The first generation is now entering its 60th year as refugees from Estonia. Many who fled the Red Army terror remained in Germany or Sweden either out of choice or circumstances. Others went to North America and in some cases Australia, as economic refugees. A large number ended up in or close to Toronto, Canada.

Despite a recent revival from the “echo boom” generation, Canadian-Estonian society has been aging much more rapidly than the population in general and this is very evident whenever a gathering takes place either at the summer camps or Estonian House. The sole remaining Estonian language paper has many more death notices than university graduation or confirmation class pictures.

Watching all this from remote snowbound Ottawa as one of the second generation on the fringes of Estonian-Canadian society, I was struck by the similarity between the slow fading away to oblivion of the communist parties in North America and Estonian Canadian society today. Some of the similarities are striking. While one group existed because of their love of an ideology to the point where it became a religion, another, with some justification, fed on its hatred of that same ideology. Beliefs were narrow, rigid and sometimes very unrealistic despite what common sense and the real world should have made evident. Both groups looked back on the 1930’s with fond memories and did not seem to notice that the world had changed significantly in the meantime.

For the communists, Khrushchev’s 1956 “secret speech” was an event that shook the foundations of the party, for Canadian-Estonians revelations, true or not, about former president Päts shook them as well, but perhaps to a lessor extent. In any event by the time of these revelations, memberships in both societies had already declined precipitously. There was also the common problem of inter-generation transfer of power; both societies became mired in a situation that was known in the latter years of the Soviet Union as the “stagnation period” or in Estonian “stagna aeg”.

Party membership never did recover and younger people stayed away in droves. Canadian-Estonian society is still breathing, but just barely. Whether or not it has sufficient “critical mass” to remain alive remains to be seen. Other than language for some of the group, nothing much distinguishes members from middle class WASP society in general, so assimilation, primarily from intermarriage has been rapid. The prognosis is not favorable.

The question then becomes did Estonian-Canadian society unwittingly promote this and to what degree is it prepared to accept it. A choice needs to be made about whether language is really that important. If it is, then many potential members will be lost because their spouses will simply not go along with being left out and to expect them to learn a language of otherwise little practical use is unrealistic. If it is not, then some accommodation needs to be made on the part of the “super nationalists” even if this leads to some dilution of the “Estonian” character of the society.

I have been impressed with the efforts that have been made by the Ottawa Estonian Society to make everyone feel welcome. The annual “Aktus” speeches have been both interesting and informative, especially so those by the older generation commemorating those who fell in the struggle for independence. In particular, the speech given by the Danish ambassador at the last “Aktus” was well worth the price of admission alone.

I recently wrote what I thought was a humorous article entitled “Greek Wedding” which was published in the English language pages of Eesti Elu. The reaction was a learning experience for me. While most people that knew me found the article funny, there were others who were so incensed that they either wrote to the paper or told me in person that they found it extremely offensive. Humor is a strange thing, especially when somebody is laughing at themselves and others aren’t sure enough of themselves to do the same.

The expatriate Estonian community was never homogenous, witness the fact that there were several churches and newspapers when one would have sufficed. However, it has come to the point where some serious thinking and self-examination needs to be done, particularly by those who still live by the motto “eestlane olen ja eestlaseks jään” which translates to “I am Estonian and will remain Estonian.”

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