Slovenes in Canada – Stamps 2021.
The emigration of Slovenes to Canada did not reach significant dimensions until towards the end of the nineteenth century. Most Slovene emigrants to Canada moved there from the neighbouring USA. Before that there had only been individual cases of missionaries (Friderik Baraga, Franc Pirc, etc.), gold prospectors and miners.
It is also worth mentioning, from the early twentieth century, the Alaskan pioneer Fred Bahovec, who was originally from Ljubljana. Bahovec Peak in south-east Alaska is named after him. In the years before the First World War a few Slovene families settled in British Columbia, where they worked in the mines and forests. Larger Slovene settlements grew up around the mines in British Columbia, northern Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Around 5,000 Slovenes lived in Canada in this period. Large-scale immigration did not resume until after the Second World War, when in 1947 Canada began to welcome political refugees from Europe. The largest number settled in Toronto and the surrounding area. They were followed by economic migrants, above all from the Prekmurje and Primorska regions, in the 1950s. Around 6,000 mainly young people immigrated to Canada in this period, bringing with them the skills and qualifications they had obtained in their homeland. Some estimates suggest that around 30,000 Slovene immigrants and their descendants live in Canada today, at least half of them in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area.
In the 1920s Slovene immigrants began to club together in societies and associations that continue to maintain contacts with the homeland even today. The stamp shows two symbolic foodstuffs of Canada and Slovenia: maple syrup and Slovene honey.
Stamp Digest 