MacLeans: When Italy met Canada

My family meeting Canada

So there’s definitely more of us out there thinking about what it means to be Italian-Canadian and how Italian that is. Last month, MacLean’s magazine published “When Italy met Canada”, a short article about how Italian immigrants settled in Canada in terms of culture and traditions and how we are not exactly like our cousins still living in Italy. Covering the typical tomato plants in the backyard, plastic on the couches and huge weddings, it suggested how shocked modern Italians would be of our culture here.

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Are we related? Memories and histories of Italian-Canadians

I’ve got this thought now…what memories, what histories, were lost when my parents came to Canada from Italy?

I was up late last night reading the opening story to my new book purchase, Are we related?

The first story, with the same title, is written by Linda Grant and is about a daughter coping with an elderly mother who is losing her memory. It explores the notion that losing her mother’s memories meant also losing her history. More interesting was the truths that came out about the family’s past as Jewish Russians, things that were hidden or names that were changed to facilitate their living in England now. The main character, or I guess, the author depending on how it was written, touches briefly on the family history lost in the immigration and things she will never know about the past.

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