MONUMENT TO THE FIRST SERBIAN SETTLERS

The Serbian community in Canada should receive this year a monument dedicated to the first Serbian settlers in Ontario in 1903 (when the first settler was officially recorded). The conceptual design of the monument is the work of a Serbian-Canadian artist Ljiljana Lili Otašević, and the project will be realized thanks to a group of Serbian-Canadian businessmen, without whose generous financial and moral support such would not have been possible.

The idea to erect a monument to the first Serbian settlers in Toronto came from the Consul General of the Republic of Serbia Mr. Vasilije Petković and his wife Dragana, who are also financing this project. When asked how he came up with that idea, Mr. Petković told us that the idea was born by accident while he and his wife were walking in one of the parks in Toronto, where they saw a monument erected to Portuguese settlers, marking 25 years since their arrival in Canada.

The reasons for the further development of the idea that the Serbian community also gets its first memorial in Canada are various and Mr. Petković explained it with the following parameters:

• The arrival and settlement of the first Serbs in Ontario is a connection between the first Serbian settlers, their heirs who live and work in Canada, and the mother country of Serbia, which no generation of emigrants has forgotten, but has remained in close contact, helping and preserving the memory of their origins;
• From the first settlers to the present generation, an organized, educated, and enlightened Serbian community was built, which with its preserved culture and identity significantly contributes to the overall development of Canada as a society and country;
• The contemporary Serbian diaspora in Ontario has an excellent organizational scheme, which is reflected in the number of associations, organizations, cultural and artistic societies, humanitarian organizations, sports societies, etc., and each in its own way marks, preserves, and promotes fundamental Serbian values;
• The Serbian community in Ontario belongs to the group of the most active Serbian communities in the world. This is evidenced by numerous recognitions that organizations and individuals have received as a reward for their achievements, which is undoubtedly an incentive for his further work. For example, starting from 2018 until today, the Cultural and Educational Community of Serbia in cooperation with the ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia has annually awarded dozens of gold badges and charters to Serbian cultural workers in Canada;
• All significant ethnic communities in Toronto and Ontario have their own monuments, such as Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Italian, Jewish, etc. In this way, among other things, the political and social strength of a certain ethnic community in Canada is shown;
• The monument would be a symbol of successful cooperation between the Eparchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Canada, the Consulate General of the Republic of Serbia in Toronto, and the Serbian community, which indicates the unbreakable connection of the Serbian diaspora with church and state institutions in the homeland.

The proposal for the monument to be placed on the property of the All Serbian Saints Serbian Orthodox Church in Mississauga was blessed by the Canadian bishop Dr. Mitrofan, and the entire project was adopted unanimously at the Assembly of the Church and School Municipality of Mississauga in March 2022.

This project was in progress for a long time, and the Consulate General encountered many bureaucratic barriers. When asked what surprised the team working on the municipal permits necessary for erecting this monument the most in that process and how they dealt with the Canadian bureaucracy, Mr. Petković answered:

"Originally, the monument was planned to be placed in one of the public parks of the city of Mississauga. We established contact and received a very good response from the city and municipal authorities, with whom we had several meetings on the subject. In the second phase, out of a total of three, within the established procedure of obtaining approval for the project on the territory of the city, part of the local opinion in the area, where the monument was to be placed, had a negative attitude towards the erection of the memorial for numerous reasons. The city authorities have informed us that they have decided to suspend the project due to the above-mentioned, apparently out of fear of displeasing some of the citizens or losing a certain number of votes in the upcoming elections. Unfortunately, we were convinced that there is still a certain amount of animosity on the part of Canadian citizens towards the Serbian community. This is precisely one of the reasons for the exceptional need to have a monument dedicated to the Serbian people in Canada to prove and show, despite some negative connotations that follow us, especially from the nineties onwards, that we Serbs are a hardworking, honest and proud people who have contributed significantly the development of Canadian society in all segments, but also on a global level."                 

The planned draft of the monument contains Serbian symbols: the Orthodox cross with four firesteels, Cyrillic letters, the Pirot carpet, and plums, as well as the Canadian symbol - the maple leaf, and together they indicate the homeland of Serbia and the new land of Serbian settlers - Canada.