Vintage Italian-Canadian photos from the SFU Archives

It’s a rainy day, so it’s a good day to look back and reflect. Lucky for me, I’ve found a great trove of vintage Italian-Canadian photos to check out and share with you. Simon Fraser University offers a wealth of images, audio and video that gives a snippet of what life was like for early Italian immigrants to Canada. Here’s a few and there’s more to come…

Italian-Canadian march (city unknown)

Italian-Canadian family with horse and carriage

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The Internment of Italian-Canadians during WWII

Last month, it was hard to miss all the news about WWII for those of us in the Italian-Canadian community. That may seem strange, but last month saw the release of a number of projects that documented how Italian-Canadians were treated during that tense time in Canadian, and world, history. The internment of Italian-Canadians during WWII is now documented well, where very little was available before.

For those who haven’t read about it, or attended one of the events, and for my readers who many not be familiar with this topic, I thought I would cover it here and point to all the new resources available to find out more about the history of Italians in Canada. WWII saw the toughest of times for Italians.

In June of 1940, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King declared war on Mussolini’s Fascist government.  Days later the Canadian Minister of Justice signed an order that resulted in labelling thousands of Italian-Canadians as enemy aliens. During this time, 31,000 were were fingerprinted, photographed and ordered to report monthly to the police. Approximately 600+ Italian-Canadian men were interned at camps in rural areas for years, most never even charged with a crime. The remote camps were in Petawawa, Ontario, Kananaskis, Alberta, and Fredericton, New Brunswick, operating from 1940 to 1945. Before and after this internment, Italians were treated harshly. There was public hostility, ethnic slurs and Italian businesses were boycotted. In addition, many men and women lost their jobs. Thousands of Italian-Canadian families were denied relief across Ontario, and forbidden to speak Italian and congregate in groups larger than five.

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Store, storo or negozio? The Back Story of Italiese

I’ve been itching to see something new. Get away and plan a vacation. While we’ve been planning, we’ve been joking around and it brought up  a word my grandmother used to use: vacationa. I’m sure you won’t find that in a dictionary anywhere, but let’s use it in a sentence as Nanna would have (I never called her Nonna): “Where you go on vacationa?” Neither Italian nor Canadian, it was her word from vacation and it stood in the middle of two languages and two cultures. It was, and is, Italiese.

I love these altered words used by older Italians…ones that have found their way into my own Italian language knowledge as well. Beyond them being adored by Italian-Canadians, the creation of  new words is also worthy of academic study. From the inner workings of the Internet, I found a paper from 1984 documenting the development and use of Italiese: “Canadian Italian: a Case in Point of How Language Adapts to Environment.” Here’s their definition of the new words Italian immigrants created as they settled in Canada:

The Canadian version of Italian (and its dialects) constitutes a case of what linguists commonly refer to as an “ethnic dialect” or ethnolect, of the mother tongue….Known vicariously as italiese (a blend of italiano and inglese “English”) or Italo-Canadian.

You can check out the full paper, but here’s my sum up with some words and how they have changed:

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The classic Italian meal structure

I’m trying to teach myself the proper Italian menu or Italian meal structure. After hosting a six course wedding dinner last year, and starting to have people over our own house, we’ve taken to at least having 2 to 3 courses when we have guests. I know that in Italy at least, we were always have primi and secondi at restaurants, but its not often that you see that here in Canada (unless you are at a relatively authentic Italian restaurant).

I came across this piece of artwork above (that I’m hoping to order to have in my kitchen, you can order it here) that got me thinking about just how much I know about the traditional Italian dinner courses. Here they are defined:

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Italian-Canadian Glass Art and Glassblowing

We didn’t intend to connect with an old Italian art when we signed up for an glassblowing class last month, but that’s just what we got. A connection to art, heritage and community and some great glass pieces to go home with.

Us two Italian-Canadians headed to small town Ontario, namely the beautiful town of Elora, to learn how to create art out of glass. We thought it would be a neat new thing to learn. As soon as I saw the fires, kiln and gorgeous glass artwork, I was immediately reminded of the spectacular sights in the glass shops in Venice that I saw when I was much younger. Venetian glass dates back to the early 1200s, glassblowing in Ontario, I’m sure, is just a few hundred years old but has a very strong artistic community.

At Blown Away Glass Studio, Katherine guided us through the toughest art lesson I’ve ever had. I don’t think I even grabbed a sixteenth of the glass that the real artists pick up to work with, and yet my arms were killing me.

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Happy San Valentino… Italian love phrases for the day

Happy Valentines Day! I could go on about the Italian origins of this romantic day but I found this cute little book instead that offers something way more useful. Berlitz’s Hide this Italian book for Lovers offers a slew of fun, cute, sexy and romantic Italian love phrases that not only sound really good (and there is pronunciation help!), they could just land you an awesome Valentines date! “I can’t live without you” …make it hotter with “Non posso vivere senza di te.” Here’s a few key Italian love phrases for Valentine’s day.

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Eating Italian: our food groups and food pyramid

It’s time to forget the Canadian food groups and follow something Italian!

After getting married last year, a Calabrese-Pugliese-Sciliano wedding, I’ve done my fair share of eating. It’s been an all-Italian free-for-all, starting with antipasto buffets and ending in a sausage and sopressata making fest this last weekend. It’s time for a diet. But I still want to eat Italian!

My largest problem with dieting has always been what prescribed diets want you to eat. I have no desire for cottage cheese or bananas or some bland chicken breast. I still want Italian food – in my own way. I was trying to create a healthy menu for this week and I remembered when I was young being taught the “Canada Food Guide”, particularly the 1980s version. It told you how much to eat of all the food groups. Great. Except the food groups didn’t include taralli, polenta, figs, tomato sauce (is that considered a vegetable serving?), ricotta or anything else recognizable. I hated that. Just like we all hated having the smelly mortadella sandwich at school when everyone else had peanut butter.

Searching for the food pyramid or food groups these days shows just how far thinking in diets has come. There’s an Italian Food Pyramid (and an Indian one, Mexican and so on.) Finally something I can relate to! It inspired me to put a nice looking one together – for all those young Italian-Canadians learning about food groups, this is for you! Polenta and foccaccia for grains, figs and grapes for fruits, artichokes and rapini for veges, parmesan and calamari for proteins. Did I miss anything integral? Let me know in the comments!

(images are courtesy of various sources from depositphoto.com)

What makes us Canadians, Italian?

Many times when I think of my “Italianness” and what it means to have culture and history in your life, your identity tied to your heritage, I think of an old friend of mine and his experience with his heritage. His story is one that always makes me think – what makes me Italian? What traits am I looking for? Who decides who I am at heart?

This particular guy was dating a friend of mine, she was Italian-Canadian and he was, by all accounts Italian. He had worked in Little Italy for some time and certainly, he had picked up some traits of the all-Italian machismo that surrounded him and from the patrons that were more often that not Italian. When he started dating my friend, his Italianness was even more evident – the way he loved, his passions, his love for food, his dedication to family and many other traits that at the time, we insisted – he was Italian in the most basic sense of the word. Yet, he was completely Canadian – tall and blonde and from small town Ontario.

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