Tanja Zec-O’Neill
Museum activities of Serbs in Canada
Museum activities of Serbs in Canada is a subject that has not been in-
teresting to the broader range of our public in Canada or in Serbia. The
care for the Serbian cultural heritage, through time and through places
where Serbs lived, has slowly developed, then disappeared due to wars
and economic crises, only to be re-established in the changed and
adapted format. This rhythm could be better monitored in the mother
country, where the museum activity is stronger, better expressed, and
then more strongly researched. In the Diaspora, the story is quite dif-
ferent. This paper will explore the definition of cultural heritage and
museums, followed by cultural activities and documentation efforts
among the Serbian communities in Canada. Significant achievements
and individuals who have fought for these successes will be examined.
Furthermore, an objective picture of the current state of Serbian cul-
tural heritage will be presented, illustrating it through its expression
and individuals who maintain it alive through their creativity. Finally,
this paper will explore ways in which the care for the cultural heritage,
through the museum activities, may continue, expand and establish
itself in this region.
Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage
The tangible cultural heritage includes outstanding buildings, secular
and religious, monuments and material works of art. This definition is
recognizable and acceptable to the public, and almost all our collect-
ive attention is focused on care of such expressions of Serbian cultural
heritage. Since there are more examples of such material cultural herit-
age present in Serbia, we often forget the presence and importance of
our intangible cultural treasure. Such form of Serbian culture is more
widespread and more often practiced due to historical circumstances
of settlers living in isolation from the mother country
Serbian material culture in diaspora, Canada specifically, is more
or less confined to the sacral architecture which, except for a few ex-
amples, is newer, but it is extremely important and visually impressive.
The oldest Serbian Orthodox municipality in Ontario was established
in 1913 in Hamilton, and the first temple, the church of St. Nicholas,
was built in 1917. The church no longer exists, and the temple was
moved to a new location on Barton Street. The oldest Serbian Church
in Canada is the church of the Holy Trinity in Regina (Saskatchewan)
from 1915. In addition to religious buildings, the facilities for the social
life of communities were springing up, which were often more func-
tional than aesthetic feats of architecture. Their value is priceless for
all the communities in which they the epicenters of the spiritual and
social life.
UNESCO defines intangible cultural heritage as a “human input,
expression, skill or performance, as well as the object, artifact, instru-
ment, or an area that is connected with it, that communities, groups
and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heri-
tage. In accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article, the intangible
cultural heritage can be: 1. the language, speech, oral tradition, oral
literature or other oral expression; 2. performing arts; 3. custom, ritual
and festivity; 4. knowledge or skills related to nature and the uni-
verse; 5. knowledge and skills related to the cult and the famous city
and 6. traditional craft or skill.” (http://www.kultura.gov.rs/docs/stra
nice/82128418889499865927/11.%20Konvencija%20o%20ocuvanju%20
nematerijalnog% 20kulturnog 20nasledja% 20% (Paris% 202003) .pdf)
So, now that the definition of intangible cultural heritage is clear,
the expression of that same culture, which surrounds us every day,
should be examined. The Serbian public is aware that life in the Dias-
pora implies the existence of dominant, foreign culture, in which we, as a
minority, are trying to maintain our own cultural identity. In this effort,
we follow the creative impulse in a few dominant cultural expressions;
1. performing arts such as folklore dance and choral singing, 2. culinary
arts, 3. social and religious festivals or collective gatherings, 4. folk art in
the form of souvenirs, or family bequests, 5. theatrical activity to a lesser
degree, and 6. fine arts and the written word which are on a rise. Most
of these aforementioned dominant cultural expressions belong to the
intangible cultural heritage. Therefore, the conclusion offers itself that
the more intense cultural expression of Serbs in Canada is the intangible
form of cultural heritage, which we as a minority in a dominant foreign
culture conscientiously support and maintain.
The practice of these dominant expressions, such as folklore dan-
cing, choral singing, culinary arts, social gatherings and festivals have
all been centered around Serbian Orthodox Church and its parishes all
over Canada. It seems that as soon as a community is established, the
social gatherings and festivals are observed mimicking cultural frame-
work from mother country. Community then builds a temple and
identifies leaders, initiates folklore section, Sunday school, language
school, group of women who organize and supply festivities with deli-
cacies from the national cuisine. Due to this pattern, such intangible
traditions surfaced as the most dominant.
Then there is journalism, which flourished in the period 1930-
1945 through political news articles, analysis and essays in the Voice
of Canada, later the Voice of Canadian Serbs, and Pravda from To-
ronto. In the period between 1954 and 1985 already strong writing and
publishing activities become most intense through the work of Avala
Printing Publishing Co., from Windsor. Finally, in the mid 1990s the
written heritage is channelled and diversified through the opening
of several weekly newspapers in Toronto, such as; weekly Newspaper
(Toronto); monthly Easterly and Messenger (both church newspaper
in Toronto) Umbrella (Vancouver), Letter (Kitchener), Tesla Magazine
(Toronto), followed by monthly bilingual newspaper Voice of Can-
adian Serbs, also from Toronto, bilingual magazine for literature and
culture People Talk (Toronto) and the Canadian Srbobran (Hamilton),
Serbia (Hamilton) and others.
The literary activity in the Canadian diaspora was intense in earlier
periods (1934-1983) and most publicized through newspaper Voice of
Canadian Serbs, where the prominent names such as Desanka Maksi-
movic, Milos Crnjanski, Slobodan Jovanovic appeared as well as many
other notable authors. By moving the Voice to Toronto in mid-1980s
and the establishment of Serbian National Academy of Canada there,
the literary activity becomes even more intense through organizing
literary evenings, book club meeting, bringing famous Serbian writ-
ers to lecture and interact. Since the mid-1990s, few writers from the
former Yugoslavia populate Canadian cities and continue creating and
publishing in Serbian language, and the number of literary enthusiasts
who maintain the production of self published poetry and prose grows.
Visual art is also on the rise due to the influx of many talented
Serbian immigrants to Canada, who continue to create, initiate mutual
cooperation and exhibiting more in local and less in the Serbian owned
galleries. Of course, this brief overview is a general picture of Serb-
ian creative impulses in the material cultural expression in the last 50
years, and deserves a more detailed review in another work. For the
sake of illustration, here are mentioned only the most visible and the
easily recognizable examples to our public.
Educational and documentational are contrasting cultural im-
pulses the previous creative ones. Many will, by the term ‘education-
al’ immediately think of religious education and Serbian language
schools which exist and work consistently for a hundred years in all
Serbian communities in Canada. The best example is Hamilton, where
the church of St. Nicholas on Beach Rd, was consecrated on 19 Decem-
ber 1917. and a religious and Serbian language school started working
almost at the same time. In the past seventy years, schools all across
Canada competed in educational category through cultural programs
offered at Serbian Day at Niagara Falls, organized by the Serbian Na-
tional Defense, Drazha Day in Bimbrook and Winona, and Diocesan
Days at Serbian monastery in Milton. Tremendous achievement in
preserving Serbian language and Orthodox religion among the Serbs
in Canada, claim the schools of Serbian language and religion are the
churches in Hamilton, Toronto and Windsor, numbering hundreds of
students. The only school that has hundreds of students today is the
Serbian school “St Sava” in Kitchener, which operates within the Can-
adian system of primary and secondary schools for different ethnic
groups. It is also notable the ten-year long operation of Dr. Radomir
Baturan’s private school of Serbian language in Toronto, which opened
classrooms in smaller neighboring towns and organized regular sum-
mer and winter camps. Numerous educational programs and activities
in choral singing, folklore, music, theater, painting icons, visual arts,
traditional handicrafts and cuisine were always well attended, great-
ly successful and very valuable in safeguarding the cultural heritage.
An excellent example in choral singing education is the first children’s
choir in Canada founded at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church in Ni-
agara Falls early as the mid 1950s. A few years later in Toronto the first
children’s choir, the first children’s folk group, the first children’s tam-
buritza orchestra were organized at the church of St. Sava. Over time,
these activities have varied in intensity and distribution in different
Serbian communities across Canada, given the public interest and /or
the existence of teachers and instructors. Culturally most active com-
munities since the end of World War II were: Windsor, Toronto, Ham-
ilton and Sudbury which, through their own efforts, were successfully
showing the Serbian culture to other more dominant communities.
Documentation impulse of the Serbian community reflects a very
strong need to store, at first the family articles of sentimental value, but
also the storage of the archives many athletic, humanitarian, cultural
and religious organizations and societies that existed, have been extin-
guished and re-established over time. There exists a necessity for an
organized approach to documentation of life and activities of a century
long of existence of Serbs on the territory of Canada. This organized
and defined process of documenting the lives of people in the com-
munity falls under the museum activity.
The Basic Functions of the Museum
Museums are centers for conservation, study and reflection on herit-
age and culture. Today museums are defined as institutions which are
not oriented to profit, are in the service of society and its development,
are open to the public, which collect, conserve, research and exhibit,
for purposes of study, education and enjoyment of the material evi-
dence of human being and his/ her environment. They maintain a link
with the past, which returns the value of the material traces of our
ancestors and, thus, play a key role encouraging social cohesion. The
main purpose of the museum is to protect and preserve the heritage
as a whole. It also carries out scientific studies needed to understand
and determine its purpose and type. But the educational mission of a
museum, regardless of its nature, is as important as its scientific work.
(see more at http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/)
The basic functions of the museum are: 1. storage – collection and
protection of heritage, conservation of articles from destruction, dam-
age and theft; 2. scientific functions – facilitating and performing sci-
entific research (history, art history, archeology, biology, chemistry,
documentation); 3. exhibiting function – the presentation of the arte-
facts to the public, thus enabling access to the collection; 4. animating
____________________
(1) During the preparation of the previous issue 27/28 of the magazine “People
Talk”, the Editorial Board has omitted to indicate the name of the author
of this text which was published in Serbian language. We are publishing
the same text in English for the current issue and thereby confirm the
authorship of Tanja Zec-O’Neill for this article. The Editorial Board
apologizes to Tanja Zec-O’Neill for the previous error.
Mirko N. Dumanović
Medieval Serbian Coins
The fundamental symbols that characterize the origin and nature of a
medieval European state are far better encapsulated through an analy-
sis of its art forms than one of its legislative proceedings. Some of the
strongest of these basic national attributes can be found in a nation’s
coins and can give valuable insight into its political, culture, economic,
and military history and traditions.
Of early medieval Balkan societies, it was only Serbs, along with
Bulgars and the Byzantine Empire, that took part in the creation of
their own metal currencies. While this practice would become far
more standardized in the periods to follow, some Balkan societies
would wait as long as the early twentieth century before fully engaging
in it.
Throughout the middle Ages, several distinct Serbian states were
formed. Some coexisted during similar time frames, while others
existed exclusively on their own. Among the longest lasting and most
influential of these states were: Duklja (Zeta), Travunija, Hum and
Zahumjle, Paganija, Raska, Bosnia and Srem. Byzantine coins were
used and present in many of these territories; a common regional
phenomenon considering the long held dominance of the Byzantine
Empire throughout most of the Balkan Peninsula.
Historically it was assumed that the smelting of domestic metal
currency began in Serbia during the reign of its first king, Stefan II Ne-
manja, sometime in the very early 13th century. Recent research sug-
gests that the process of making a unique domestic currency did not
begin until the reign of his son, Stefan Radoslav, somewhere between
1227 and 1234.
Looking towards to the Byzantine Empire for example, King Rado-
slav of Raska began the creation of the first silver and copper coins.
These early coins were concave in shape, had text in Greek (rather than
in Serbian, which was still literarily young at the time), and remain
today only in incredibly small quantities. Interestingly, they are also
the only medieval Serbian coins ever made from materials besides
silver alone, namely copper and gold. A high regional abundance of
silver ores forced subsequent monarchs through this transition.
Depending on the state in question and time period, Serbian coins
throughout the middle ages went by two different names: the Dinar
and the Perper. The former has its origins from the old Roman coin,
the “Denarius”, meaning “Tenth”, whilst the perper is of Byzantine
origin. While the dinar remains a traded currency to this day, the
perper ceased to be produced with the dissolution of the Kingdom of
Montenegro in 1918.
Records tell us that King Stefan Uros Dragutin, in 1276, near an
old mining town in what is now northern Montenegro, produced an
unusually pretty silver coin that resembled the Venetian Matapan (a
form of Venetian currency). As more of these Serbian “Matapans”
entered production and circulation, they quickly became a popular
coin, seeing trade all throughout the Mediterranean, and as far away
as mainland Spain.
The usage of these coins became so widespread, so as to cause one
of history’s earliest negative demand shocks to competing currencies.
Venice, which was a dominant trading Republic of the time, was espe-
cially unsatisfied with this arrangement, and in a bid to eliminate Serb-
ian coins from the international market, decreed their use illegal and
undertook significant measures to see the destruction of these coins.
This early Serbian currency posed enough of a nuisance, even threat, to
the Venetian authority that it receives mention even in Dante’s “Divine
Comedy”,
“And Portugal should be held in blame, with Norway and the Ra-
scian who laid his eyes on Venetian coins and forged his own ill-fame.”
(Dante Alighieri, Paradise, Canto XIX, Eagle speaking)
It is of particular interest that Dante placed this detail in the realm
of heaven.
Legend has it that the source of many early Rascian coins, the town
of Mojkovac, got its name from an amalgamation of three words:
“Moj” meaning “My”, “Kovani” meaning “forged”, and “Novac” mean-
ing “coins”. While never truly verified, the likelihood that this is the
authentic origin is rather high, especially considering the close prox-
imity of several old silver mines and mints. Indeed, the practice of
naming location based on their service to the king is not exclusive to
this location. The monastery “Naupare” in central Serbia was once the
king’s own treasury and money vault. On way to combat enemies in
the area, it is said that Czar Lazar (1329-1389) looked in the direction of
the monastery and proclaimed that “they [the enemy] have arrived ‘Na
um pare’, ‘to our money’”.
Although early ventures into domestic minting were very conserv-
ative, borrowing heavily from Byzantine and Venetian models, later
Serbian coins would be shaped (literally) to best suit the needs and
demands of the domestic economy and authority. Rulers and Saints
were the most common depictions on these coins, while accompany-
ing texts were done in a variety of languages including Latin, Italian,
Greek, and old Serbian.
The minting of coins in medieval Serbia was first set to written law
as part of a much larger codex in 1354. This codex is one of the earliest
attempts at a universal and an all-encompassing list of laws in Europe
following the collapse of the Western Roman state. Casually translat-
ed, the first law pertaining to the smelting of coins stated: “Those in-
volved in the minting of coins in the dukedoms and lands that belong
to the Czar may only
The creator of the aforementioned law codex, and the most notable
of medieval Serbian autarchs, Stefan Dušan, holds particular import-
ance to the evolution of Serbian currency. Throughout his reign as
king (1331-1346) and later as Czar (1346-1355) the production of currency
in Serbia would surpass even that of its strongest neighbors. Whether
in terms of number, variety, or aesthetic beauty, this period in the de-
velopment and production of medieval Serbian coins is regarded as the
greatest. The minting of domestic money was continued in Serbia by
subsequent leaders right up until the fall of the despotate in 1459.
Following the Turkish conquest of the Serbian state in the 15 th cen-
tury, the production of domestic currency ceased. Instead, Ottoman
currency prevailed, and remained as the sole legal tender of Serbian
lands until well into the later half of the 19 th century.
The First Modern Dinar
Following Serbia’s defacto independence in the early 19th century, and
in the time preceding the foundation of a single national currency, a
wide variety of European and Turkish coins were used in domestic
commerce. Records indicate that at least 43 different forms of foreign
currencies were employed in Serbia, 10 of which were gold, 28 silver,
and 5 copper. At a conference held in 1868, in the city of Kragujevac, it
was decided that a new, exclusively Serbian currency would be formed.
These early coins were minted in Vienna, Austria and came in copper
divisions of 1, 5, and 10 “para”. They featured the image of prince Mi-
hajlo Obrenovic; the head of state at the time. What makes these early
Serbian coins especially unique and collectible is the appearance of an
occasional spelling mistake. Some coins, of the 1 Para denomination,
featured on their obverse side the correct phrase “Obrenovic III Serb-
ian King”, while others featured the same phrase with an incorrect
spelling of the word “Serbian”.
The “dinar” was chosen as the national monetary unit while the
“Para” was designated a subunit, in much the same way as the cent
to the dollar. The name “dinar” was chosen for its obvious historical
significance to medieval Serbian states. This position was advocated by
the minister of foreign affairs, Cedomir Mijatovic, who is consequently
regarded as the godfather of the early dinar. The first silver dinars were
minted in 1875, whilst the first gold domestic coins were minted four
years later, in 1879, and came in denominations of 10 and 20 dinars.
The 20 dinar coin was nicknamed the “Miland’or”, after king Milan
Obrenovic, Mihajlo’s successor. The 5 and 10 Para coins were also col-
loquially (and respectively) nicknamed “Marijash”, and ”Gosh”.
The last coins to include the image of a head of the Obrenovic dy-
nasty were minted in 1897. They featured the image of King Alexan-
der I Obrenovic and came in 1 and 2 dinar denominations. A violent
change in dynasties in 1903 brought with it a change in the appearance
of the domestic currency. From 1904, onward to the dissolution of the
Kingdom of Serbia in 1918, all domestic coins were minted with the
image of the successor king, Peter Karadordje.
In 1904, a silver 5 dinar coin was minted in celebration of the 100
year anniversary of the First Serbian Uprising. The obverse of the coin
featured King Peter I (the reigning monarch) and Karadordje Petrovic
(leader of the 1804 rebellion against the Ottoman).
Silver coins minted in the image of King Peter I continued to be
made until 1915. The last Kingdom of Serbia coins were minted in 1917,
one year prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats,
and Slovenes. This marks the end of a violent and tumultuous chapter
in the history of the Serbian nation and its national currencies.