Debrecen4U September 9, 2025

New finds advance the study of Hungarians in Canada

Special contemporary documents, including personal papers related to the founding of the First Hungarian Reformed Church of Montreal in 1926, were also donated to the university. The personal papers of Mihály Fehér, a former student of the Reformed College and the Royal Hungarian Tisza István University of Debrecen, were able to return to Hungary thanks to the family’s donation.

In order to learn about the history of Hungarians in Montreal and preserve their heritage, a cooperation agreement was signed in 2023 between the Consulate General of Hungary in Montreal and the Faculty of Arts (BTK) of the University of Debrecen (DE), which was later joined by Concordia University’s Oral History and Digital Storytelling Center and several other organizations.

The research into the past and present of the Hungarian diaspora in Montreal, the mapping of its memories, and the scientific presentation of its history are coordinated by the Anglo-American Institute (AAI) of the Faculty of Humanities (BTK) of the University of Debrecen (DE).

The existence of the documents that have now returned home and are of invaluable value to the project—handwritten memoirs, correspondence, passports, birth certificates, and documents related to the history of the church—was revealed during the research work.

“Last year, I learned about the project researching the heritage of Hungarians in Montreal, and I began to hope that before I die, I would find a way to save these documents for posterity. I am deeply grateful that with the help of the University of Debrecen, the documents of Mihály Fehér can be brought to a suitable place, “home”,” said the daughter of the former founding pastor, Mária Fehér, when the documents were handed over in Canada.

Mihály Fehér was born in 1900 in Méhtelek, was a student of the Reformed College between 1912 and 1918 and of the Royal Hungarian Tisza István University of Debrecen from 1920 to 1923, and then continued his studies at Princeton University between 1923 and 1926. For the large number of Hungarian immigrants who arrived in the city at that time, he founded the First Hungarian Reformed Church of Montreal in 1926, which he served until 1967 after a brief return home.

“The documents are unique in many ways, as they not only present a special life story, which is interesting in itself, but also provide insight into the history of Hungarian emigration, the role of the church in the lives of immigrants to Canada, the history and relationships of various organizations, and the integration challenges associated with each wave of immigration. A special interest of the documents is that Mihály Fehér and his wife are tied to Debrecen and the city’s former educational institutions in several ways. Negotiations are currently underway regarding the placement of the documents in the archives,” Balázs Venkovits, head of the research team, told portal hirek.unideb.hu.

Regarding the further fate of the documents, the director of the DE BTK AAI revealed that with their help they plan to prepare a multilingual volume on the life and work of the founding pastor, following consultations with the current leadership of the church, as part of the events organized on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Hungarian Reformed Church of Montreal.

Apart from processing of the recently received documents, the research work continues, as new interviews are being conducted in the Hungarian community of Montreal, and an interactive map will soon be available, which will provide an overview of the Hungarian-related organizations and events of the past hundred years of Montreal with the help of photos and archival materials by presenting approximately 170 locations in English and Hungarian.

In addition, the staff of the DE BTK Sociological Institute are preparing a questionnaire survey covering the whole of Canada.

As Péter Csatár, the Deputy Dean for Strategy and Economics at the DE BTK, put it, “This research is also important for the Faculty of Humanities because the International Migration Research Center operating at the faculty, in addition to having been advertising comprehensive courses in Hungarian and English for several years to convey the research results of scientific fields dealing with migration, intends to make the historical mapping of Hungarian emigration a priority research direction in the future, for which the project dealing with Canadian Hungarians is the first step.”

Source:dehir.hu | Photo credit:Pixabay