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St.
Patrick's Church on 131 McCaul Street was built in 1861 for the
Irish Catholics of the city, and apart from a few German services
which were held there as early as 1881, it was not until 1929 that
a German-speaking Redemptorist priest from the United States was
appointed to minister especially to the German Catholics in the
City of Toronto. A small congregation of twenty-eight people gathered
at the church on October 6, 1929, and from that small beginning,
the congregation was to grow into a thriving community over the
next few decades.
Most
of these early German parishioners were Volksdeutsche, or Donauschwaben,
who had come to Canada from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia as a
result of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following World
War One. They came from agricultural villages where mutual aid institutions,
such as funeral societies and credit unions, were common, and these
were accordingly also established in Canada in response to the needs
generated by the depression. In fact, the hardships of the depression
served as a focal point for the establishment of an active community
life during the early years of the congregation.
Anniversary
booklets, oral testimonies and ethnic histories tell us something
about the social fabric of this German Catholic community. It was
quite common, for example, for young parents to have left their
small children behind with grandparents in Europe, and it might
take many years before they could be sent to Canada.During
the depression, women were often able to find work more easily than
men, frequently as cleaning women or domestics.
The
poverty of the people and the fact that the women were compelled
to work outside the home led to the building of a centre called
the Catholic Settlement House at the back of the church property
in 1930. In addition to providing for school children during after-school
hours, it functioned as a neighbourhood house and a social and cultural
centre. A kindergarten, a library and a hall, where German and English
classes were taught and where theatre evenings, concerts and dances
were held, became part of the activities of the centre.
After
1934 the Settlement House greatly expanded its range of activities
and the number of people it served largely as the result of the
vitality and energy of a new priest, Father Daniel Ehman, who was
reputed to have sparked enthusiasm even among lapsed Catholics.
In 1936 he wrote:
Made visits to 241 homes and contacted 616 persons.
This does not include visits to the sick in homes and hospitals.
1100 children have been attending the Catholic Settlement House
each month and were divided into various play and work groups.
At the present there are 197 school-age and 54 preschool age children
who are registered with us. On the average, 153 children came
to the settlement house daily. In addition, we were able to get
jobs for men, women and young people of up to 100 working days.
Dozens of others, we helped get a permanent job. Families who
were in need were given beds, mattresses and linen. We distributed
clothing to many persons, of which we did not keep a record. We
prevented the invalid marriages of many persons; brought the sick
to Catholic homes; provided lodging for poor and single persons
when they had difficulty with their landlords and also some families,
who were evicted; helped dozens get their citizenship papers,
and others to get sponsorship; in short, we tried on every side
to be all things to others in Christ.
(cited
in K.J. Schindler, Im Dienst des Volkes, 1929-1969 Jahrbuch zum
40-Jahrigen Jublilaum der deutschsprachigen katholischen Gemeinde
in Toronto, p. 47, trans. H. Martens)
In
addition to the Settlement House, a credit union to help parishioners
with major purchases was founded in 1939 and a funeral society,
which helped with burial costs, was established in 1933. Other organizations,
such as the Rosary Society, the Holy Name Society and the Catholic
Youth Organization, provided social and recreational activities
for the parishioners. Later, land was purchased in Richmond Hill
where a lodge, swimming-pool, dance pavilion, tennis-court and baseball
diamond were constructed in order to ensure that outings by young
people were still contained within the parish and that they would
not be "lost to Communist clubs and to intermarriage with non-Catholics."
The
aftermath of World War Two brought a flood of new German immigrants
to Toronto, not only from Rumania, Yugoslavia and Hungary, but also
from Germany and Austria.
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This
influx challenged St. Patrick's German community to respond to a
whole new set of problems brought on by post World War Two anti-German
feeling and the poverty and adjustment difficulties of the newcomers.
During these years the community expanded greatly as the credit
union grew to 800 members and English classes were once more in
demand.
The
combined number of baptisms and marriages climbed from about eighty
in 1950 to 660 in 1957. According to one parishioner, it was common
for some 300 young people to be at the church hall on a Saturday
evening - dancing, playing table tennis, billiards or bowling. Most
lived within walking distance of the parish hall.
The
Redemptorist priests of St. Patrick's played an important role,
not only in creating and maintaining cultural and social ties among
the German Catholics of Toronto, but also in fostering some norms
of the host society. For example, they encouraged attendance at
English classes in the Settlement House hall, and Father Daniel
Ehman was reported to have bought fox-trot records so that his parishioners
would learn to do North American dances, as well as the traditional
German polkas and waltzes.
The
formality of the relationship between parishioner and priest was
considerably lessened in Canada, as noted by one parishioner who
related that when she and her brother were first introduced to one
of St. Patrick's priests, the priest had slapped her brother on
the shoulder in greeting, while they had been prepared to kneel
down and say, "Gelobt sei Jesu Christus," as was done in their homeland.
Two
benevolent societies were organized during this period, which were
particularly suited to the needs of the new immigrants. They were
the Kolping Society and the St. Michaelswerk Verband katholischer
Donauschwaben. The Kolping Society of Ontario was founded in 1954
and modelled after its German counterpart. In Germany it was originally
a society which provided lodging for travelling journeymen; here
in Toronto it served as a benevolent society for Catholic German
tradesmen who came to Canada in the late 1950s.
A review
of the membership rolls shows that most Kolping members were skilled
tradesmen: there were stonemasons, welders, upholsterers, builders,
painters, steel workers, machinists, toolmakers, carpenters, printers,
tailors, butchers, gardeners, watchmakers, bookbinders, barbers
and the odd clerk or accountant. Kolping members helped to find
housing and jobs for newcomers, often meeting them at Union Station
when they first arrived in Toronto.
The
St. Michaelswerk Verband was started in 1949 primarily to serve
the needs of the Donauschwaben whose lands had been confiscated
and who now sought compensation under Germany's indemnification
laws. The organization was also intended to preserve their cultural
traditions.
The
late sixties and the seventies saw the gradual decline of the German-speaking
congregation at St. Patrick's. As early as the late forties, some
of the original members began to leave the area around the church
on McCaul Street and to buy houses in outlying areas of the city.
The later immigrants began moving out of the city proper in the
sixties to buy houses in the suburbs. They began to attend the Catholic
churches, mostly English speaking, in their new neighbourhoods.
The German congregation still exists at St. Patrick's, but the number
of marriages and baptisms performed has greatly declined, and only
on special feast days and anniversary celebrations is the church
well attended.
Organizations,
such as the funeral society, the credit union, the Kolping Society
and St. Michaelswerk Verband, have continued but they no longer
attract many new members, particularly young members. Many of the
postwar immigrants have become well off and acculturated, so that
organizations which once had a mutual aid function have now become
largely social. Those that still maintain a benevolent function
have directed their activities to helping people in other countries.
The Catholic Settlement House continues as a day-care centre for
the neighbourhood's children, but the ethnic composition has changed
entirely so that there are almost no German-speaking children anymore.
In
retrospect, it is clear that the community of St. Patrick's played
a very vital part in the lives of German immigrants in Toronto from
the 1930s to the 1950s by helping them cope with the pain of uprootedness
and poverty and by ensuring that they would be able to fully participate
in the affairs of the established society.
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