Slavic Toponymic Neologisms in Canada

Abstract

The Slavs in Canada constitute numerically the third ethnic group. Ahead of them are the British and French groups. According to the 1951 census there were 395,043 Canadians of Ukrainian origin, 219,845 of Polish, 91,279 of Russian, 63,959 of Czech and Slovak, and 21,404 of Yugoslav (Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian). Several thousand Bulgarians, Macedonians, Byelorussians, and other Slavs were not listed in the census reports. Altogether there are about one million Canadians of Slav origin linked together by historic ties and by kinship of language and cultural traditions. Side by side with Canadians of British, French, and other origin, the Slavs retain and cultivate their heritage, thereby contributing to the development of Canada's culture and her spiritual growth. The importance of such cultural contributions has been fully realized and acknowledged by many prominent Canadian leaders. Included in the cultural traditions which the Slavic settlers in Canada brought over from Europe is a rich repertoire of folk songs, proverbs, folk beliefs, legends, and tales. This they have preserved and enriched by the creation of new cultural values on Canadian soil. The Slavic folklore has been preserved and cultivated here for many reasons, primarily because the folklore traditions constituted a large part of daily life in the European homeland, because such traditional wisdom helped to compensate the Slavic people for their prevalent illiteracy, and because they had a strong natural predisposition, as a predominantly rural population, to express their hopes, emotions, and aspirations in old and new songs and in other forms of folklore. Canadian Slavic folklore, therefore, constitutes an inseparable part of Canadian folk culture, and deserves our special attention and study. Folk tales, folk etymologies, proverbs, sayings about the origin and meaning of Canadian place names, or what may be called Canadian Slavic namelore represent aspects of Canadian folklore. This kind of folklore has been collected and discussed by the author in Onomastica, No. 11, Winnipeg, 1956. In pursuing his research into Canadian Slavic namelore and to-