Effective September 17, 2026.
Who we are
The Canadian Macedonian Heritage Society (“CMHS”, “we”, “us”) is an Ontario non-profit and registered charity. This policy explains how we handle personal information when you visit macedonianhistory.ca, create an account, become a member, subscribe, contact us or contribute information.
Information we collect
- Accounts and memberships: your name, email address, preferred language, password hash, email-verification state, optional mailing address and account settings.
- Membership payments: your plan, subscription status and renewal information, Stripe customer and subscription references, payment-method type and last four digits, and information required for membership receipts. Stripe processes the full card details; CMHS does not store them.
- Submissions and messages: information you send through business, recipe, contact, volunteer and newsletter forms, including your name, email address, message, sources and uploaded material where applicable. Contact and volunteer messages are delivered by email and may remain in the Society’s mailbox.
- Technical information: session cookies, IP address and user-agent information used for sessions, fraud prevention, security and rate limiting, plus aggregate page-view counts.
Business directory
The Canadian Macedonian Business Directory is compiled from public sources and community submissions. A published entry may include a business or principal’s name, category, address, city, province, telephone number, website, social links, description, Macedonian connection and source citations. This information is public. An email supplied privately with a directory submission is used to review and answer the submission and is not published unless the sender separately asks us to publish it as business contact information. Please email us to correct or remove an entry.
Public and private contributions
Information intended for publication—such as a credited article, photograph, oral history, recipe, business listing or comment about a historical record—may be visible worldwide and may be indexed by search engines or preserved in archives. Please do not submit private information about another person unless you have their permission or another lawful basis to do so. Administrative notes, submitter contact details and unpublished drafts remain restricted to the volunteers, staff and service providers who need them for review.
How we use information
We use information to operate and secure the website; authenticate accounts; provide and administer memberships; process payments, renewals and receipts; publish and maintain community collections; respond to messages and submissions; send requested newsletters; understand use of public pages; comply with legal obligations; and prevent misuse. Depending on the circumstances and applicable law, we rely on consent, performance of a membership agreement, legitimate operational interests and legal obligations.
Membership and receipt records
Stripe sends CMHS payment and subscription events so that we can activate, renew, cancel or correct a membership. We keep limited identifiers and status history to reconcile those events and resolve failed or disputed payments. When an official receipt is issued, its number, date, eligible amount, member name and contact or address details are preserved as a historical snapshot so that an issued receipt remains accurate even if the member later changes their account. Payment providers, banks and tax authorities may require some of these records to be retained.
Cookies, analytics and outside services
Essential cookies keep sessions, forms and sign-in working. When Google Analytics is configured, it measures visits to eligible public pages; it is excluded from sign-in, account and error pages. Google Signals and advertising personalisation are disabled.
We use a local IP-to-country database only to decide whether to offer an analytics choice. We do not retain the IP address or country for this purpose. Visitors identified in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland are offered a choice before Analytics loads. In other locations, or when a country cannot be determined, Analytics may load automatically. A saved refusal is honoured wherever that browser is later used.
Some forms may use Google reCAPTCHA, and pages may include services such as YouTube, Google Calendar, Stripe or CanadaHelps. Those providers process information under their own terms and policies. CMHS does not currently use Google Ads or advertising cookies. We will update this policy and the available choices before enabling advertising or remarketing.
The analytics choice is stored for 180 days in a first-party cookie and is not attached to a membership account. In a covered region, the Cookie settings link in the footer reopens the choice; clearing browser cookies also removes it. A choice applies only to that browser and device. Embedded or linked services may set their own cookies when you choose to use them, and their controls are separate from the CMHS analytics choice.
Sharing and international processing
We share information only as needed with service providers that support hosting, email, security, analytics, payments and donations; with volunteers or staff who need it for Society work; when you ask us to publish it; or where law requires. Providers may process information outside your province or country, where it can be subject to local law.
Retention and security
We retain information only while it is reasonably needed for the purposes above, to protect the service, and to meet tax, accounting, payment and legal obligations. We use access controls, encryption where appropriate, password hashing, backups and limited administrative access. No online system can promise absolute security.
Retention depends on the record: session and security information is generally short-lived; unresolved submissions and correspondence are kept while they are being handled; newsletter records remain until withdrawal; and membership, transaction and receipt records may be kept longer for reconciliation, fraud prevention and legal compliance. Public historical material may be retained for the Society’s archival mission, but we will consider privacy, correction and removal requests in context. Backups may hold deleted information for a limited recovery period before normal rotation removes it.
Children and information about others
The website is intended for a general audience and is not designed to collect personal information directly from children. A parent or guardian who believes a child supplied personal information may contact us for review and deletion. If you provide family history, photographs or contact information concerning another person, please consider their privacy and share only what is appropriate for the Society’s public historical purpose.
Your choices and rights
You may ask what information we hold about you, request a copy, correct it, withdraw consent where applicable, or ask us to close your membership account and delete all account data. Email admin@macedonianhistory.ca. We may verify your identity before acting. We will delete or anonymise information that is no longer required; limited records may remain where law requires or permits. Additional rights—such as restriction, objection, portability or a complaint to a privacy regulator—may apply in your jurisdiction.
Please describe the account, submission or directory entry involved so that we can find the correct records. An authorised representative may make a request where permitted, but we may ask for proof of authority. We will respond within the period required by applicable law and explain any lawful reason why a request cannot be completed in full.
Changes and contact
We may update this policy when the website or our practices change and will revise the effective date above. Questions, directory corrections and privacy requests may be sent to admin@macedonianhistory.ca.