From the Editor - SAN1

I present to you the first issue of SAN Magazine. The magazine is meant for those who left the former Yugoslavia shortly before, or after the last war in the Balkans.

Living many years in Canada has imposed many questions on me: How does one bridge two worlds, societies, cultures, mentalities, traditions? A world where most of us came from, and a world we live in for years already—some of us even decades. A world where our children are growing up and where our descendants will continue to live. How does one adapt to a different society and succeed in it? How does one responsibly influence our future generations in fostering our culture, traditions, and language? What are the most high-quality and beautiful things in the world from which we came, and in this new world in which we now live? What did we get, and what did we lose? Did we change, and if so, how much? And finally: how do we use the incredible opportunity that our generation has to find, combine, and add to the best things from both societies and worlds, and soften the negative things in both?

The topics that will be covered in SAN Magazine will be those that interest us; ones we talk about; ones that affect us; ones about which we often do not have enough information. They deal with fitting into a new society; the challenges that we face as immigrants; the information, discoveries, and conclusions that we arrive to every day. We will write about organizing life; women’s themes; parenting; education; the preservation of language and culture; the country we live in and the country we came from; travels; cultural events in Toronto. We will write about finding a job and building a career, about private business. The magazine will publish interviews with successful people. The Kids’ Corner will delight the youngest readers. The long-term vision of the magazine is to grow and eventually include the generation of our children who would be not only faithful readers, but also active participants in the creation of this magazine in their native language.

SAN Magazine is the result of many months of work from volunteers and enthusiasts who have contributed their time, effort, and ideas to bring life to such a project as this. In this issue, you will read an article from Ljilja Vujnović and an opinion poll she carried out on the topic of how much (or whether) we succeeded as immigrants in Canada and what is the definition of success. On the topic of the new sexual education program in Ontario elementary schools, Tanja Rajevac has laid out her point of view. Karolina Grujić has written about the architecture in our city, Toronto. For those who will visit Belgrade this summer, Živka Perić recommends interesting walking tours and tourist destinations in Belgrade. Ivana Djordjević has elaborated the Travel section. Svetlana Stankić has written about ways of dealing with everyday stress. In this issue of SAN Magazine, we have reviewed the book Beograd ispod Beograda (Belgrade beneath Belgrade). On the topic of preserving tradition and language, you will find out how to excite your kids into speaking and reading in Serbian. For younger children, there is also a Kids’ Corner, and the older ones are represented in the rubric Our Youth in Canada.

This magazine will take life with your help and support. The rubric Letters from our readers will show us your thoughts and interests on new topics what you would like to read about in future issues. You can support the magazine by placing your ads or by sponsoring.

Readers are also invited to join in our work. We need journalists, photographers, writers, web designers, sales agents, etc.; not only professionals, but also amateurs and enthusiasts full of ideas, talent, and faith in this project. We invite you to send us your articles, reports, photographs, poems, stories, drawings, etc. If you would like to join our team, or support the magazine in another way, you can contact us as sansanduce@gmail.com

I truly believe that this magazine will take life through our joint desire and cooperation—you who read SAN Magazine and advertise in it, and we who put it together. I hope that the magazine will provide the readers with valuable information, different viewpoints, and new ideas, and that it will take the readers back and remind them of that world from which they came, and help them to succeed and be happy in the new world in which they now live. I also believe in its positive influence on preserving our traditions, culture, and language. And it will help many answer the question: how does one bridge two worlds and take the best from each one?

Toronto, June 2015