THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE of Italian heritage living in Canada topped the one million mark in the last decennial census. The presence of Italian men and women in politics, the arts, education, and business has been increasingly evident in recent years. Today, Italian communities exist throughout the country. More than three-quarters of Italians have chosen to live in Canada’s cities and have been central in the physical and cultural transformation of these urban areas. As labourers, many Italians did the back breaking work of construction and manufacturing to fuel Canada’s booming postwar economy. Later, as purveyors of Italian cultural foods, fashion and styles, especially in cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, significant multigenerational Italian communities have recast these cities.

Before the Great Depression, almost 150,000 Italians entered Canada to earn enough money to buy some land back in Italy. Following World War II, almost 500,000 Italians entered Canada to work and to make a life for themselves and their children. By 1981, almost 87 percent had settled in Quebec and Ontario with the majority of those in Montreal and Toronto. Almost 70 percent came from Italy’s south, 12 percent from central Italy, and 18 percent from the north. Many arrived from areas such as the provinces of Cosenza and Catanzaro in Calabria, L’Aquila in Abruzzo, Campobasso in Molise, and smaller numbers from Sicily, Lazio, Puglia, Veneto, and Friuli. Of all officially counted Italian immigrants to arrive in the United States over the last century, half immigrated before 1910; for Canada, the median year was 1955!

Although the vast majority of Italians can trace their origins in Canada to the postwar period, there have been more than four centuries of different forms of interaction between Italians and Canada. First, before the birth of either the Canadian or Italian states in the 1860s, individuals working for English, French, or Spanish monarchs journeyed to Canada. Later, in the nineteenth century, northern Italians with specialized skills such as music and language teachers, hoteliers, or masons provided services for the general society. After the 1880s, Italians (many of them peasants from southern Italy) began to migrate to Canada in massive numbers as part of the great trans-Atlantic migrations of Europeans that continued up to the Great Depression. Many came to work seasonally but still others settled and created the foundation for postwar communities. Following World War II, mass immigration to Canada from Italy recommenced at historically unprecedented levels that continued up until the early 1970s. As early as 1497, with the arrival in Newfoundland of Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) in the service of the English King Henry VII, individuals from the Italian peninsula began to come to Canada. Other notable figures included Francesco Bressani, the Jesuit priest whose Relazione Breve written in Italian about his experiences among the Huron in French Canada was published in 1653. As military men in the service of France in the New World, several men of Italian heritage played prominent roles. Enrico di Tonti was La Salle’s lieutenant in the 1680s during the expansion of the fur trade. General Carlo Burlamacchi helped defend New France against the British in 1759-60. Captain Filipo de Grassi served the British in the West Indies and was later given a land grant in Upper Canada where he settled in to teach Italian. Throughout the centuries of migration to Canada, Italians arrived as people with ability in search of opportunity whether as language or music teachers, vendors, hoteliers, itinerant artisans, stone cutters, tailors, or labourers.

While the history of Italian migration to Canada finds its antecedents in these individuals, the story of Italian settlement here really begins with the arrival of Italians to work in Canada’s resource-based economy, mining and railway construction – from the 1880s until laws in Canada and Italy restricted migration in the 1920s. Between the years 1901 and 1911, almost two million Italians arrived in the United States as compared to only 60,000 who came to Canada. Labour recruitment programs developed by Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian National Railway, and Dominion Coal Company, with the help of paid labour agents, or padroni, brought workers in to work on railway construction along the Grand Trunk, in the steel mills in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in mining at Crow’s Nest Pass or the Kootenay district in British Columbia and in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Some cleared bush in Canada’s hinterland, engaged in agricultural development in Manitoba, or were truck farmers in Lethbridge or Montreal. Many others, as sojourners, participated in any form of manual labour that earned them enough money to send home to their families in Italy or establish a foothold in Canada’s urban centres. Since much of this work was seasonal, gradually small urban settlements were established to service workers returning from Canada’s frontier. At first, settlements of Italians in Canadian cities tended to consist predominantly of male seasonal workers who returned to the cities after clearing brush, setting rails, or mining.

Gradually, as Toronto and other cities addressed the need for the urban infrastructure of sewers and trolley lines, Toronto’s Italian population grew and settled more permanently. By 1910 many seasonal workers became settlers finding work as stonemasons, green grocers, tailors, or cobblers. Canadian cities developed neighbourhoods known as “Little Italies” during this early period and these formed the basis of the huge settlements of Italians in Toronto’s west end and of Montreal’s St. Léonard’s district. Although the term “Little Italy” can be used disparagingly, it also indicates that Italians were establishing a permanent presence in the life of Canada’s cities. Immigrants from Sicily used their peasant agricultural skills, knowledge of fruits and vegetables, and their access to the railways to establish a niche in the wholesale and retail fresh food trades. As these sojourners became more settled, they sent for wives in Italy, and, by 1921, the female population in Toronto was only slightly less than the male population.

Italian-Canadian community life during the period between the two wars was centred around commerce, Italian national Catholic parishes such as Our Lady of Carmel in Toronto, Our Lady of Sorrows in Vancouver, or St. Rita’s in North Bay. Other activities developed out of social clubs and mutual benefit societies that were established during these years to encourage Italians to unite for their political and social self-interest. Prominent among these were the Sons of Italy lodges throughout central Canada; the Tirolese Italiana in Lethbridge, Alberta; the Umberto Primo Society in Montreal; or the Comitato Intersociale that was the umbrella group of Italian organizations in Toronto. During the interwar years, many of these clubs received aid from Mussolini’s Italy. This coloured the view of Canadian government officials when World War II was declared. Several hundred Italians were interned during the Second World War at Camp Petawawa, and others faced prejudice during the war as a result of their heritage. In 1947, when finally the Enemy Alien Act was lifted, Italians were again permitted to enter Canada.

In the postwar period, the small Italian settlements were rapidly transformed by the incredible numbers of new immigrants arriving to work in manufacturing, construction, and development of Canada’s industrial base. It is estimated that as many as 80 percent of Italian immigrants who arrived in this period came through the family sponsorship program. Family life was altered as women became more active in the formal labour market. While kin connections were central in helping Italians migrate here, they also aided many Italian men and women to find work in factories or construction sites with cousins and people from their original hometowns. In southern Italian society, women had worked at home or in groups farming in the fields. The economic needs of Canadian life forced women to double their workday both in their traditional care giver roles in the home and now out in Canada’s booming industrial and manufacturing economy. The large numbers of Italians enabled the kinship systems to find places in which Italian women could work together. This assuaged cultural and gender fears about the New World.

To cope with this influx, communities established new associations with the help of some prewar elites. In Vancouver there was the Comitato Attività Italiane; in Montreal and Toronto, the Italian Immigrant Aid Society helped new immigrants adjust to Canadian life through counselling, provisioning of goods, and interpreting. Later, in the 1960s, Centro Organizzativo Scuole Tecniche Italiane, or COSTI, aided Italian immigrants and many other immigrants to adjust to the Canadian labour market through recertification of skills, language classes, family counselling, and aid to injured workers. The Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association (CIBPA) and the Federation of Italian Canadian Clubs and Associations (FACI), later known as the National Congress of Italian Canadians, were two organizations instrumental in helping to organize community events, lobby governments, and assist with raising funds for victims of earthquakes or disasters back in Italy.

In 1971 FACI and CIBPA in Toronto created the Italian Canadian Benevolent Corporation later known as Villa Charities to build Villa Colombo, a home for the aged. Over a quarter of a century later, a new cultural centre, Columbus Centre, and several seniors’ apartments were built to establish a locus for Italian community activity in the city. In Vancouver, the Italian Folk Society representing over 50 clubs constructed the Italian Cultural and Recreational Centre, in the late 1970s. Other Italian communities across the country built similar community centres such as the Casa d’Italia in Montreal, the Calgary Italian Club, the Italian Community Hallin Dominion, Cape Breton Island, and the Da Vinci Centre in Thunder Bay.

The vitality of postwar Italian communities is not limited to their extensive institutional structure. While the number of social services offered to Italian speakers and their children through community activities is impressive, Italian Canadians have made their presence felt in other social arenas. In politics three members of its current government immigrated to Canada within a year of each other (1957/58). The Hon. Charles Caccia has served in the House of Commons consectutively since 1968; The Hon. Alfonso Gagliano has been elected to the House of Commons since 1984; The Hon. Maria Minna, Minister, International Cooperation, has served in the House of Commons since 1993. In the 50 years since the end of World War Two, over 60 Italian-language newspapers have been published in Toronto alone. Writers such as Nino Ricci, the poets Mary Melfi and Antonino Mazza have explored the immigrant experience and life as Italian Canadians. New cultural magazines such as the Eyetalian magazine in Toronto or Vice Versa in Montreal offer cultural venues for hundreds of thousands of Italian Canadians. Italian immigrant economic mobility in the postwar period has set the stage for the second and third generation to explore ways to create “Italian-ness” within a Canadian setting.