Culture

Union ballots were printed in Hungarian.

Labor Day and Hungarian connections

Canada and the United States celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday in September. It is a public holiday and honors the workers who made these countries prosperous. The long weekend known as Labor Day Weekend is also the unofficial end of summer in North America. Canadians spell it Labour Day. It is rarely mentioned that Hungarian immigrants played an […]

by · September 3, 2018 · Culture
Árpád Szakács

Árpád Szakács — A Fidesz propagandist on a mission to terrorize Hungarian artists

Árpád Szakács has just published the twelfth installment of a series of articles in the Magyar Idők government daily entitled “Whose cultural dictatorship?”. His series aims to highlight how Hungarian public institutions and agencies are still often willing to fund cultural projects that are spearheaded by artists, authors or thinkers not associated with the ruling party or those who are […]

by · August 14, 2018 · Culture
Brancusi with Margit Pogány

The Romanian sculptor and his Hungarian muse

Hungarian and Romanian politicians, on both side of the border, often create and thrive on conflicts between the two nations. For example, this year on December 1, Romania will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of modern state. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has already declared in a speech on Romanian soil (!), at Tusványos that “we understand why […]

by · August 11, 2018 · Culture
Detail of a building in Fecske utca. Source: Új Kelet.

A Hundred Turbulent Years

Some three years ago I was visiting Prague and there, amongst the few remaining Jewish monuments was the relatively new, elegant Spanish Synagogue. Despite its elegance and attractive style, my interest was rather caught by the representative exhibition in the women’s gallery showing the ample contribution the Jews of Prague provided to Czech and European culture at large. It was […]

by · August 2, 2018 · Culture
Timea’s Song

Timea’s Song

Sex slavery survivor, author, speaker and social advocate, Timea Nagy immigrated to Canada in 1998. Her nightmare unfolded in Toronto in that same year after arriving from Budapest, Hungary in the hopes of finding meaningful employment. The daughter of a Hungarian policewoman, Timea was held in a cheap motel at the hands of traffickers. She was forced to work in […]

by · June 25, 2018 · Culture
Kányádi (in the middle) with fellow Transylvanian Prof. Albert-László Barabási (left) and George Soros (right).

Sándor Kányádi 1929-2018

Poet and translator Sándor Kányádi has died at age 90. Kányádi was born in 1929 in Nagygalambfalva (today Porumbeni), in rural Transylvania. He moved to Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) in 1950 where he completed his university studies and worked as a Hungarian language and literature teacher. He started to publish poems in 1955 in literary and children’s magazines and also became active […]

by · June 24, 2018 · Culture
Pastor Szenczy in North Korea.

Hungarian Baptists in North Korea

Sándor Szenczy is a Baptist pastor and President of Hungarian Baptist Aid. This week we learned that a high-ranking official from North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended that Pastor Szenczy build a Baptist House of Prayer in Pyongyang. On a recent trip to North Korea, the pastor was given the opportunity to speak in one of only two Protestant […]

by · April 24, 2018 · Culture
Visiting the Spirit Lake Cemetery in 2008.

A petition to save the Spirit Lake internee cemetery in Québec

Some of our readers will know that between 1914 and 1920, Canada interned 8,579 innocent men, women and children as “enemy aliens.” Most of these internees were from the lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and were primarily ethnic Ukrainians. Activists and organizations from Canada’s Ukrainian community fought diligently to have the federal government acknowledge this dark chapter in the country’s history. […]

by · April 18, 2018 · Culture
Good Friday – Hungary’s latest public holiday

Good Friday – Hungary’s latest public holiday

Last year Good Friday became a public holiday in Hungary. The proposal was submitted by the ruling Fidesz alliance with the Christian Democrats and was approved by 163 votes in support and two abstentions. The idea of introducing a public holiday on Good Friday was first suggested by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at a memorial event of the Synod of […]

by · March 30, 2018 · Culture
Invitation

Catholic Procession and Hungary’s National Holiday

March 15th is Hungary’s most important National Holiday. It is not a religious occasion. It commemorates the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 that grew into a war for independence from the Habsburg rule. From the Catholic Habsburg rule. The Hungarian Consulate of Chicago has sent out an invitation to a March 15th celebration taking place at Saint Stephen King of Hungary […]

by · March 7, 2018 · Culture