, “A Guide to the Museum.”The page numbers below refer to the print edition of this book.
ABBREVIATIONS
ALBA Alkali Lake Band Archives
AC Author’s collection
BA Barkerville Archives
BCA British Columbia Archives
CMA Cumberland Museum and Archives
CFC Culos Family Collection
CVA City of Vancouver Archives
FCL Felice Cavallotti Lodge Archives, Nanaimo
FHS Fernie Historical Society Oral History Collection
GM Glenbow Museum
KA Kamloops Archives
KCM Kitimat Centennial Museum
LAC Library and Archives Canada
NCA Nanaimo Community Archives
NCIC National Congress of Italian Canadians
PRA Powell River Archives
RBCM Royal British Columbia Museum
TMA Trail Museum and Archives
UBCSC University of British Columbia Special Collections
VIUL Vancouver Island University Library
page i Whoever Gives Us Bread: The title comes from a statement by an anonymous Italian immigrant who said, “Italy is for us whoever gives us bread.” Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 22.
PROLOGUE
page 3 Protection Island Mine disaster: Bowen, Boss Whistle; Bowen, “Dreams Ended in Disaster.”
page 5 “It won’t be any use”: Bryden, “Diary.”
page 7 wop: The Oxford Canadian Dictionary says the origin of the word is uncertain, but it is a derogatory word for Italian that may come from the Italian/Neapolitan word guappo, which means bold or showy and is associated with the Neapolitan crime group the Camorra. The World Wide Web offers many possibilities, among them that wop is short for “without papers,” but favours guappo. During the late 1920s there were many Italians in Canada working “without permits” (W.O.P.) which could explain the term. The Oxford English Dictionary definition makes no reference to Italians.
page 7 “the largest exodus”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 40.
page 7 “well-nigh expulsion”: Ibid., p. 49.
page 7 26 million: Zwingle, “Boston’s North Enders.”
page 8 navvies: The word is short for navigators—labourers who built the navigation canals in seventeenth-century Britain—and came to mean unskilled workers. Other terms such as blanket stiffs, stiffs, camp-men and boomers have been applied to unskilled workers, depending to some extent on which industry they worked in.
CHAPTER 1
I Am Always Being Faithful
page 12 Felice Valle documents: Valle papers.
page 13 history of Chiavari province: Colliers Encyclopedia; Genoa, Italy website; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
page 14 early emigration: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Joes, Mussolini; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
page 14 “In whatever quarter”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 5.
page 15 scudo, scudi: According to a modern Italian dictionary, scudi are silver coins, but the term is an ancient one that has been applied to a variety of coins found in various Italian city-states such as Milan and Florence, and in Spain (escudo). Generally speaking, the term was still in use in Italy just before unification (1870). Giovanni Coppola, a resident of Victoria in 1873, used the term in a letter (Valle papers, Coppola to Franco, March 19, 1873) in which he asks for the thirty scudi owed to him. In Powell River in the mid-1950s and later, the word was widely used among older and more recent Italian immigrants as synonymous with dollars. Even a modern-day second-generation Italian-Canadian woman in Nanaimo uses the word in the same way.
page 15 “We don’t understand why”: Valle papers, Giuseppe to Felice Valle, January 4, 1872.
page 15 scribes: The letters sent by Giuseppe and Maria are written in different hands and, according to the translator Pilar Vitacchio, contain many grammatical errors. In a small town at this time, only the priest would have been able to write, but not all priests were well educated.
page 15 “I’m letting you know”: Valle papers, Maria Valle to Felice Valle, February 18, 1872.
page 15 “Valle, Maria”: On documents and letters, it is customary in Italy to place the surname before the Christian name. Unlike Maria, most Italian women kept their maiden names, even into the middle of the twentieth century. In the last thirty or forty years, however, married women have been using their maiden names only on all official documents.
page 16 Italians in California: Chapelle, Small Sailing Craft; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Italian Legacy in the Mother Lode website; Rolle, Immigrant Upraised; Talese, Sons.
page 17 feluccas: Despite the association of the felucca with Egypt, the word is Italian and the term “Italian felucca” means any work boat with a lateen sail. According to Chapelle, Small Sailing Craft, in nineteenth-century San Francisco feluccas were so associated with Italian fishermen that they were called San Francisco Dago Boats.
page 17 New Caledonia: The lower half of present-day British Columbia.
page 19 Governor Douglas and the discovery of gold on the Thompson River: According to Morice, Northern Interior, Aboriginal people found gold nuggets in rocky crevices on the banks of the Thompson River in 1856 or 1857. They reported the gold to a HBC trader, who in turn reported it to Douglas, who issued a proclamation declaring that all gold in situ belonged to the Crown. The proclamation was later declared beyond his jurisdiction because he was not yet the governor of mainland British Columbia.
page 19 communication with Britain: Although the telegraph had been invented by this time, there was no telegraph line across the North American continent until 1861 and no transatlantic cable until 1866.
page 19 Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Lytton was the author of the infamous opening sentence, “It was a dark and stormy night . . . ,” that inspired the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which gives an annual award for purple prose.
page 19 law and order in British Columbia: Matthew Baillie Begbie, once he arrived in the colony, was in charge of maintaining the law. Colonel Moody and the Royal Engineers were in charge of maintaining order.
page 20 trails and roads of the British Columbia gold rush: Barman, Jean and Roderick, interview; Duncan, Cariboo Runaway; Francis, “Douglas Trail”; Goldrush Trail website; Harris, “Moving”; Morice, Northern Interior; Valle papers.
page 20 Douglas Route: It was also known as the Lillooet Trail, the Harrison Trail or the Lakes Route.
page 21 The spelling of Cariboo: Some informants say it is a misspelling of “Caribou” while the Canadian Encyclopedia calls it a variant of “caribou.” The mountain range of the same name is spelled “Cariboo” and most signs in the area spell it the same way.
page 21 “the richest goldfield”: Morice, Northern Interior, p. 296.
page 21 fist-sized nuggets: Reksten, Illustrated History.
page 21 Filippin Simeon: The spelling of this name on the land office map is “Phillipin” but “ph” is not used in Italian. The translator Luciano Culos says that the name is not a common one but could be a diminutive of Filippo. Given that Simeon was probably not literate and in any case would not have been the one to write his name on the map, it is likely that his name was misspelled by the mapmaker.
page 21 Italian surnames: It is possible to determine the geographic concentration of Italian surnames on the Internet by using the Italian Surnames website.
page 21 Herman Otto Bowe: According to the regulations established in 1859 and in that same year, Bowe settled on land at the head of Alkali Lake and built a stopping house for travellers. His ranch and the lake would take their name from a white patch of alkali on a nearby hill.
page 22 pre-emption: The law required each pre-emptor to make a written application to the government, live on the land and gradually improve it, and eventually, when he had fulfilled these criteria, survey it in order to acquire a certificate of improvement and claim it as his own.
page 22 settlers and pre-emptions in the 1860s: B.C., Crown Lands, Map Vault; Oblate Records; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Valle papers.
page 22 bunchgrass: Grass that grows in bunches is deeply rooted and thus suitable for land that gets little rain. It was the presence of bluebunch wheatgrass, as it is formally known, that made small areas in the Okanagan Valley, the Thompson River near Spences Bridge, the Nicola Valley and the Cariboo-Chilcotin suitable for cattle ranching.
page 24 mules, mule trains and packing: Barman interview; Barman, “Packing.”
page 24 Valle’s licence: Valle papers.
page 24 Barkerville history: Barman interview; Cariboo Sentinel; Duncan, Cariboo Runaway.
page 24 Nicola Cuneo, a.k.a. Nicholas Cunio: Cariboo Sentinel, 1865–80, Barkerville Historic Town archives, R.I.C.; Cariboo Sentinel, 1865–80; Valle papers.
page 25 XXX Ale: Cariboo Sentinel, January 23, 1869.
page 25 “It’s the cold of the devil”: Valle papers, Ernesto Sopranis to Felice Valle, December 1871.
page 26“I understand that winter”: Ibid.
page 26 Cuneo letter to Valle: Valle papers, Cuneo to Valle, December 31, 1871.
page 26 padroni: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Harney, “Commerce”; Harney, “Padrone”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Talese, Sons.
page 28 abandonment of wives: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Spada, Italians in Canada; De Luca interview.
page 29 “conserve his bachelor freedom”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 439.
page 29 “emigration [was] taking the place”: Ibid., p. 441.
page 29 “I am always being faithful”: Valle papers, Maria Valle to Felice Valle, April 18, 1872.
page 30 Valle loses mules: Valle papers, Boucherat to Felice Valle, March 28, 1973.
page 30 José Marie Rodrigos: The letter about the loss of Valle’s mules was written in French by someone named Boucherat who spelled Rodrigos’s name phonetically. Roderick Barman deciphered the name and located Rodrigos in the 1881 census as a resident of the Lytton/Cache Creek district.
page 30 Cataline, or Jean Caux: The most famous packer in British Columbia between 1858 and 1912.
page 30 Yankee notions: Although the phrase was used to describe many things, the most common use was to describe ingenious manufactured objects of all sorts—buttons, tools, needles—mostly related to clothing.
page 30 cassimere: Most commonly made of wool, cassimere was a fancy yard good used to make American Civil War uniforms and fine men’s clothing.
page 31 “Meanwhile I have heard”: Valle papers, Maria Valle to Felice Valle, March 3, 1874.
page 31 Valle’s death: Vital Statistics, Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Act, 1872.
page 32 old HBC fur brigade trail: This was a route used by the North West Company and subsequently by the HBC from 1811 to 1846 to connect Fort Vancouver at the mouth of the Columbia River to Fort St. James in northern British Columbia, a journey that took two months. The first part of the journey, east from Fort Vancouver to Fort Okanogan (now Oroville, Washington), was by boat; the route turned north to follow the Okanogan River, which took travellers up the Okanagan Valley (note the difference in spelling) through present-day Vernon, then west to Fort Shuswap (now Kamloops), along Kamloops Lake to the Thompson River and north to Fort Alexandria—where the trail met the Fraser River south of present-day Quesnel—then to Fort George, now Prince George, and Fort St. James in northern British Columbia. The relatively open plains along the route made it the only route for cattle drives into British Columbia. During the Cariboo gold rush, miners used the trail as an alternative route to the goldfields.
page 33 Cariboo ranchers: B.C., Crown Lands, Map Vault; Oblate Records; Reksten, Illustrated History. Although the CPR did not go through the Cariboo as the ranchers had hoped, those who were able to survive the 1870s found markets for their beef when the CPR was built in the 1880s. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway traversed the Cariboo on its route between Quesnel and Squamish, and the construction of the Canadian Northern Railway in 1915 again provided markets for the Cariboo ranchers. Augustin Boitano married a First Nations woman and worked his ranch at Springhouse until his death in 1914, supplementing his income by running regular pack trains for the HBC between Fort Langley and Fort St. James. Francesco Chiara pre-empted additional land in the Alkali Lake/Dog Creek area, acquiring official possession of the lands in 1871, 1878, 1884 and 1888.
page 33 No railway for Victoria: Just before he lost the 1873 election to Alexander Mackenzie, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald promised that Victoria would be the terminus of the transcontinental railway. But the route through the province was not determined until Mackenzie chose Burrard Inlet as the terminus and thus excluded Victoria. It was only in 1884, when Robert Dunsmuir agreed to build the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, that the railway reached Victoria.
page 32 Francesco Savona: Savona adopted the name of his hometown in Liguria to avoid having his real last name misspelled. The town of Savona was moved to the south shore of the lake in 1884 when the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway came through.
CHAPTER 2
Of Tombstones and Pretensions
page 35 British Columbia Pioneer Society: It is, according to its constitution, “a moral, benevolent, literary and scientific association” with two classes of members: the first composed of men who had come to British Columbia before December 31, 1858, and their male descendants, the second of men who had come to the province before January 1, 1865.
page 36 Victoria in the nineteenth century: British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Lai, Chinatowns; Reksten, Illustrated History. Cormorant Street is now an extension of Pandora Street.
page 37 “undoubtedly one of the handsomest”: R.T. Williams’s Directory.
page 37 “some with great pretensions”: Mallandaine’s Directory.
page 37 opium: Lai, Chinatowns.
page 37 Bossi brothers: Colonist, November 11, 1879, February 21, 1896, April 16, 1950; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Hanna interview; Norris, Strangers; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Spada, Italians in Canada. The Bossis’ buildings on Johnson and Store still constitute a strategic corner of Victoria’s Market Square, which is surrounded by buildings constructed between the 1860s and the 1890s and occupies what was once part of the Johnson Street Ravine.
page 38 Astrico family: Colonist; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Williams, New Country.
page 39 “I say it with shame”: Williams, New Country, p. 235.
page 39 Ragazzoni family: Colonist; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Pioneer Questionnaire, BCA.
page 40 “The alarm was given”: Daily British Colonist, July 1868.
page 40 Grancini family: Daily Colonist; Daily Standard; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Hanna interview; RootsWeb website; Valle papers; Victoria Times.
page 41 “influential gentlemen”: Daily Standard, November 10, 1879.
page 42 Ferrymen: From the mid-1860s until 1888, a ferry provided a shortcut across the harbour between the business district on the one side and the Songhees reserve and naval station at Esquimalt on the other. The first owner of this ferry was one Carlo Saverio Sbocia, who preferred to be called Charles Levy, and the second was Nicola Bertucci. Sbocia’s surname, which is uncommon in Italy, is spelled at least seven different ways in various documents.
page 42 “old and tried friends”: Daily Colonist, November 11, 1879.
page 42 Grancini’s pallbearers: The only Italian was Carlo Bossi.
page 42 Italian businessmen in Victoria: Daily British Colonist; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Holmes, “Some Memories”; Norris, Strangers; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Spada, Italians in Canada; Valle papers; Victoria and Our Island website; Dunae, VIHistory website. This is a partial list of the surnames of Italians in business in Victoria in the 1860s and 1870s: Astrico, Bertucci, Bossi, Caravella, Conessa, Costello, Cranoelli, Denegri, Grancini, Magnone, Medana a.k.a. Medina, Montaro, Montobio, Perazzo, Piaggio, Quagliotti, Quagliotti-Romano, Ragazzoni, Refazzo, Sciutto, Viacava and Vignolo.
page 42 occupations of Italians: Dunae, VIHistory website; Directories.
page 42 dago: According to several dictionaries, the term is slang for dark-skinned persons of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or other Latin descent. A vulgar term of prejudice and contempt, it seems to apply only to Italians when used in Canada.
page 42 Medana family: In directories, vital statistics records and newspaper accounts, the name Medana is interchangeable with Medina. In a pioneer questionnaire filled out by a family member, both versions of the name appear.
page 43 older men marrying younger women: According to the RootsWeb website, there were over sixteen hundred white men in Victoria in 1871 and almost twelve hundred white women. For other examples of such marriages see Bowen, Dreams.
page 43 death of Carlo Bossi: Bossi died of heart disease, as did his younger brother, Giacomo, who predeceased him by two years.
page 43 Italian graves: Bedard interview; Cariboo Sentinel; Quackenbush correspondence; Valle papers; B.C., Division of Vital Statistics.
page 44 Trentino–Alto Adige headstones: Franchini, Tales. A search of 456 cemeteries in Trento revealed that about half of them contained headstones of emigrants, but from the 514 cenotaphs found, many showing more than one and up to six names, scholars were able to detect an increase in the number of families able to afford to erect such a memorial. The numbers peaked in the 1950s.
page 45 “the man who improved”: Daily Colonist, February 15, 1935.
page 45 Quagliotti family: British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Hanna interview; Holmes, “Some Memories”; Lewis interview; Ministry of Mines Annual Reports, 1879; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Valle papers. Subsequent generations of the Quagliottis and Quagliotti-Romanos were well-known theatre owners: in Victoria, Eugenia Quagliotti-Romano of the Romano Theatre, and in Vancouver, Hector (Quag) Quagliotti-Romano, owner of the Colonial Theatre.
page 46 Robert Dunsmuir: For further reading see Bowen, Dreams, and Bowen, Laird.
page 46 “It is impossible”: Mines Annual Reports, 1879. Dunsmuir’s letter dated February 5, 1880, would have been received by the inspector while he was preparing his 1879 report for publication and was thus included in that year’s report.
page 47 “I did not think it right”: Mines Annual Reports, 1879.
CHAPTER 3
A Class Not Easily Advised or Intimidated
page 50 Wellington Colliery strike: Audain, Castle; Bartlett, “Wellington Miners’ Strike”; Bowen, Dreams; Bowen, Laird; Canada: Sessional Papers; Daily British Colonist; Nanaimo Free Press.
page 53 Dunsmuir libel suit: George Norris, owner, publisher and sole reporter of the Free Press, had reported that someone else called Dunsmuir a liar.
page 53 European anti-Italian attitudes: Barzini, The Italians; Buonavita interview.
page 54 “Naturally they were this way”: Buonavita interview.
page 54 stilettos: A letter from the secretary of the patronage committee of the Toronto Reform Committee to W.D. Scott, Superintendent of Immigration, dated August 10, 1908, says the following with regard to stilettos and other weapons: “Many foreigners carry concealed weapons. They are accustomed to do this before leaving Europe, and until they are in Canada for some time they do not realize that they do not have to depend on their own resources for protection. The trouble seems to be largely with Italians.” “Letter to W.D. Scott,” LAC.
page 54 “dirty dagos”: Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 55 “‘clannish,’ ‘treacherous’ and unassimilable”: Belshaw, Colonization, p. 127.
page 57 “putting on a lively appearance”: Nanaimo Free Press, June 6, 1877.
page 57 Italians as strikebreakers: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Belshaw, Colonization; Weinberg, “Class Warfare.”
page 57 “It won’t be any use”: Bryden, “Diary.”
page 57 Italian emigration: Rates of mass migration are difficult to calculate and compare, given the many variables involved, but according to McKeown in “Global Chinese Migration,” the mass migration rates per year per thousand population between 1846 and 1940 were as follows: Italy, 10.8; Norway, 8.3; Ireland, 7. In the peak years of Chinese migration in the 1920s, Guangdong province, which was slightly larger in area and slightly smaller in population than Italy, had a rate of 9.6, and Hebei and Shandong provinces had a rate of 10. Chinese migration would likely have been higher if it hadn’t been for the head tax. Hatton in “The Age of Mass Migration” says Italy was third in Europe after Ireland and Norway between 1870 and 1879, but in the years between 1900 and 1913 Italy had the highest rate by far (17.97, over second-place Ireland’s 7.93). Italy can also claim the highest rate of return migration among European countries.
page 58 History of the Italian peninsula to 1815: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Joes, Mussolini; Kendrick, Malaspina; Einaudi, “What is the Future of Italy?” website; Talese, Sons.
page 58 German states: Germany did not become a unified country until 1871.
page 59 Napoleonic Civil Code: This was the first successful codification of laws in European history; it strongly influenced the law in many jurisdictions, including Quebec.
page 59 Risorgimento: Bagnell, Canadese; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Joes, Mussolini; Kendrick, Malaspina; Talese, Sons.
page 59 Garibaldi: His name appears extensively on streets and piazzas in modern-day Italy and even in British Columbia, where, in 1860, a British naval officer, G.H. Richards, while surveying Howe Sound, named one of the many mountains he saw Mount Garibaldi.
page 59 “bourgeois radicals”: Talese, Sons, p. 121.
page 59 Roman Catholic Church: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Barzini, The Italians; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Joes, Mussolini; Tullio, North of Naples.
page 60 “a fusion of animism”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 46.
page 60 “half festivity”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 97.
page 60 effect of Napoleonic reforms: Culos, Luciano, interviews; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Talese, Sons; Tullio, North of Naples.
page 61 effects of unification: Facaros, Bay of Naples; Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Robb, Midnight; Einaudi, “What is the Future of Italy?” website.
page 61 emigration in 1901: According to Ramirez, Italians in Canada, 533,245 Italians left Italy in that year. According to Woodsworth, Strangers, 3,828 of those Italians came to Canada. According to Foerster, Italian Emigration, Canada had a total Italian population of 10,834 in 1901. According to Woodsworth, 1,740 of those were in British Columbia.
page 62 history of Venetia: Culos, Luciano, interviews; Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 63 Friulian language: Culos, Luciano, interviews; Filippin interview; Vitacchio interview.
page 63 Longobards: Also called Lombards, the Longobards were a Germanic people originally from northern Europe who ruled parts of northern Italy between the sixth and eighth centuries.
page 63 “the land of small property”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 118.
page 64 emigration from Friuli: Between 1876 and 1886, of all the regions of Italy, the number of emigrants was highest from Venetia, at 134 emigrants per 10,000 population. Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 64 “This most lovely land”: Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands, p. 6.
page 64 poverty in Friuli: Anderson interview; Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Venturato interview.
page 65 campanilismo: Culos, Luciano, interviews; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Harney, “Padrone”; Nabhan, Songbirds, Truffles and Wolves.
page 65 “Then they go back”: Culos, Luciano, interview.
page 66 Cuffolo family: Cormons interview; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Nicholls manuscripts; Norcross, Nanaimo Retrospective; Sedola interview. At various times, the surname was also spelled Gaffolo, Guffalo and Cuffalo in historical records. There are Cuffolos and Cuffalos still living in Nanaimo.
page 66 Italian Boarding House: It became the Italian Hotel, then the Columbus Hotel and then the Jolly Miner Pub.
page 66 Italians in early Nanaimo: Mar, “From Segregation”; Nicholls manuscripts; Humbert Pace correspondence. Cuffolo came to Nanaimo in the mid-1860s; Bartolomeo Corso had come from Genoa to San Francisco and thence to the Amazon before settling in Nanaimo; John Canessa came in the mid-1870s; Bruno Mellado, an architect from Chile, and his bride, Mary Anne Thompson, were married in Nanaimo in 1871, the first couple in British Columbia to buy a marriage licence after the province joined Confederation that year.
page 67 Other Italian businessmen on Vancouver Island: Giovanni Ordano arrived in 1858 and eventually owned hotels, houses and stores in Genoa Bay (named after his birthplace) and Cowichan Station; Ordano’s daughter, Marie Antoniette, and her husband, Pete Frumento, built a hotel in Cowichan Bay in the 1880s.
page 68 Italians in Nanaimo and Wellington in the 1880s: Belshaw, Colonization; Canadian census 1881; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Nanaimo Free Press; B.C., Ministry of Mines Annual Reports; Dunae, VIHistory website; Wood, Nationalism. In those days, before Italian emigration reached its peak, the number of Italians in both Nanaimo and Wellington seems small when compared with the total population, but the two communities contained by far the largest number of Italians among all towns in British Columbia at that time. A comparison of the figures in the census and the directories with the deaths and injuries listed in the Ministry of Mines Annual Reports yields inconclusive results. Even taking into consideration the fact that Nanaimo was bigger than Wellington, it appears that Wellington had more Italian miners while Nanaimo had more Italians in total. The fact that Italians known to be living in the two communities at the time are not listed in either the census or any of the directories makes it even more difficult to determine exact numbers.
page 69 “total abolishment of Chinamen”: Nanaimo Free Press, February 8, 1888.
page 69 Wellington strikes, the Chinese head tax and the legal battles in the 1890s between the Dunsmuirs and the provincial government regarding the employment of Chinese in coal mines: For more details, see Bowen, Dreams.
page 70 Coal company names: For the sake of brevity I have used the terms Nanaimo Coal Company and Wellington Colliery instead of the more cumbersome corporate names, which changed with every reorganization and change of ownership.
page 70 Italians in the Wellington Strike: Evidence that Italians were involved in the 1890–91 Wellington Strike on both sides can be found in the Free Press and the Ministry of Mines Annual Reports. Italians injured or killed in the Wellington mines during the strike, and there were several, would be strikebreakers. At least one of the several ships arriving from San Francisco in August 1890 with strikebreakers on board contained Italians. Strikers carrying the union flag plus the Belgian and Italian flags “escorted” strikebreakers to work each day. This could indicate that there were Italian strikebreakers in the group being escorted or that there were Italians among the strikers. A letter written by the labour leader Tully Boyce to the San Francisco Council of Federated Trades urged the council to keep it hot for Dunsmuir because the company was trying to create dissent among Belgian and Italian union members, even promising four dollars a day in wages.
page 70 Sing Kee: He had murdered a “fellow Celestial,” Lung Chow, at Rivers Inlet on July 24, 1892, by firing a rifle three times at him from an upstairs window.
page 70 Cavarello murder: Nanaimo Daily Free Press; Humbert Pace correspondence; Nanaimo Coroner’s Minute Book, 1866–1903; Mar, “From Segregation.” Some sources spell the murderer’s name Dominick Teragnolo.
page 71 Bartolomeo Corso: Corso, Rina’s father, left Departure Bay a month before Taraniello’s trial. He bought a farm south of Nanaimo in the Cedar district, where he logged mine props and cleared the road that became Holden-Corso Road.
page 72 “The bitter antagonism”: Sutherland, Missionary Outlook, Volume XIII, No. 12, December 1893, p. 179.
page 73 “Comparing an ignorant Italian”: Nanaimo Daily Free Press, December 2, 1899.
page 73 “It used to be said”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 422.
page 73 “Italians and Poles”: Rode-Scott, quoting Buddy DeVito in the Trail Times, June 30, 1986.
page 73 “to regard their landlords”: Culos, Luciano, interview.
CHAPTER 4
Birds of Passage
page 75 Canessa family: Duncan, Fifty-seven Years; Nanaimo Free Press; Nicholls manuscripts. The Canessa family stayed in Nanaimo until 1888, when they moved to the mainland. John bought a small unnamed four-acre island in Fisherman’s Cove for seventy dollars and built a smokehouse with a very tall chimney. The island, which became known in those days as Canessa’s place or Italy Island, is now Eagle Island in West Vancouver’s Eagle Harbour and the home of the Eagle Harbour Yacht Club.
page 75 Burrard Inlet: Reksten, Illustrated History; McDonald, Making Vancouver.
page 76 Vancouver fire: Davis, Greater Vancouver; Nicholls manuscript.
page 77 Casorso origins and journey: Casorso, Casorso Story; Harris, “Moving”; Kelowna Museum, “Road Trip.” There is, in the story of Casorso family, a sense of legend making. Rosa and Giovanni had nine children. They and subsequent generations of the family built an empire around their ranching, fruit and vegetable, and meat butchering operations in the Okanagan Valley.
page 80 maccheroni: According to Harrison, Italian Days, maccheroni was the generic term for all kinds of pasta in the Middle Ages and was still used by earlier generations of Italian immigrants.
page 81 Pandosy Trail: The ten kilometres at the end of the trail is now in Okanagan Mountain Park. Even today it is traversed only by trails and the occasional rough road.
page 82 “Bells tell you the happy days”: Sedola interview.
page 83 stopping hail: Culos, Luciano, interviews.
page 84 hallucinogenic seeds, herbs and roots: Romer, The Tuscan Year.
page 84 “loss of reason”: Ibid., p. 96.
page 84 Father Nobili: Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver”; Rolle, Immigrant Upraised; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.” In Norris, Strangers Entertained, Nobili is mistakenly connected with Casorso, who arrived in British Columbia over thirty years after Nobili returned to California in 1849.
page 85 Canadian immigration policy to 1896: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Kelley, Mosaic; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 85 Changes in American immigration policy: According to Avery, Reluctant Host, in 1891, nine years after the United States decided to admit southern Europeans, only 13 percent of the population in both the United States and Canada was foreign-born and three quarters of those foreigners in Canada were British.
page 85 Italian emigration policy to 1901: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Harney, “Commerce”; Harney, “Padrone”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
page 86 sojourners: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Spada, Italians in Canada; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 87 “We plant and we reap wheat”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 420.
page 88 “the land would strangle”: Harney, “Commerce,” p. 42.
page 88 Working on the CPR: Bone, Steel Went Through; Roberts, Western Avernus; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Whitehead, Nicolas Coccola.
page 89 Father Coccola: British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Ratch, “Impossible Curse”; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.” Corsica had been a region of France since the eighteenth century, but the island had been governed by various Italian republics previous to that, and Italian was the language of culture in Corsica until the end of the nineteenth century.
page 91 priesthood in Italy: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Iacovetta, Enemies Within; Tullio, North of Naples. The second report was the Inchiesta Parlamentare.
page 93 religion in Italy: Campagnaro, Campise, Gentile interviews; Culos, Luciano, interviews; Gigliotti interview; Rino interview.
page 93 “Calabria in particular”: Facaros, Bay of Naples, p. 208.
CHAPTER 5
Hordes of Foreigners
page 94 “gnarled, knobbly toe”: Calabrian tourist brochure.
page 94 history of Calabria: Bagnell, Portrait; Barzini, The Italians; Facaros, Bay of Naples; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Levi, Christ Stopped; Robb, Midnight; Talese, Sons.
page 95 Mezzogiorno: The word means noon, or the middle of the day, and refers to the half of the Italian peninsula below or south of the middle.
page 95 organized crime: Bagnell, Canadese; Bocchigliero Tourism; Buonavita interview; Facaros, Bay of Naples; Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Levi, Christ Stopped; Robb, Midnight; Talese, Sons.
page 96 “thieves and those who protect them”: Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands, p. 59.
page 96 “the only poetry”: Levi, Christ Stopped, p. 139.
page 96 American army collaboration with the Mafia: Robb, Midnight; Talese, Sons. Confirmation or denial of the story awaits release of still-classified American documents.
page 96 Black Hand: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Woodsworth, Strangers. In the twentieth century, the Mafia and the Camorra used the Black Hand as a method of extortion in Italy.
page 97 Griffin-Dunsmuir case: Bowen, Laird; Daily Colonist, November 15, 18, 21, 23, 29, 30, December 1, 1888.
page 98 labour in Union Camp: Bowen, Three Dollar Dreams; Nanaimo Free Press.
page 99 Abbondio Franceschini: Franceschini, Abbondio, interview and Franceschini, Joe and Jacqueline, interview.
page 100 Italians in Cumberland (Union Camp); Bowen, Three Dollar Dreams; Conti, Graham and Marocchi interview; “Italian Band,” CMA file; Franceschini, Abbondio, interview; Franceschini, Joe, interview; Franceschini, “Italian Heritage”; Mayse, Ginger; Nanaimo Free Press; Porter, “Mining Casualties.”
page 100 “You didn’t marry”: Conti, Graham and Marocchi interview.
page 100 Marocchi family: Conti, Graham and Marocchi interview; Cumberland Islander; [Cumberland] News Herald, February 2, 1902, July 12 1904; Ministry of Mines Annual Reports; Times Colonist, March 28, 2004.
page 101 Prohibition: In British Columbia it lasted only from 1918 to 1922; it lasted in the United States from 1920 to 1933.
page 101 Tyrol: After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles gave the Tyrol to Italy and it became the region of Trentino–Alto Adige.
page 102 Black Hand rumours: Nanaimo Daily Free Press, January 16, 1893.
page 103 Rossland: Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Waldie, “Clinic”; Woodcock, Ravens; Rode-Scott, “Historic Neighbourhood.”
page 103 Trail: DeVito interview; DeVito, “The Italians”; Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Martin interview; Masleck, “More Smoke”; Mayse, Goodwin; Priore interview; Rode-Scott, “Historic Neighbourhood”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Tognotti interview; Trail History, Trail of Memories; Waldie, “Clinic”; Ward, “Italy’s Election”; Wood, Nationalism; Woodcock, Ravens.
page 103 Giorgetti family: The family now spells its name Georgetti. Isacco has been called a wheeler-dealer and a bootlegger and the “King of Rossland Avenue.” He was one of the founders of the Cristoforo Colombo Lodge.
page 104 women of the Kootenay Hotel: Priore interview; Tognotti interview; Battistella, Priore and Tognotti memoirs in Trail History, Trail of Memories. To tell the story of the women who ran the Kootenay Hotel between 1910 and the end of World War I, I had to pick my way through conflicting information from two interviews recorded at the turn of this century and three family biographies written in the mid-1990s. All the informants were either participants in the events that took place almost a century before or the offspring of that generation. But old age and the handing down of stories from one generation to the next have played with the facts and the dates. It is impossible to decide who was in charge and at what time without trampling on people’s memories. The story is important, however, and so the women who ran the Kootenay Hotel deserve equal billing, and the women and girls who helped them must be recognized as well.
page 104 Boarding houses: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Foerster, Italian Emigration; McDonald, Making Vancouver; Piccoli sisters interview; Benedetti, Ramon and Irma, interview; Benedetti, Violet, interview; Culos, Marino, interview; Quilici, “Strong Lady”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.”
page 106 Ceddio case: Gadoury, “Persons Sentenced”; Grand Forks Gazette, May 30, 1908; Kamloops Sentinel, July 31, 1908; Williams, Myra’s Men; Sheriff Herbert C. Kerman to Attorney-General W.J. Bowser, July 30 and August 7, 1908, GR 429, Box 15 File 4 3028/08; B.C. Attorney General Correspondence 1872–1937, BCA.
page 108 “Italians are industrious”: Woodsworth, Strangers, p. 134.
page 108 racial propensity for crime: Bagnell, Canadese; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 108 “Too much has been made”: Woodsworth, Strangers, p. 134.
page 109 “Italy is the country”: Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands, p. 85.
page 109 “It is the Old World way:” Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 405.
page 109 railroads in southeastern British Columbia: J.F. Armstrong to Deputy Attorney General, June 24, 1898, GR 429; British Columbia, Attorney General Correspondence 1872–1937, Box 4, file 2, 1247/98; Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Harris, “Moving”; Waldie, “Clinic.”
page 109 holdings at Trail: In 1906 the CPR amalgamated its interests in the Trail area under the name Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, which became known by its cable address, COMINCO.
page 110 “It is only prejudicial”: Eagle, Canadian Pacific, p. 57.
page 111 “They have no money”: Attorney General Correspondence, June 24, 1898.
page 111 “I had only two cents money”: Ibid.
page 111 Fernie: Crisafio interview; Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Gigliotti interview; Mouat, “James Baker and William Fernie”; Ramsey, 100 Years of Coal Mining; Ratch, “An Impossible Curse”; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie.”
page 112 “foreigners” in Fernie: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; Crisafio interview; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Yarmie, “Community and Conflict.”
page 112 Coal Creek mines: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Giuliano interview; Mayse, Ginger; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga; Yarmie, “Community and Conflict.”
page 113 company store: The Coal Creek company store was sold to A.B. Trites and R.W. Woods in 1902 as the result of a concession by the company to the Western Federation of Miners. The Trites-Wood store, however, co-operated closely with the company in such matters as garnisheeing wages.
page 113 Cosmo Crisafio: Crisafio interview.
page 113 Maria Marasco Amanti: Minifie interview.
page 114 disasters in early Fernie history: British Columbia, Attorney General Inquests 1906–1928, BCA GR 431; Ministry of Mines Annual Reports; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga.
page 114 1902 Coal Creek explosion and aftermath: Ministry of Mines Annual Report, 1902; Norton, “In Memoriam”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie”; Yarmie, “Community and Conflict.” As with all coal mine disasters, the number of deaths is a subject of debate. A website says 128; the Ministry of Mines Annual Report says 125; Yarmie, “Community and Conflict,” says 130; and Norton and Langford, Crowsnest Communities, says 127. The Ministry of Mines says 22 Italians were killed; Norton and Langford say 28.
page 116 crime in early Fernie: Crisafio interview; Gigliotti interview; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga.
page 116 Black Hand: British Columbia, Attorney General Correspondence 1872–1937, BCA GR 0429 Box 15, File 4, 3039/08; Great Alberta Law Cases website; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 116 “Italians at or near Fernie”: British Columbia, Attorney General Correspondence.
page 116 prisoners escape: Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga.
page 117 Raniera trial: British Columbia, Attorney General Correspondence.
page 117 “of this apparent”: Ibid.
page 117 “who should be instructed”: Ibid.
page 118 Black Hand in Vancouver: “Celebration of the 50th Anniversary.”
page 118 southerners in Fernie: Quarin interview; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing.”
page 118 Piccariello and Lassandro: The opera Filumena, by John Estacio and John Murrell, which was based on this story, premiered at the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts in 2003.
page 118 “hotbed of southern Italians”: Quarin interview.
page 119 the Annex: Bascio interview; Guzzi interview; Minifie interview; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing.”
page 119 “When you went to the other part of town”: Crisafio interview.
page 120 Colander restaurant in Trail: It has been serving generous portions of pasta in sauce since the days when Italian women were scarce in Trail and men living in boarding houses needed a place where they could get large portions of Italian food at reasonable prices. The prices are still reasonable, the portions still large, the choice no wider, and Italians descended from the first men who came to work in Trail beginning in 1895 still eat regularly at the Colander.
page 120 grappa: Battistoni interview; Bresanutti memoir in Trail History, Trail of Memories; deCamillis interview; DeVito interview; Ward, “Italy’s Election.”
page 121 “Boy, if you had stomach trouble”: Battistoni interview.
page 121 “Well, that’ll blind you”deCamillis interview.
page 122 “They kept whatever was left”: Busato interview.
page 122 Italian propensity for crime: Bagnell, Canadese; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
CHAPTER 6
Birds and Fishes, Sharks and Falcons
page 123 fava beans and malaria: Romer, The Tuscan Year.
page 123 malaria: Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Romer, The Tuscan Year.
page 124 polenta: Anderson interview; Franceschini interviews; Giuliano interview; Hawes, Extra Virgin; Nabhan, Songbirds, Truffles and Wolves; Romer, The Tuscan Year; Ungaro interview; Yori interview. Pellagra disappeared from northern Italy only in the 1950s, when money sent home by emigrants had improved and diversified Italian diets and cod liver oil administered daily made children healthier if not happier.
page 126 “willing to roam”: Avery, Reluctant Host, p. 21.
page 126 immigration policy and statistics from 1895 to 1914: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Hall, “Clifford Sifton.” Foerster says four to eight thousand Italians came to Canada a year in this period. He also devotes a great deal of time comparing the numbers of temporary versus permanent immigrants and comes to the conclusion that the proportion doesn’t change even though both numbers increase.
page 127 “professional vagrants”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 28.
page 127 Foley, Welch and Stewart: The firm was the largest railway construction company in North America between 1908 and World War I. Among the important British Columbia companies associated with the three principals was the logging company Bloedel, Stewart and Welch, which later merged with H.R. Macmillan to become Macmillan Bloedel. Avery, Reluctant Host; Francis, “Foley, Welch and Stewart”; Leonard, Thousand Blunders.
page 127 southern appearance and character: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Villard, Hemingway; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 127 “They called us niggers”: DeVito interview.
page 127 concentration of Italian populations: In “Frozen Wastes,” Scardellato points out that before World War I, Italian sojourners in Ontario and Quebec settled in Toronto and Montreal when they left the isolated camps where they first found work, but sojourners in British Columbia tended to settle in smaller communities. This was especially true in the Kootenays, which were separated from Vancouver by the fact that there was no easy transportation connection until after the CPR completed the Kettle Valley Railway in 1916. It is important to realize that even Italian areas of settlement such as Kamloops and Revelstoke, which were connected to Vancouver by the main line of the CPR, or Italian settlements on Vancouver Island, which were connected by regular boat service, fit into Scardellato’s statement that “an awareness of the pattern of regional growth and settlement in B.C. is essential for an understanding of the parallel growth of the province’s most important Italian enclaves.”
page 127 attitude to Italians 1896–1914: Dubinsky and Iacovetta, “Murder, Womanly Virtue”; Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
page 128 “to repress the blood”: Dubinsky and Iacovetta, “Murder, Womanly Virtue,” p. 517.
page 128 “black Italians”: Ibid., p. 518.
page 128 Revelstoke: The number of families from the south who lived in Revelstoke varies depending on the individual’s definition of where the south begins, but the number of families in Revelstoke from the south far exceeds the numbers from the north. Emigration figures are from Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 128 Royal Decree of 1901: Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 129 passports: According to Foerster, despite the requirement to carry a passport, thousands travelled without one in order to escape military service (Italy required each man at age nineteen to serve for two years in the army) or jail. In Friuli, for instance, an early study showed that only about half of the emigrants had passports.
page 129 Officials involved in emigration: Bagnell, Canadese; Harney, “Commerce”; Kelley, Mosaic; Woodsworth, Strangers.
page 129 “These great currents of our workers”: Foreign Minister Baron Tommasco Tittoni, August 6, 1914, quoted in Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 477.
page 129 padroni: See Chapter 1 for sources. According to Harney, “Padrone,” Slavs, unlike Italians, were too individualistic to tolerate a padrone.
page 130 Cordasco: Bagnell, Canadese; Harney, “Commerce”; Spada, Italians in Canada.
page 130 agents supplying British Columbia: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; CPR Fonds, GM; Harney, “Padrone”; Nanaimo Daily Free Press.
page 130 railway construction between 1907 and 1914: Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; Eagle, Canadian Pacific.
page 132 Canadian Northern Railway: The CNoR was the brainchild of Mackenzie and Mann and Company, which convinced the federal government to allow it to create a transcontinental railway by extending a small network of lines in Manitoba eastward and westward.
page 132 Bafaro family: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; Bafaro, Robert and Joan, interview. Although private employment agencies usually hired section gangs for the CPR, Francesco Bafaro was hired directly. According to Sanford in McCullough’s Wonder, the CPR preferred Italians for maintenance work because they were good workers.
page 133 young men leaving the south: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; Bafaro, Robert and Joan, interview; Belshaw, Colonization; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Harney, “Commerce”; Marocchi interview; Talese, Sons; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Woodsworth, Strangers; Yori interview.
page 134 requirements for steamships carrying Italian emigrants: Corsini Fonds, NCA.
page 135 Kamloops: British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Comazetto interview; Corea interview; Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Società Cristoforo Colombo; Vigna interview; Whitehead, Nicolas Coccola.
page 136 Kamloops band: The musicians included an eight-year-old piccolo player named Joe Arduini, whose father, Ivo, owned a shoe repair business. As an adult, Joe was president of the Cristoforo Colombo Lodge from 1939 to 1945 and head of the Canadian Italian War Effort Committee, which formed in 1940 at a time when Italy was at war with Canada.
page 136 CPR’s preference for Italians: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Bagnell, Canadese; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Kelley, Mosaic; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Spada, Italians in Canada.
page 136 Antonio Corea: Corea interview.
page 136 Domenico Fuoco: Fuoco genealogy; Vigna interview.
page 137 attitudes toward Italians in Revelstoke: British Columbia, Attorney General Correspondence 1872–1937, Rex v. Schilto, Romano and Falsetti, Box 17, File 2, 4176/09; Kamloops Sentinel, July 5, 1909.
page 137 “owing to the state”: Rex v. Schilto.
page 137 “political activity”: Società Cristoforo Colombo.
page 137 DiMarchi family: The name is also spelled DeMarchi and Demarchi. Alessandro DiMarchi would eventually redeem himself with the city to work as a jailer and garbage collector and would retire as the city pound keeper, to be succeeded by his son, Guigliemo (Bill). Comazetto interview; Demarchi correspondence; Fuoco genealogy; Società Cristoforo Colombo.
page 137 “a bit of a thug”: Demarchi correspondence.
page 138 cholera infantum: a form of gastroenteritis.
page 138 Comazetto family: Comazetto interview; Demarchi correspondence; Romanin interview; Società Cristoforo Colombo. Cecilia gave birth to ten children, nine of whom survived childhood, and she was an accomplished homemaker. But her inability to read had strange consequences when she trusted an English neighbour to register her children in school. The neighbour had already changed four of the children’s names before the family realized what she was doing: Teodolinda had become Lena, Angelo had become Chino, Lindo had become Alder and Bruno had become Bruce.
page 139 Teti family: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Benedetti, Violet, interview.
page 139 Main Street: Named Westminster Avenue at first.
page 141 Vancouver’s Little Italy before 1912: Atkin, “Strathcona” website; Battistoni interview; Benedetti, Violet, interview; Benedetti, Ramon and Irma, interview; Branca interview; “Celebration of the 50th Anniversary”; Crosetti interview; Culos, Raymond, interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Leland interview; Macdonald, Vancouver: A Visual History; McDonald, Making Vancouver; Negrin interview; Quilici, “Strong Lady”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Venturato interview.
page 141 Battistoni family: Battistoni interview; Venturato interview.
page 141 Fare una bella figura: This expression means to make a good impression or to have a fine appearance. According to Talese in Sons, there was an “excessive” emphasis on appearance in Italy, despite the poverty or perhaps because of it. Both Luigi Battistoni and Angelo Calori were northerners, however. When discussing bella figura in North of Naples, Tullio says Italians know how to accentuate their best features, and their bearing radiates confidence and self-esteem.
page 141 Angelo Calori: Claydon, Vancouver Voters, 1886; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; British Columbia Directory; Draper, Mallandaine, Wolz, Directories; Kalman, Exploring Vancouver 2; Luxton, Building the West; Macdonald, Visual History; News clipping file, CVA; Rootsweb website; Ruocco interview; Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi”; Spada, Italians in Canada.
page 143 Klondike Gold Rush: Adney, The Klondike Stampede; Ogilvie, Early Days on the Yukon.
page 143 Hotel Europe: Claydon, Vancouver Voters; Kalman, Exploring; Luxton, Building.
page 144 Benny’s Ice Cream Parlour: Benedetti, Violet, interview.
page 145 Sylvia Apartments: Built on English Bay in 1912, the building would become the legendary Sylvia Hotel.
page 145 Tate murder: “Celebration of the 50th Anniversary”; Benedetti, Violet, interview.
page 145 “How have you got the heart”: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians, p. 28.
page 146 “Some days”: Benedetti, Violet, interview.
page 147 community organizations in Vancouver: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Kelley, Mosaic; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.”
page 147 William Gennaro Ruocco: “Celebration of the 50th Anniversary”; Culos, Marino, interview; Culos, Raymond, interview.
page 147 Filippo Branca: Bagnell, Canadese; Branca interview; Crossetti interview; O’Connor, “Memory Loss”; Scardellato, “Foreign Wastes.” Branca had been in Vancouver since 1903 when he and a fellow miner, Giuseppe Crossetti, left Vancouver Island and started the Europe Grocery Store, which was the first in Vancouver to sell food imported from Italy.
page 147 Italian regions: Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver.”
page 148 unity of New World Italians: Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Wood, Nationalism. The fact that the newly formed Sons of Italy lodge sent relief money to victims of two earthquakes in the south—the one that killed five thousand in Calabria in 1905 and the one in which several southern cities lost half their population in 1908—indicates an early willingness to ignore the north/south division of Italy.
page 148 first Italian lodges in British Columbia: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; FCL; Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.”
page 148 lodges: All British Columbian communities with a large Italian population have at least one Italian lodge, some founded before World War I, some founded as late as the 1970s. Several are named for Cristoforo Colombo or use variations on “Sons of Italy.” Others reflect the region of origin of the members. All reflect the Italian tendency toward regionalism, and they seldom amalgamate into federations, unlike such British or North American lodges as the Ancient Order of Foresters or the Independent Order of Oddfellows. The purpose of lodges was to give aid to members in times of illness, death or injury. At first, a prospective member in an Italian lodge had to be Italian and male. Women, however, were welcome to attend parties, cook all the food for banquets and bake sales, and wash all the dishes. Although women’s auxiliaries began to form before World War II, full voting membership for women was not possible in Nanaimo until many years later, and it is still not allowed in some lodges in other cities.
page 149 gardening: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; Franceschini, Joe, interview; Macmillan, Valentine and Buse interview; Quarin interview; Sedola interview; Yori interview.
CHAPTER 7
Our Foreign Brother
page 151 Anna Piccoli: Macmillan, Valentine and Buse interview; Southern interview; Valentine interview.
page 151 Powell River’s beginnings: Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River”; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes” and “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Sixty Years of Growth; Southern and Bird, Pulp, Paper and People.
page 152 Micheluzzi family: Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River;” Mitchell interview; Scardellato, “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Sixty Years. According to Southern and Bird in Pulp, Paper and People, files in the Powell River Archives and the Mitchell interview, Teresa’s fourth child was one of three white baby girls born at this time. Her daughter, Mary Josephine, and another Italian baby, Mary Termini, were born on the same day in 1912, but a non-Italian, Louise Smarge, was born a year before, making her, and not the Micheluzzi baby as is claimed by some sources, the first white girl to be born in Powell River.
page 152 Teresa Babuin: Until the middle of the twentieth century, Italian women kept their maiden names after marriage. See also the note in Chapter 1 about Valle, Maria.
page 153 Cranberry: Abalini interview; Cossarin interview; Bressanutti interview; Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River.” According to Scardellato in “Italian Immigrant Workers” and Teedie Gentile in Sixty Years, there were four Italian families (Culos, Derton, Micheluzzi and Bosa) among the first settlers in Cranberry, but Tony Culos, translator of “Powell River e gli Italiani,” and Elio Cossarin, a recognized community authority, say that Bosa didn’t come to Cranberry until 1928 and that it was not Micheluzzi but his sons, Albert and Marino (Babe) Mitchell, who settled in Cranberry, but not until later.
page 153 Riverside: Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River”; Southern and Bird, Pulp, Paper and People; Woodward interview; Zuccato interview.
page 153 Powell River company store: Bressanutti interview; Bird and Foote in Zuccato interview; Mitchell interview.
page 153 “[Italians] never bought”: Reno Bressanutti, quoted in Southern and Bird, Pulp, Paper and People, p. 169.
page 154 Augusto Bosa: Cossarin interviews; Culos, Tony, interview; Sixty Years. Bosa married his wife, Lina, shortly after he arrived in Cranberry, but they never had children. Besides being a grocer and a landlord, he was a “wheeler-dealer and money lender of last resort.” Augusto and Lina moved in 1946 to Vancouver, where he carried on an import and distribution business out of their home. In 1957, he opened a retail and wholesale business named A. Bosa and Company on Victoria Drive in Vancouver. Bosa sponsored many nieces and nephews and other relatives (he boasted there were over three hundred) who helped him in his various businesses. One of his nephews, Natale Bosa, founded Bosa Construction. page 154 “He said, ‘I’m going to fix you’”: Bressanutti interview.
page 155 Bosa and Mitchell Brothers: Cossarin interviews; Culos, Tony, interview; Lambert, Rusty Nails. The partnership continued in Cranberry and gained legendary status in Vancouver, where its Victoria Drive store and the Mitchell Brothers’ new Kootenay Street store supply Italians and other lovers of Italian food with all the ingredients necessary to cook and eat Italian. There is still a Mitchell Brothers store in Cranberry.
page 155 name changes: Giuliano interview; Neish, “In Search of the Radical Past”; Quarin interview; Yon interview; Yori interview; Zuccato interview. Some Italians, like the Mitchell brothers, anglicized their names deliberately either to integrate into Canadian society or to downplay their ethnic origin at a time when being noticeably Italian wasn’t an advantage in business. Others had their names changed by border officials and employers who couldn’t be bothered to check the proper spelling or couldn’t pronounce the name properly. In the case of Julio Ion, a mistaken reading of his handwriting by the citizenship office led at first to the spelling “Ton”; later, when he corrected it, the office spelled his name “Yon.” He said, “To hell with it,” and adopted the name Yon for his family. An Italian in Fernie named Capobianco changed his name to Whitehead, but his descendants returned to the Italian version of their name. One of the Quarin brothers of Fernie had this to say: “One of the nicest things that I’m finding about the Italian culture now is that a lot of the young Italians . . . are changing their name back to what it used to be.”
page 155 Errico family: Cossarin interviews; Culos, Tony, interview; Scardellato, “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Sixty Years.
page 155 Italian jobs in a pulp and paper mill: Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River”; Mantoani interview; Scardellato, “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Southern interview.
page 155 “made it comfortable”: Mitchell interview.
page 155 Powell River Company: Bressanutti interview; Mitchell interview; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes” and “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Southern and Bird, Pulp, Paper and People; Woodward interview.
page 156 Ocean Falls: Culos, Luciano, interview; Woodcock, Ravens.
page 156 Martignaggo family: Anonymous interview.
page 156 “Oh no, no, no”: Ibid.
page 157 “It was hard work”: Ibid.
page 157 “You get the feeling”: Woodcock, Ravens, p. 143.
page 157 “I really often had the sense”: Culos, Luciano, interview.
page 157 Canadian National Railway: The CNR was a conglomeration of struggling railways, including the CNoR and the GTP, which the Canadian government nationalized beginning in 1919 into the largest railway company in Canada.
page 158 Grand Trunk Pacific: Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Francis, “Grand Trunk Pacific”; Harney, “Padrone”; Leonard, Thousand Blunders.
page 158 labour on the Grand Trunk Pacific: Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Harney, “Padrone”; Leonard, Thousand Blunders; Spada, Italians in Canada. Although his book is principally about the United States, Foerster notes the large number of Italians employed by the Grand Trunk Pacific in British Columbia. Leonard does not include a listing for Italians in his index, but he devotes a chapter to GTP labour relations, something he says has been largely ignored by other scholars apparently because of a lack of sources, a lack that Leonard disputes.
page 159 “Feeding is unstinted”: Avery, Reluctant Host, p. 38.
page 159 Union Steamship Company: This collection of disparate boats identified by their red and black funnels had provided service to canneries, mines, logging camps and coastal towns since 1889. The service reached Prince Rupert only after 1898, when the demands of the Klondike gold rush made it a paying proposition, and carried on until 1956.
page 159 “Food unfit for a dog”: Leonard, Thousand Blunders, p. 96.
page 159 “so filthy a self-respecting pig”: Ibid.
page 160 “Tower of Babel”: Seager, “Socialists and Workers.”
page 160 “radical, Socialist, renegade”: Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie,” p. 21.
page 160 Western Federation of Miners: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; International Union of Mine Mill correspondence; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie”; Yarmie, “Community and Conflict.”
page 160 United Mine Workers of America: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie”; Weinberg, “Class Warfare from Above.” The union was formed in 1890 in the United States.
page 161 “[Hungarians and Italians] have been undesirable”: Weinberg, “Class Warfare from Above,” p. 174.
page 161 “for their cruel, heartless cheating”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 57.
page 161 “It will assist him”: International Union of Mine, Mill correspondence, Secretary-Treasurer of WFM in Denver to Andrew Shilland, Secretary of Sandon Miners’ Union, No. 81, WFM.
page 161 death of an Italian in Sandon: International Union of Mine Mill correspondence.
page 162 emigration from the Valtellina: Corsini Fonds; Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 163 Felice Cavallotti Lodge: Founding members included miners from Extension and Nanaimo.
page 163 Extension: Armanasco interview; Bowen, Boss Whistle; Canada, Industrial Disputes; Corsini Fonds.
page 163 “dust laid around boulders”: Bowen, Boss Whistle, p. 26.
page 164 Arman and Fognini: Corsini Fonds; Arman interview; Armanasco interview. The Armans had six children, five of whom survived infancy. Steve died in 1919 of a burst appendix, and Josephina, as she was called by then, supported her children by renting out the Tunnel Hotel, which her husband had bought from a brewery. In 1921 she married Tony Senini, another Tovo native who had first emigrated to Australia.
page 165 Big Strike: Avery, Reluctant Host; Bowen, Boss Whistle; Corsini interview; Fontana interview; Giovando interview; Specogna interview.
page 166 UMWA in Fernie: A six-month strike in 1911 held Fernie coal mines in its grip as six thousand UMWA members struck for an eight-hour day and wage increases. Street fights and knifing were features of the strike. Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie”; Sturino, Canada’s Peoples website.
page 166 1911 statistics: Sturino, on the Canada’s Peoples website, is presumably quoting the 1911 Canadian census figures when he writes that there were 1,200 Italians in Fernie. The figures he uses for Vancouver Island—177 Italians in Nanaimo, 332 Italians in Esquimalt—don’t make sense, however. According to Wood, Nationalism, there were only thirty to forty Italians in Victoria in 1910, down dramatically from the hundreds who were there in the mid-nineteenth century. Wood says there were ten times more Italians in Wellington and Extension, but by 1910, the year to which she is referring, the Wellington mines had closed and most of the population had gone to Extension. There were Italians in Cumberland, and there were so many Italians in Ladysmith that the Chinese owner of a bakery advertised his bread in Italian. Scardellato cites Amy Bernardy’s 1910 report, which says there were four to five thousand Italians in Nanaimo, far more than the census figures mentioned above. As to the supposed 332 Italians in Esquimalt, I can only assume that because the Dunsmuirs had built the E&N Railway or because James Dunsmuir’s residence was in Esquimalt or because the railway company owned the mines, the census taker had consolidated all Dunsmuir’s Italian employees, including the ones living in Ladysmith, under the Esquimalt heading.
page 167 Fontana family: Canada, Industrial Disputes; Fontana interview.
page 167 “a good worker, a good slave”: Fontana interview.
page 168 “And of course my father”: Giovando interview.
page 168 Lorenzo Giovando: He grew up to be Dr. Larry Giovando, a beloved physician and member of the British Columbia legislature.
page 169 Italians in the Big Strike: Pinkerton reports.
page 169 “displayed traits”: Ibid.
page 170 Cormons and Cuffalo: Cormons interview; Nicholls manuscripts.
page 170 “There was this little Italian”: Cormons interview.
page 170 “generally of the Italian”: Pinkerton reports.
page 171 “When it came to a case”: Ibid.
page 171 “Because he is Italian”: Ibid.
page 171 Vancouver before World War I: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Crosetti interview; Macdonald, Vancouver: A Visual History; McCormack, “Industrial Workers of the World”; McDonald, Making Vancouver; Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi”; Wood, Nationalism.
page 172 “shovellers on the top of the Earth”: McDonald quoting the British Columbia Commission on Labour, 1912–14, in Making Vancouver, p. 212.
page 172 Industrial Workers of the World: McCormack, “Industrial Workers of the World.” The union was an important part of the Miners’ Liberation League, which was the organization that agitated for a general strike to support the strikers during the Big Strike on Vancouver Island.
page 173 Canadian Northern strike: McCormack, “Industrial Workers of the World.” So burdened were Mackenzie and Mann by debt that they were forced to give control of the railway to the federal government in 1918.
page 174 Grand Trunk Pacific strike: Leonard, Thousand Blunders; McCormack, “Industrial Workers of the World.”
page 174 “American system of importing”: Leonard, Thousand Blunders.
page 175 “resented the Italians’ willingness”: McDonald, Making Vancouver, p. 213.
page 175 emigration from the Carnic Alps: Bernardon, Terrazzo Workers; Culos, Luciano, interview; Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 177 “commenced modestly”: Foerster, Italian Emigration, p. 122.
page 177 Tobia Castellarin: Culos, Luciano, interviews and emails; Ellis Island website.
page 177 Ellis Island: By the time it closed in 1954, more Italians had entered North America through its facilities than any other ethnic group in the sixty-two years of its operation.
page 178 “conditioned to regard”: Culos, Luciano interview.
page 178 “to raise their miserable extended family”: Ibid.
page 178 “I know everything”: Tobia Castellarin to Antonia Tomasin, October 23, 1913, CFC.
page 179 effect of unemployment and World War I on immigrants: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Specogna interview.
page 179 Friulians abroad at beginning of World War I: Bertuzzi, “Regional Emigration.” By 1915, there were only two thousand Friulian emigrants still outside the country. Most were in Europe; two hundred were in Argentina and three hundred in North America.
page 180 labour supply during World War I: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Iacovetta, Enemies Within.
CHAPTER 8
La Grande Miseria
page 181 building the Kettle Valley Railway: Eagle, Canadian Pacific; Penticton, Historical Souvenir of Penticton; Sanford, McCullough’s Wonder; Sismey, “The Kettle Valley Railway”; Williams, Myra’s Men; Wilson, Smile of Manitou. The word river was dropped from the name of the Kettle River Valley Railway when the new company was formed.
page 183 rock ovens: Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; Italian Legacy in the Mother Lode website; Sharon Keen correspondence; Williams, Myra’s Men; Wright, “The Naramata Ovens.” Italian gold seekers built outdoor stone ovens in California. There were also rock ovens at Midway on the Great Northern right-of-way and in the construction camps of other Canadian railways. Rock ovens have also been associated with Chinese cooks and Scandinavian navvies; hundreds of rock ovens in Nevada are associated with Basque shepherds and cowboys.
page 183 “well-crusted and most toothsome”: Williams, Myra’s Men, p. 93, quoting Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man.
page 183 Maurice Williams: The author of Myra’s Men, Williams is a historian who has spent much of his spare time in recent years hiking and biking the KVR and helping in the reconstruction of the fourteen Myra Canyon trestles destroyed by a forest fire in 2003.
page 183 “While not fast”: Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man, p. 110.
page 184 Italians who died building the KVR: Camillo Allursio, Dominic Allursio, Pietro Giuseppe, Leonardo Capusciuto, Giuseppe Demarchi.
page 185 Conscription in Italy: All fit men at the age of nineteen were eligible for service in the armed forces from 1907, when conscription became law, until 2004, when the bill was repealed.
page 185 Italian government response to the onset of war: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Talese, Sons. Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915 and on Germany in August 1915.
page 185 Italians enlist: Avery, Reluctant Host; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Schianni interview.
page 185 Tripoli: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Talese, Sons; Wikipedia. The justifications for invading Tripoli were as follows: it had a large Italian population; it was a geographical extension of Sicily; it was possibly a remnant of the Roman empire; and a war of conquest would unite northern and southern Italy in a common cause.
page 185 Daniele Gigliotti: Gigliotti interview.
page 186 Giuseppe LeRose and the Bocchiglierese: LeRose memoirs in Trail History, Trail of Memories; Bocchigliero Tourism Handout. Giuseppe Filipelli recruited the original group, which included men with the surnames LeRose, Catalano, Vulcano and Tedesco. Some stayed to work for the CPR and the Cominco smelter. Some went back to Italy for military service and then returned to Trail. When Canadian immigration laws after World War I prevented emigration except for family reunification, the original men from Bocchigliero were able to bring many of their relatives to Trail. People in Trail from Bocchligliero eventually numbered over one thousand. A member of the LeRose family is the current owner of the Colander restaurant, a Trail institution closely associated with the Italian community.
page 186 Battle of Caporetto and retreat: Barzini, The Italians; Osvaldo to Umberto Fabris correspondence; Franceschini, Abbondio, interview; Galli, “Monte Grappa” website; Hemingway, Farewell.
page 186 names from Natisone Valley: Nanaimo Daily Free Press; Nicholls manuscripts; Specogna interview.
page 187 “not of war”: Dr. Branko Maruši, “A Guide to the Museum.”
page 188 “happy to be alive”: Talese, Sons, p. 336.
page 188 Tony Specogna: Specogna interview; Sedola interview.
page 189 Giovanna Fabris: Culos, Ivana, interview; Culos, Luciano, interview. On Giovanna’s return home, she found that her neighbours had stolen all her furniture, including her sewing machine. Giovanna was Ivana Culos’s maternal grandmother. Ivana first saw the photograph that was taken by the army photographer in a magazine article about Remembrance Day when she lived in Prince George, British Columbia, in the 1970s. Her grandmother’s face was partially hidden, but she recognized her “buxom” Aunt Giuditta. The photograph appeared again without caption or comment in a CBC television documentary.
page 190 Osvaldo Fabris: Osvaldo to Umberto Fabris correspondence; Culos, Ivana, interview; Culos, Luciano, interview.
page 192 Platischis families in Nanaimo: Cormons interview; B.C., Ministry of Mines Annual Reports, 1918; Nanaimo Daily Free Press; Sedola interview.
page 193 Friulian emigration in 1920: Bertuzzi, “Regional Emigration.” Besides the 17,000 who went to other European countries, 1,000 went to South America, 3,000 to the United States and 1,500 to Canada.
page 193 Albert Goodwin: Mayse, Ginger; Conti, Graham and Marocchi interview.
page 193 UMWA strike in Trail in 1917: DeVito interview; Forbes, Historical Portraits; Mayse, Ginger; Tognotti interview; Turnbull, Topping’s; Waldie manuscript.
page 195 unions and Italians 1914–19: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Rode-Scott, “Historic Neighbourhood”; Seager, “F.H. Sherman of Fernie.”
page 196 transport of Italians back to Italy: “Transportation for Italians,” LAC. Before February 20, 1919, the only way Italians could return from Canada to Italy was via New York.
page 196 “misery to near starvation”: Culos, Luciano, interview.
page 197 “In our society”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 9
Less Desirable Classes
page 199 Vancouver’s Little Italy, 1918 to 1930: Battistoni interview; Benedetti, Violet, interview; Branca interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Leland, Negrin, Venturato and Tiveron interviews.
page 199 mungo sungo: A game unique to Strathcona that required the players to balance a feather hat and then keep it in the air by kicking it.
page 200 crime in Strathcona: Benedetti, Violet, interview; Branca interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Leland interview; Negrin interview.
page 200 “[She] knocked me flying”: Dora Buse in Macmillan, Valentine and Buse interview.
page 200 “people called us dagos”: Corsini interview.
page 201 “slag and scum”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 108.
page 201 racism in the 1920s: Bradwin, Bunkhouse Man; Corsini interview; Macmillan, Valentine and Buse interview.
page 201 “less desirable classes”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 105, quoting Deputy Secretary F.C. Blair of the Department of Immigration and Colonization.
page 201 “not only for [their] alleged propensity”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 92. page 201 Italy in turmoil: Barzini, The Italians; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Spada, Italians in Canada; Talese, Sons.
page 201 Mussolini: Barzini, The Italians; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins: The War Series, Part II, 1942–45; Pennacchio, “Exporting Fascism”; Talese, Sons.
page 202 Italian government interest in emigration: RG25 A2 File C19/49, LAC; RG 25 A6 Vol. 407, LAC.
page 202 Amabile Ius: Anderson interview.
page 203 immigration after World War I: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Kelley, Mosaic; International Union of Mine, Mill correspondence; Rolle, Immigrant Upraised; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes.”
page 204 railways in the 1920s: Thompson, Decades of Discord.
page 204 “the aversion of the native-born”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 94.
page 204 government policy in the 1920s: Ibid.; Kelley, Mosaic.
page 204 effects of the Railway Agreement: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Thompson, Decades of Discord; Kelley, Mosaic.
page 205 “this cursed business”: Avery, Reluctant Host, p. 105.
page 205 questionnaire for would-be farmers: Devlin Papers, “Application for Employment to Canada,” LAC.
page 205 British government warning: Letter from British Passport Control Office (Rome) to Canadian Immigration office in Antwerp, May 28, 1924, RG25 A6, Vol. 47, LAC.
page 206 Lucia Constantini: Constantini interview. Lucia was ninety-nine years old and living on her own when interviewed in 2004.
page 209 “‘Cheap’ men”: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners, p. 107.
page 209 “who jabber all the tongues”: Ibid.
page 210 immigration in the 1920s: The sources do not agree about the magnitude of Italian immigration to Canada in this period. In “The Italians of Vancouver,” Jansen says it virtually disappeared between 1914 and 1940. Avery in Dangerous Foreigners agrees, saying that the Railway Agreement allowed the railways to bring in 185,000 central European agricultural workers between 1925 and 1930, but no Italians. But Rolle in Immigrant Upraised says several thousand Italians entered Canada each year in the 1920s, and Spada, in Italians in Canada, says the number of Italians in Canada increased from 66,769 in 1921 to 98,173 in 1931. Not included in this increase of thirty thousand immigrants were the sojourners who came in great numbers but, having no fixed address and no intention to settle in Canada, would probably not have been counted. The Italian government tried on more than one occasion to count the number of people leaving Italy permanently, but given the number who came and went several times and the number who emigrated illegally without a passport, the effort was generally unsuccessful.
page 210 air pollution in Trail: DeVito interview; Masleck, “More Smoke”; Tognotti interview; Waldie manuscript. The vegetation-killing sulphur dioxide emissions stopped when communities downwind from Trail, particularly on the American side, protested, and the International Joint Commission levied heavy fines against Cominco. By that time the company had built a fertilizer plant at War-field, a village between Rossland and the Gulch, to convert sulphur dioxide into fertilizer. As a result, decades later, the hills around Trail are green again.
page 211 saving the gardens: Caravetta interview; DeVito interview; Franceschini, Joe, interview; Priore interview; Rode-Scott, “Historic Neighbourhood”; Tognotti interview.
page 211 “We never blamed the company”: DeVito interview.
page 212 lead absorption in Trail: Dimock interview; Dimock, “Lead Poisoning”; Dimock, “Occupation Health”; Mayse, Ginger. The number of lead poisoning compensation claims dropped from sixty-six in 1936 to fewer than ten in 1940.
page 212 “It was terrible”: Mayse, Ginger, p. 95.
page 212 “It was common knowledge”: Martin interview.
page 213 beer as a medicinal beverage: Mayse, Ginger; Rode-Scott, “Historic Neighbourhood.”
page 214 Italian government rules for emigration: Canada, Colonial Office, LAC; Devlin Papers, LAC.
page 214 Bafaro family: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; Bafaro, Robert and Joan, interview. Rachel died in 1955 after twenty-five years of marriage. Francesco married a third time because he couldn’t live by himself and he wouldn’t live with any of his children. His new wife, Teresa, “waited on him hand and foot,” for ten years until he died, and then she went back to Spezzano Piccolo.
page 215 opposition to immigrants at the beginning of the Depression: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Avery, Reluctant Host; Thompson, Decades of Discord; Thompson, Ethnic Minorities.
CHAPTER 10
Gold for the Fatherland
page 216 “more popular”: Barzini, The Italians, p. 146.
page 216 Mussolini’s accomplishments: Barzini, The Italians; Buonavita interview; Coffey, Lion by the Tail; Talese, Sons; Tullio, North of Naples.
page 217 draining the marshes: The discovery of DDT in the late 1930s and its subsequent use by the American army in Italy after 1943 finished what Mussolini had begun when he drained the marshes.
page 217 “Italians seemed to revere him”: Coffey, Lion by the Tail, p. 20.
page 217 Italian government and the diaspora: According to Foerster, Italian Emigration, a pre–World War I manual given to emigrants leaving for Argentina reminded Italians that Italy still regarded them as its subjects and assured them that when the inevitable day came when the laws of Argentina were at odds with the laws of Italy, “the two governments will amicably settle each instance as it arises.” An extensive correspondence between the royal consul general of Italy in Canada and the Department of Immigration and Colonization in 1918 about the number of Italians in the Canadian armed forces leaves the reader with the impression that the Italian government was prepared to intervene, even in the case of Italians who were Canadian citizens. Canada, “Number of Italians in Canadian Forces,” LAC.
page 217 fasci: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Iacovetta, Enemies Within; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi”; Spada, Italians in Canada; Wood, Nationalism. In addition to those in Vancouver, there were fasci in cities across Canada and particularly in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary.
page 218 Sons of Italy: Branca interview; Culos, Marino, interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians.
page 219 vice-consuls: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Iacovetta, Enemies Within.
page 219 “to define a common Italianità”: Cumbo, “‘Uneasy Neighbours,’” p. 100.
page 219 “intimidated, persecuted”: Principe, “Tangled Knot,” p. 31.
page 220 RCMP surveillance: Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Principe, “Tangled Knot”; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins: The Early Years.
page 221 Majestic Hall: Crosetti interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians.
page 221 L.D. Taylor: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Francis, Louis Taylor page 222 Wildwood: Macmillan, Valentine and Buse interview; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Souvenir Program, Wildwood.
page 223 scaffolding accident: Cossarin interview; Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River.” Large crosses top the matching headstones that mark the graves of Primo Gobbo, Giuseppe Morello and Giovanni Peloso and make the graves visible from the road that passes in front of the Powell River Cemetery. On the other side of the road is D.A. Evans Park, named for the mill manager who replaced the notorious Joe Falconer in 1937.
page 223 CCF purge: Bressanutti interview; Cossarin interview; Culos, Ermes and Tony, “Powell River”; Mitchell interview; Scardellato, “Frozen Wastes”; Scardellato, “Italian Immigrant Workers”; Southern and Bird, Pulp, Paper and People; Southern interview; Souvenir Program, Wildwood; Powell River’s First Fifty Years.
page 224 Socialist Party courting Italians: Canada, “Public Socialist Meetings,” LAC; Robin, Radical Politics.
page 224 “may now be held publicly”: Canada, “Public Socialist Meetings,” LAC.
page 225 “found [their] way”: Souvenir Program, Wildwood.
page 225 “You never knew”: Mitchell interview.
page 225 Canadians’ attitude to Fascism in 1935: Principe, “A Tangled Knot.”
page 226 gold for the Fatherland: Anonymous interview; Bressanutti interview; Coffey, Lion by the Tail; Levi, Christ Stopped; Pennacchio, “Exploring Fascism”; Sedola interview; Spada, Italians in Canada. The sources disagree over whether the replacement rings were made of steel or of iron.
page 226 “[They] were coming around”: Anonymous interview.
page 226 donated gold: The rings and other gold jewellery were supposed to go to the Canadian mint to be melted down and then on to the Italian Red Cross, but legend has it that the jewellery surfaced years later in its original state in California, where it had been hidden by Italian diplomats in case things went badly in Italy.
page 227 Willie Ruocco: Culos, Marino, interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Ruocco interview; Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi.”
page 228 Ghislieri family: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi.” Contrary to all other sources, Jansen, in “The Italians of Vancouver,”
says the Italian-Canadian Society was founded in 1930, five years before Ghislieri arrived in Vancouver.
page 229 RCMP in the late 1930s: Bagnell, Canadese; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins: The Depression Years, Parts II, III, IV; Principe, “Tangled Knot.”
page 229 “A good fascist”: Principe, “Tangled Knot,” p. 38.
page 230 Fernie meeting: It is interesting to speculate on how the RCMP undercover officer was able to determine which men were Italians and Slavs at the Fernie meeting in 1935. Had he been in the community so long that he knew these men? Or was he guessing based on his idea of what Italians and Slavs looked like?
page 230 Tom Uphill: Mayor of Fernie from 1915 to 1946 and 1950 to 1955; MLA from 1920 to 1960. The CCF was too conservative for Uphill, but though his views tended to conform with those of the CPC, he never joined and was always associated with parties with the word labour in their name.
page 230 Natal, Middletown and Michel: Anderson, Fabro, Quarin and Ungaro interviews.
page 230 “behind the coke ovens”: Anderson, Busato, Fabro and Quarin interviews; Scott and Hanic, East Kootenay Saga.
page 231 coke ovens: Anderson, Busato, Guzzi and Quarin interviews; B.C., Ministry of Mines Annual Reports, 1901.
page 231 “There was no nothing”: Quarin interview.
page 231 Quarin family: Ibid.
page 233 “Today we have a jumble”: Ibid.
page 233 Branca: Bagnell, Canadese; Branca interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Francis, “Branca, Angelo Ernest”; Marlatt, Opening Doors.
page 233 Marino Culos: Culos, Marino, interview; Culos, Raymond, interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians. Although Raymond Culos is frank when he tells his father’s story, his love and respect for Marino is obvious throughout his book.
page 233 Cleofe Forti: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians. An experienced and well-trained teacher, Forti was a Fascist, but she is remembered fondly and respected even now by her former students.
page 235 L’Eco italo-canadese: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Spada, Italians in Canada. Marino Culos’s newspaper ownership ended with a struggle between the two partners over the sill of an open window on the twelfth floor of the building that housed the newspaper. Marino’s thumbs were on his partner’s throat when the two men came to their senses.
page 235 RCMP’s list: Bagnell, Canadese; Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Thompson, Ethnic Minorities; Kelly, “The Prisoner of War Camps.”
page 235 “zealous members”: Bagnell, Canadese, p. 73.
CHAPTER 11
Enemy Aliens
page 237 reaction to outbreak of World War II: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Leland interview; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins: The Depression Years, Part IV.
page 237 RCMP activity between September 1939 and June 1940: Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, Parts IV and VI.
page 237 “The Italian has a volatile nature”: Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletin, Part VI, p. 232.
page 238 “There was not much conversation”: Leland interview.
page 238 buildup to Mussolini’s declaration of war: Bagnell, Canadese; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Iacovetta, Enemies Within; Kelley, Mosaic.
page 238 declaration of war: Bagnell, Canadese; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, Part VI; Principe, “Tangled Knot”; Vancouver Sun.
page 238 arrests of Italians: Bagnell, Canadese; Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Kelley, Mosaic.
page 239 Vice-Consul Brancucci: The diplomat was finally arrested in New York in October 1942 and detained on Ellis Island.
page 239 naturalization: This was the term used before Canadians were granted the right to Canadian rather than British citizenship. By June 14, more than nine hundred Italian Canadians in Vancouver had registered voluntarily with the Vigilance Committee, according to the Nanaimo Daily Free Press.
page 239 “the alien and enemy alien situation”: Nanaimo Daily Free Press, June 11, 1940.
page 239 first few days after June 10: Bagnell, Canadese; Ciccocelli, The Innocuous Enemy; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, Part VI; Vancouver Sun, June 10–15, 17, 18, 1940.
page 240 “The mother was afraid”: Culos, Marino, interview.
page 241 “properly organized”: Ibid.
page 241 “And no one”: Ibid.
page 241 “The Italian people in Nanaimo”: Nanaimo Daily Free Press, June 13, 1940.
page 242 numbers of detainees: Hostetter, NCIC.
page 242 enemy aliens: Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Principe, “Tangled Knot”; Vancouver Sun, June 11, 1940.
page 242 Kananaskis Camp: Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Kelly, “The Prisoner of War Camps”; Oltmann, My Valley.
page 242 Ruocco and Ghislieri: Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Hostetter, NCIC, Culos, “Souvenirs Ricordi.”
page 243 Ennio Victor Fabri: A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Fabri was barely thirty when he was arrested. His father, the sculptor Alemando Fabri, who was born in Tuscany and remained fiercely nationalistic even after he arrived in Vancouver via Pittsburgh in 1911, was arrested at the same time. Alemando’s work can be seen in the Marine Building foyer and the Georgia Hotel, among other notable locations.
page 244 Pasqualini: Ibid.
page 245 Arandora Star: Aniballi interview; Bruit, “Internment”; Iacovetta, Enemies Within; SS Arandora Star website.
page 246 Malaspina: Black, John, lecture; Francis, “Malaspina, Alejandro”; Kendrick, Alejandro Malaspina.
page 246 place names associated with Malaspina: Malaspina Galleries on Gabriola Island; Malaspina Strait between Texada Island and the mainland of British Columbia; Malaspina Peak near Tahsis on Vancouver Island; Malaspina Inlet in Desolation Sound. In addition, Vancouver Island University (VIU) in Nanaimo used to be called Malaspina College; the drama facility at VIU is still named Malaspina Theatre.
page 247 registration: Anderson interview; Bruit, “Internment”; Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Culos, Marino, interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; DeVito interview; Johnstone interview; Gigliotti interview; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, The War Years, 1939–41 and The War Series, Part II, 1942–45; Quarin interview; Schianni interview; Vancouver Sun. Spouses and families were not included on the lists of enemy aliens. As to the requirement to surrender explosives, one is hard pressed to imagine what sort of explosives a city dweller might innocently have stored in his house.
page 247 “registration of enemy aliens”: Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien.”
page 247 “It is the law”: Ibid.
page 247 “too timid to go”: Vancouver Sun, June 18, 1940.
page 248 Ben Gigliotti: All the Gigliottis of Fernie come from the municipality of Colosimi in the province of Cosenza, but they are not necessarily related to one another.
page 248 “All this has had”: Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, The War Years, 1939–41.
page 249 reaction of Italian community to internment and registration: Bruit, “Internment”; Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Culos, Marino, interview; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, The War Years, 1939–41.
page 249 other internment camps: In February 1941, Kananaskis became a camp exclusively for Germans. Italians who were still interned were moved to Petawawa near Pembroke, Ontario. This was a larger camp with more Fascists, more wealthy men and more criminals, including Mafiosi. A year later, in the summer of 1942, the remaining 162 Italians were moved to Gagetown, where living conditions were harsher and the weather worse, and where the presence of radical Nazis led to violence between Italians and Germans. Bagnell, Canadese; Bruit, “Internment”; Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians.
page 249 internment policies: Bruit, “Internment”; Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, The War Years, 1939–41.
page 249 “great favour”: Kealey, R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins, The War Series, Part II, 1942–45.
page 249 treatment of Italians in Canada during World War II: Ciccocelli, “The Innocuous Enemy Alien”; Guzzi interview; Canada, External Affairs, “Payment of Pensions,” LAC.
page 250 minor humiliations: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; DeVito interview; Franceschini interview; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing”; Zuccato interview.
page 251 “tension and expectation”: Origo, War in Val d’Orcia, pp. 155–56.
page 251 Castelsilano: Aiello interview; Campise interview; Gentile interview; Giuliano interview.
page 251 Grand Sila: A forested, mountainous area in Calabria on a high plateau, it became a national park in 2002.
page 251 Aiello family: Aiello interview; Ciuliano interview.
page 252 World War II in southern Italy: Facaros, Bay of Naples; Gentile interview; Luongo interview; Marasco interview; Perri interview.
page 252 “We were scared”: Ungaro interview.
page 252 Canadian troops in Italy: Barris, Days of Victory; Boss, Daily News; Mowat, “I Remember Italy”; Saunders, “Canada’s Quagmire.” The last of the Canadian forces left Italy in February 1945 and went to northwestern Europe.
page 253 “Before the war”: Mowat, “I Remember Italy.”
page 253 “The first time”: Luongo interview.
page 254 “I was in a bomb”: Marasco interview.
page 254 “[It was a] light”: Ibid.
page 254 Italy from the invasion to the end of the war: Barzini, The Italians; Cossarin interview; Hawes, Extra Virgin; Newby, Love and War; Origo, War in Val d’Orcia; Robb, Midnight; Sedola interview; Talese, Sons.
page 255 “because they, being persecuted”: Barzini, The Italians.
page 255 experiences during the War of Liberation: Anonymous interviews; Campagnaro interview; Cossarin interview; Culos, Ivana, interview; Culos, Luciano, interviews; Sedola interview; Specogna interview.
page 256 “Mussolini he think”: Marasco interview.
page 257 conditions in Italy: Letters from both the Allied and German sectors passed through the hands of censors. Canada, Dept. of National Defence, “Report of Mail from Italy November 1, 1944 to January 15, 1945,” LAC.
page 257 “In our small town”: “Report of Mail from Italy,” October 27, 1944, LAC.
page 257 “It frightens one”: Ibid., November 22, 1944.
page 258 “The Germans made many passes”: Sedola interview.
page 258 “They were thieves”: Ibid.
page 258 “Anyone that has guns”: Specogna interview.
page 259 “We didn’t know”: Ivana Campagnaro in Campagnaro interview.
page 260 “Everyone was afraid”: Anonymous interview. “Angelina Scarpolini” is a pseudonym.
page 260 “We are alive”: Ibid.
page 261 “He came home”: Ibid.
page 261 “prehistoric squalor”: Barzini, The Italians, p. 143.
page 262 “My wife and I”: Aiello interview.
page 262 “Everything was so precious”: Giuliano interview.
page 262 “Well, Italy is nice”: Bascio interview.
page 262 “Well, Old Country”: Campagnaro interview.
page 262 “rich in everything”: Bagnell, Canadese.
page 262 “Emigration was in their history”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 12
Impossible to Dream
page 263 “‘Is no you’”: Bascio interview. Giovanni Ferrarelli died three months after he and Serafina arrived in Fernie from the injuries he suffered in a coal mine. Serafina was pregnant with their fourth child. She supported her family by herself until she remarried eight years later.
page 264 postwar Italy: Avery, Reluctant Host; Barzini, The Italians; DeVito interview; Facaros, Bay of Naples; Giuliano, “Noi andiamo”; Kelley, Mosaic; Marasco and Specogna interviews; Quilici, “Strong Lady”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada.
page 264 Canada’s response to postwar labour and immigration: Avery, Reluctant Host; Bagnell, Canadese; Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Kelley, Mosaic; Spada, Italians in Canada; Whitaker, Double Standard.
page 265 “genuine farmers”: Avery, Reluctant Host, p. 201 fn.
page 265 statistics: Avery, Reluctant Host; Bagnell, Canadese.
page 265 “satisfy the Minister”: Kelley, Mosaic, p. 323.
page 265 “after that it was just a parade”: Bafaro, Robert and Joan, interview.
page 266 late fall departure: Leaving Italy in the late fall after the harvest was complete meant that these immigrants arrived at their destinations in the middle of a Canadian winter, a quirk of timing that gave them a bad first impression of their new home.
page 266 Pier 21: Halifax has been processing immigrants since 1749. Pier 21 is a complex of buildings containing facilities for immigrants that is connected to a railway station. During the years it operated between 1928 and 1971, Italians were the third-largest national group to go through, after British and American immigrants.
page 266 “I said no”: Aiello interview.
page 266 “I wasn’t a farmer”: Ibid.
page 266 “I jumped on him”: Ibid.
page 267 sponsorship: Giuliano interview; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Quilici, “Strong Lady.”
page 267 RCMP role in immigration: Avery, Reluctant Host; Whitaker, Double Standard. In 1956–57, the RCMP was rejecting two hundred applicants a month, particularly those who were hoping to work in trades where unions, such as the one for railway track workers, had Communist affiliations.
page 268 “We want honourable people”: The once young woman is anonymous by request because the accusation of the consular official still upsets her.
page 269 “the sturdy men”: Bagnell, Canadese, p. 108.
page 270 Kitimat: Beck, Three Towns; Garvey, King and Queen; Squazzin interview; Wood, Nationalism.
page 271 marrying non-Italians: Comazetto, Cossarin, Gigliotti, Franceschini, Quarin, Vigna and Yori interviews; Hostetter, NCIC.
page 271 non-Italian wives of lodge members: The Società Cristoforo Colombo in Kamloops allows Italians with non-Italian wives to join, but it doesn’t allow Italian women who marry non-Italians to join.
page 272 problema del Mezzogiorno: Barzini, The Italians; Levi, Christ Stopped; Crisafio, Culos, Luciano, Sguazzin and Vitacchio interviews.
page 273 earthquakes: Bagnell, Canadese; Culos, Luciano, interviews. The many devastating earthquakes suffered by the south, according to Foerster, Italian Emigration, created “a mood of helplessness or even apathy.”
page 274 baccalà: Luvisotto interview.
page 275 “Walk back and forth”: Sedola interview.
page 275 superstition: Crisafio, Gentile, Gigliotti, Giuliano, Perri, Schianni and Ungaro interviews; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing.” Although the word affascina is used frequently in interviews with people from Fernie, it is not familiar to my translator, who speculates that it may be Calabrian dialect.
page 277 “It’s like you have”: Gentile interview.
page 277 “There’s lots in Fernie”: Perri interview.
page 278 “I spent my youth”: Giuliano interview.
page 279 the Ghost Rider and the Fernie curse: Caravetta, Crisafio, Giuliano and Minifie interviews; Ratch, “An Impossible Curse”; Robertson, “Politics of Cursing.” Not all people looking at the Ghost Rider see the same thing. Others see a man and woman on horseback or a woman chasing a man on horseback.
page 280 “like Indians from a movie”: Giuliano interview.
page 280 difference between pre-war and postwar immigrants: Bagnell, Canadese; Campagnaro and Gigliotti interviews; Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver.”
page 281 “They came here”: Campagnaro interview.
page 281 “They used to call us”: Ibid.
page 281 “the Canadian embassy”: Ibid.
page 282 “‘Pick up the sixty thousand’”: Ibid.
page 282 immigrants without passports: Leaving Italy without a passport, a practice common in all eras of Italian immigration, and the coming and going of sojourners each year or so made it difficult for Italy to keep precise emigration figures. See also Chapter 6 notes about passports.
page 282 “Where Edmonton is?”: Campagnaro interview.
page 283 “One, two, three”: Ibid.
page 283 “The contractor said”: Ibid.
page 284 Idana and Johnny Campagnaro: Ibid.
page 284 Antonietta and Modesto Luongo: Luongo interview.
page 284 women working outside the home: Bagnell, Canadese; Foerster, Italian Emigration; Giuliano and Luongo interviews; Quilici, “Strong Lady.”
page 285 “If they notta work”: Luongo interview.
page 285 “I find when I come”: Ibid.
page 286 Vancouver 1945 to 1960: Bagnell, Canadese; Benedetti, Violet, Culos, Raymond and Leland interviews; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians; Marlatt, Opening Doors; Quilici, “Strong Lady”; Rosenbluth, “Leisure Time.”
page 287 Pietro Culos family: Culos, Luciano, interviews and emails; Culos, Tony, interview; Sixty Years. Luciano finished high school and earned a teaching degree from Simon Fraser University. He married Ivana Castellarin (no relation), whom he met on a visit home. After eight years together in Canada, they and their three Canadian-born daughters returned to Italy, where Ivana’s parents still lived. Luciano is fluent in English and trained in history, understands British Columbia and is a passionate Friulian. He now makes his living as a translator. Luciano’s travelling companion, his brother Ermes, also graduated from university and became a beloved teacher in Ashcroft, British Columbia, and a translator into Friulian of works such as The Divine Comedy and Shakespearean plays.
page 288 silkworms: Culos, Luciano, interviews; Einaudi, “What is the Future of Italy?” website; Finnemore, Peeps at Many Lands; Foerster, Italian Emigration.
page 288 Montasio cheese: Women from the village took their excess milk to the co-op or latteria, where they made Montasio cheese—so named for the place in the Julian Alps where the cattle grazed in the summer. The softer, sweeter version is not exported; the aged cheese that is exported is harder and more piquant. page 288 pig processing: Foerster, Italian Emigration; Giuliano and Specogna interviews; Ricci, “The Best of Two Worlds.”
page 289 Italy from 1960 to the present: Barzini, The Italians; Campagnaro, Campise and Rosetta interviews; Ramirez, Italians in Canada; Spada, Italians in Canada; Tullio, North of Naples.
page 291 “slow, irrational, underpaid”: Barzini, The Italians.
page 293 Canadian population figures: Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver”; Ramirez, Italians in Canada. Ethnic population figures depend on whether the statistician defining them is interested in the newly arrived or the permanently settled, country of origin, mother tongue or genetic origins. In 1971, over 7 percent of the Canadian-Italian population resided in British Columbia.
page 293 “I am rich”: Campagnaro interview.
page 293 Communism: Bafaro, Frank and Sheila, interview; Tullio, North of Naples; Vitacchio interview.
page 294 Italian businesses: Many Italian businessmen started by owning a grocery store and importing the staples of an Italian diet. Canadian-owned stores did not stock the variety and quality of cheeses, pastas and olive oil that Italian cooks regarded as essential.
page 294 Pete Maffeo: Maffeo was raised in Extension by his uncle, Joseph Fontana, after his parents died within two years of each other. See Chapter 7 for the role Fontana played in the Vancouver Island Big Strike of 1912–14.
page 295 Capozzi family: Hammond, “Italians in British Columbia”; Jansen, “The Italians of Vancouver”; Norris, Strangers; Spada, Italians in Canada.
page 295 Filiponi family: Corsini interview; Cossarin interview; Culos, Raymond, Society of Italians.
page 295 the family: Barzini, The Italians; Harney, “Commerce”; Quilici, “Strong Lady”; Tullio, North of Naples.
page 295 “the first source of power”: Barzini, The Italians, p. 190.
page 296 “Being Italian is being Catholic”: Giuliano interview.
page 296 status of the ’Ndrangheta: Dispatches on CBC radio, July 6, 2008.