The Making of a Radical Immigrant

The radical immigrant in the title of this book Edo Jardas was a young Croatian who arrived in Canada in May 1926 and worked for several years as a lumberjack in the hinterland of British Columbia. He was a loyal member of the Communist Party of Canada a newspaper editor and a militant trade union activist in the Canadian Croatian community. He fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and returned to Canada as a war veteran. Jardas left Canada for Yugoslavia in 1948 where he assumed several prominent political functions including the post of mayor of the largest harbour in the country-his hometown of Rijeka-from 1952 to 1955. <br />Rather than being a simple biography this book describes the circumstances that shaped the Croatian immigrant community in the hostile social and natural environment of Canada. The community was deeply engaged in the political debates concerning the Croatian status in the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes (later renamed as Yugoslavia) since its foundation in 1919. The question of national identity and its affirmation at home and in the diaspora therefore figured pre-eminently in the Croatian immigrant press.<br />The book is also very much a study in Canadian history. It is an account of the political radicalization of the Canadian working class inspired by the international communist movement at a time of major economic and political upheaval in the post-WWI decades.