The World Congress of Slovaks was established on June 17-21, 1971 in Toronto, and its first chairman was one of Canada's most influential businessmen, an emigrant from Slovakia, Stefan Boleslav Roman. He came to Canada in 1937 and founded Denison Mines Limited in the early 1950s, which eventually became the owner of the world's largest uranium mine.
Pope Paul VI of Rome appointed him a lay delegate to the Second Vatican Council.
All his life he supported the struggle of Slovaks for freedom and state independence, for which he received several awards. For the "Slovak cause" he also managed to gain sympathy among politicians and important personalities of the Western world. In October 1976, he arranged for the “Slovak matter” to be heard by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and in 1980 he submitted complaints during the II. conference on the Helsinki Agreement in Madrid, in which he called on the delegations of the signatory states "to alert the government in Prague about human rights violations"
