyars. This was not surprising, for by the 1911 census there were fewer than 10,000 Hungarians in the whole of Canada and most of these were pioneer farmers in Saskatchewan. Change soon came, however. The 1921 census figure of 13,181 rose to 40,582 in 1931 and to 54,598 in 1941. Some of the rise may have been due to natural increase, bui more of it came from massive immigration brought in by such agencies as the C.P.R. and C.N.R. Colonization Departments and the British Land Settlement Corporation. Many of these migrants had to have passports from the Succession States but gladly affirmed their true national origin for the Canadian censustakers in 1931 and 1941. In my 18 professional years in Winnipeg (1922-40), my contacts with the Hungarian community were chiefly through the Kanadai Magyar Ujsag [Canadian Hungarian News],* and the Royal Hungarian Consulate, opened in 1928 under Stephen J. Schefbeck (Petenyi), later followed by Dr. Louis Szelle in 1936. In 1925-28, the entire margin of my time (beyond professorial duties) was being devoted to verse translation from a wide range of European languages. From this activity there issued my Outline of European Poetry (published serially in the Western Home Monthly, (June-November 1927), my European Elegies (Graphic Press, 1928), and in 1930 The North American Book of Icelandic Verse (Carrier & Isles, pp. 228), the first in a projected series of volumes planned for the whole spectrum of Europe's poetic literatures. Over two decades later, this volume was to make me a Knight Commander of the Order of the Icelandic Falcon, but that is another story. Enter B61a Bdchkai Payerle, the 24-year-old editor of the Kanadai Magyar Ujsag, who had encountered my translations from Magyar in European Elegies and the Western Home Monthly and now sought to encourage me to make The North American Book of Magyar Verse the next in my colossal series. He had been born in Ujvidek (Neusatz, Novi Sad), and had studied Greek in Budapest under Professor Karl Ker^nyi (d. 1973) and engineering at the Budapest Polytechnic. Since the half-million Magyars in the southern districts where his father had *Founded about 1920 in Kipling, Saskatchewan, by Miklos Istv^nffy (editor) and Zoltan Istvanffy (printer) and moved to Winnipeg soon thereafter. It was taken over in December 1924 by the Immigrants' Aid Bureau.