From the moment explorer Giovanni Caboto stepped onto Canadian soil, Italians have left their footprints on Canadian history. In the 1700s, Italians including Alphonse and Henri de Tonti came to New France to trade with the Natives and settle the vast land. In the 1800s, Italian workers built the foundation for railways and highways into Canada's northern forests. Today, Little Italy is a part of every major Canadian city. The Italian-Canadian vote is even credited with helping keep Canada together in Québec's sovereignty referendum.
From the moment explorer Giovanni Caboto stepped onto Canadian soil, Italians have left their footprints on Canadian history. In the 1700s, Italians including Alphonse and Henri de Tonti came to New France to trade with the Natives and settle the vast land. In the 1800s, Italian workers built the foundation for railways and highways into Canada's northern forests. Today, Little Italy is a part of every major Canadian city. The Italian-Canadian vote is even credited with helping keep Canada together in Qu?bec's sovereignty referendum.
Italians came to Canada to seek a better life. From the 1870s to the 1920s they arrived in large numbers and found work mainly in mining, railway building, forestry, construction, and farming. As time passed, many used their skills to set up successful small businesses, often in Little Italy districts in cities like Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Winnipeg. Many struggled with the language and culture in Canada, but their children became part of the Canadian mix. When Canada declared war on Italy on June 10, 1940, the government used the War Measures Act to label all Italian citizens over the age of eighteen as enemy aliens. Those who had received Canadian citizenship after 1922 were also deemed enemy aliens. Immediately, the RCMP began making arrests. Men, young and old, and a few women were taken from their homes, offices, or social clubs without warning. In all, about 700 were imprisoned in internment camps, mainly in Ontario and New Brunswick. The impact of this internment was felt immediately by families who lost husbands and fathers, but the effects would live on for decades. Eventually, pressure from the Italian Canadian community led Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to issue an apology for the internment and to admit that it was wrong. Using historical photographs, paintings, documents, and first-person narratives, this book offers a full account of this little-known episode in Canadian history.
Through a historical and economic analysis of Italian Canadian migration in the second half of the 20th century and through the study of Italian and Canadian archival sources, this book provides an analytic and in-depth tool for the study of the economic and cultural relations between Italy and Canada, from the Golden Age until the present. It focuses, in particular, on the analysis of migratory flows between the two countries, on the evolution of integration, work and assistance problems, and on the promotion of Italian-Canadian culture. The book also retraces the evolution of some relevant non-profit organizations and their role in the enhancement of Italian-Canadian cultural heritage.
Enemies Within is the first study of its kind to examine not only the formulation and uneven implementation of internment policy, but the social and gender history of internment. It brings together national and international perspectives.
Like an armor-toothed belt across Italy’s upper thigh, the Gothic Line was the most fortified and fiercely defended position the German army had yet thrown in the path of the Allied forces. On August 25, 1944, it fell to I Canadian Corps to spearhead the famed Eighth Army’s major offensive, intended to rip through it. The 1st Infantry and 5th Armored Divisions advanced into a killing ground covered by thousands of machine-gun, antitank gun positions, and pillboxes expertly sited behind minefields and dense thickets of barbed wire. Never had the Germans in Italy brought so much artillery to bear or deployed such a great number of tanks. For 28 days, the battle raged as the Allied troops slugged an ever deeper hole into the German defences. The Metauro River, the Foglia River, Point 204, Tomba Di Pesaro, Coriano Ridge, San Martino, and San Fortunato became place names seared into the memories of those who fought there. They fought in a dust-choked land under a searing sun which by battle's end was reduced to a guagmire by rain. But they prevailed and on September 22 won the ground overlooking the Po River Valley, opening the way for the next phase of the Allied advance.
Between 1880 and 1915, thirteen million Italians left their homeland, launching the largest emigration from any country in recorded world history. As the young Italian state struggled to adapt to the exodus, it pioneered the establishment of a “global nation”—an Italy abroad cemented by ties of culture, religion, ethnicity, and economics. In this wide-ranging work, Mark Choate examines the relationship between the Italian emigrants, their new communities, and their home country. The state maintained that emigrants were linked to Italy and to one another through a shared culture. Officials established a variety of programs to coordinate Italian communities worldwide. They fostered identity through schools, athletic groups, the Dante Alighieri Society, the Italian Geographic Society, the Catholic Church, Chambers of Commerce, and special banks to handle emigrant remittances. But the projects aimed at binding Italians together also raised intense debates over priorities and the emigrants’ best interests. Did encouraging loyalty to Italy make the emigrants less successful at integrating? Were funds better spent on supporting the home nation rather than sustaining overseas connections? In its probing discussion of immigrant culture, transnational identities, and international politics, this fascinating book not only narrates the grand story of Italian emigration but also provides important background to immigration debates that continue to this day.
After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Toronto. This book describes their labour, business, social and cultural history as they settled in their new home. It addresses fundamental issues that impacted both them and the city, including ethnic economic niching, unionization, urban proletarianization and migrants' entrepreneurship. In addressing these issues the book focuses on the role played by a specific economic sector in enabling immigrants to find their place in their new host society. More specifically, this study looks at the residential sector of the construction industry that, between the 1950s and the 1970s, represented a typical economic ethnic niche for newly arrived Italians. In fact, tens of thousands of Italian men found work in this sector as labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and cement finishers, while hundreds of others became contractors, subcontractors or small employers in the same industry. This book is about these real people. It gives voice to a community formed both by entrepreneurial subcontractors who created companies out of nothing and a large group of exploited workers who fought successfully for their rights. In this book you will find stories of inventiveness and hope as well as of oppression and despair. The purpose is to offer an original approach to issues arising from the economic and social history of twentieth-century mass migrations.
Whether you are planning a romantic Italian getaway, packing a knapsack for your junior year abroad, or just want to engage your Italian business associate in everyday conversation, Italian Made Simple is the perfect book for any self-learner. Void of all the non-essentials and refreshingly easy to understand, Italian Made Simple includes: * basics of grammar * vocabulary building exercises * pronunciation aids * common expressions * word puzzles and language games * contemporary reading selections * Italian culture and history * economic information * Italian-English and English-Italian dictionaries Complete with drills, exercises, and answer keys for ample practice opportunities, Italian Made Simple will soon have you speaking Italian like a native.
Italian anarchism emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, during that country’s long and bloody unification. Often facing economic hardship and political persecution, many of Italy’s anarchists migrated to North America. Wherever Italian anarchists settled they published journals, engaged in labour and political activism, and attempted to re-create the radical culture of their homeland. Transnational Radicals examines the transnational anarchist movement that existed in Canada and the United States between 1915 and 1940. Against a backdrop of brutal and open class war—with governments calling upon militias to suppress strikes, radicals thrown in jail for publicly speaking against capitalism and the church, and those of foreign birth being deported and even executed for political activities—Italian anarchism was successfully transplanted. Transnationalism made it more difficult for states to destroy groups spread across wide geographical spaces. In Italy and abroad the strong anarchist identity informed by class, ethnicity, and gender reinforced movement values, promoted movement expansion, and assisted mobilization during times of crisis. In Transnational Radicals, Tomchuk makes use of Italian government security files and Italian-language anarchist newspapers to reconstruct a vibrant and little-studied political movement during a tumultuous period of modern North American history.
