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Kensington Market and the surrounding area had
already known a long history as a place where immigrants made their
first homes in Toronto. Jewish, Italian, Hungarian and Ukrainian
newcomers had all settled here, one after the other. Now it was
the turn of the Portuguese.
Since
1964 they had been settling in Alexandra Park, and, according to
the first census returns (1962), there were ten thousand Portuguese
registered in St. Mary's Church on the corner of Adelaide and Bathurst
Sts. There were three or four Portuguese families in Toronto in
1953 when I left for Labrador. But when I got back nine months later,
there were already many more.
Kensington
Market looked like a market at home, all the merchandise out on
the streets in full view of everybody. Beans and rice were sold
in exactly the same way as they would be in Portugal.
If
you wanted to buy fruit, for example, you selected your own, then
went and paid for it. Houses were relatively inexpensive at that
time in this area. So many Portuguese newcomers settled there. Antonio
Sousa, Mississauga The chief problems of the new immigrants arose
from the difficulty of finding jobs, and from their lack of English.
There
were no Social Agencies in those days either, so some of the Portuguese
who knew a little English began to act as interpreters for the others.
The first two to do this kind of thing were Jose Menezes and Jose
Rafael.
Meanwhile
more Portuguese kept coming from every direction seeking work and
somewhere to live. Naturally they were attracted to go where they
could find someone who knew how to communicate with them and with
the Canadian authorities. So many found their way to this area.
One
of the first meeting places for the Portuguese who came to Toronto
from other parts of the province and other Canadian cities was a
restaurant on the corner of Nassau Street and Bellevue Avenue known
as "Sousa's Restaurant." Antonio Sousa writes: We opened at 6:00
a.m. and closed at midnight.
I
had to go out to work at a bakery till 3:00 p.m. in order to have
enough money to pay my debts. I had spent seven thousand dollars
to renovate the building I had bought to serve as a restaurant,
so I owed money to a great many people, to carpenters, to stone-masons
and to friends. My wife looked after the restaurant while I was
at the bakery. Everybody came there. People who were all alone in
the city could meet each other there and talk and laugh and cry.
They
came to find friendship, and they did. So my restaurant became a
kind of family home for the Portuguese. Meanwhile the First Portuguese
Canadian Club was formed and was lodged just across the road in
front of the restaurant, where the Portuguese bookstore is located
now. Portuguese festivals were organised and a soccer team was formed.
You could hear people singing Portuguese songs.
A
little later, the Lisbon bakery made its appearance. It was the
first bakery to make real Portuguese bread in Canada. Next came
the first store with Portuguese foods for sale, and after that the
first Portuguese Travel Agency. The growth of the Portuguese population
in Toronto was rapid, and Public Services could not cope with the
needs of the newcomers.
The
St. Christopher House was the only agency which offered them social
services in those days, and this was owing to the interest of a
Portuguese lady who was the daughter of an immigrant from Macau.
English classes and a Day-Care Centre were set up.
The
Portuguese Consulate began to function officially on August 1st,
1956. Until that date Toronto had only the services of an honorary
consul who was assistant to the Portuguese Consul in New York.
The
first Portuguese Consul in Toronto was Dr. Armando Nunes de Freitas.
Marcelino Moniz, Vice-Consul, writes: When I came to work in the
Consulate at the end of 1956 there were literally piles of immigrants'
letters for me to attend to. My first job was to sort them out and
reply to all this correspondence. Portuguese were writing from all
regions of Ontario, complaining about working conditions, asking
for information etc., etc.
Many
were concerned with sponsorship of their relatives and consular
protection. Pastoral care for the Portuguese Catholics began in
St. Michael's Cathedral under the direction of a German priest who
had worked for some time in Brazil. Then a group from Madeira invited
a priest from the islands, a Padre Camacho, to come and serve the
Portuguese community in Toronto.
Their
centre moved from the Cathedral to St. Elizabeth's Church on the
corner of Spadina Ave. and Dundas Street West. It was nearer the
Portuguese settlement. Meanwhile Padre Camacho was replaced by a
priest from the Azores who was working in the United States at the
time.
This
was the Rev. Joaquim Esteves Louren,co, and it was he who established
St. Mary's as the Portuguese parish in Toronto.As the Portuguese
population grew, other priests from the Azores were sent to help
him, the Rev. P. Antero de Melo in 1962, and the Rev. Francisco
Fatela in 1964.
Besides
the Church and the First Portuguese Canadian Club, there also existed
another club situated on Spadina Avenue near Dundas known as the
Portuguese Association of Canada.
But
it only lasted a few years and then, owing to domestic misunderstanding
and financial difficulties, it had to close. A festival took place
in 1963 to mark the first ten years of Portuguese immigration from
Madeira.
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A
group of these who had set foot in Canada in June 1953 rented a
farm in Orangeville from Carlos Pereira, and organized the celebration
of the feast of Nossa Senhora do Monte (a great festival in Madeira).
It is now kept every year in Madeira Park, south of Sutton, Ontario.
This
is a social-religious occasion, but the Portuguese began to organize
politically as well. In August 1959 a group of Portuguese democrats
met together "to form a front against the Fascist regime in Portugal."
This became the Portuguese Canadian Democratic Association.
From
its first days this Association initiated celebrations and orientation
workshops, conferences, etc. in order to bring artists, writers
and political leaders from Portugal to Toronto.
They
were anxious to keep their compatriots informed as to what was going
on in Portugal, and to assist them towards participating in Canadian
Society in a fuller and more enlightened way than they had hitherto
been able to do. The Decade of 1964-74 During these years the Portuguese
community in Toronto grew in strength, and by 1974 it was one of
the greatest nuclei of Portuguese immigrants anywhere in the world.
It
has been calculated that there were about eighty-five thousand people
of Portuguese descent living in Toronto at that time. From the sixties,
the Portuguese began to move West from the neighbourhood of Alexandra
Park and Kensington towards Ossington, and South from College Street
towards King Street. The Church was still an institution of greatest
influence and importance among the Portuguese.
On
February 3rd, 1966, Padre Alberto Cunha arrived to replace Padre
Joaquim Lourenco. He and Padre Freitas de Leite, a priest who had
come to Toronto as a tourist, began to organize the formation of
a Co-operative to buy the building known as "La Cubana" on College
Street. This was to become a Portuguese Centre with a church hall,
a Medical Clinic, a Legal Office, a Travel Agency and other facilities.
However when the Bishop of Toronto heard of what was going on (five
thousand dollars had already been collected), he put a stop to it
and the two priests were replaced.
In
1956 the Portuguese began to use a permanent Parish Centre close
to St. Mary's when they needed social assistance of any sort. For
some years this Centre helped Portuguese clients to more than two
thousand jobs. At the same time cultural and recreational activities
were organized by the Parish Centre. On June 10th, 1%6, the first
socio-religious festival took place. About ten thousand Portuguese
gathered in the Exhibition Coliseum for this occasion.
A
year later, a Procession was organized. This was a really big public
event complete with allegoric wagons which moved along Bay and Front
Streets. Another, more famous festival, is that of "Senhor Santo
Cristo dos Milagres," of Azorean origin which is still celebrated
every year at St. Mary's. It, too, began in the year 1966. Manuel
Arruda writes: Mr. Mariano Rego offered the statue of Santo Cristo
to the Church as a present. My brother and I brought it to Toronto.
It
was decorated with flowers by some ladies in the parish, and was
taken in procession round the streets of Toronto (going by Richmond
and Niagara Streets). As the Portuguese population grew in size,
other priests were needed to help the parish of St. Mary's. One
of these, who deserves special mention and leaves behind him a memory
of dedication and personal holiness, was Padre P. Candido Nogueira,
who was quite young when he died.
About
1965, another Portuguese parish began to be formed. This became
the Church of St. Patrick, and an American Redemptorist, who could
speak and understand Portuguese, was appointed pastor. In 1968 the
Rev. Antero de Melo replaced him, but two years later was transferred
to serve the Portuguese community in the area of Dundas and Grace
Streets.
Their
priest was a Brazilian, the Rev. Alexandre Neves, who had returned
to Brazil. Neves had been serving the Portuguese in the Italian
church of Santa Ines. However with the advent of Padre Melo the
Church became predominantly Portuguese, and the Italian congregation
moved to the church of St. Francisco which lies on the same street
(Grace) a little further north.
The
development of industry in Toronto during these ten years attracted
many Portuguese immigrants to the city, and, after they had settled
down, they sponsored their families. Many young men also came to
Canada in order to avoid military service overseas in the African
colonial war. At this time a visitor to Canada could get landed
immigrant status on request, and many Portuguese found an asylum
here.
A
Portuguese newspaper already existed, the Correio Portugues (Portuguese
Mail) which had been founded by Maria Alice Ribeiro and her husband,
Antonio Ribeiro, in July 1962.
Now
another appeared, O Jornal Portugues, (The Portuguese Newspaper)
founded by the Reverend P. Alberta Cunha, whose editor was Fernando
Pedrosa. The first issue came out in March 1968.
Two
years later a third newspaper, O Novo Mundo, (New World) made its
appearance, launched by A. Pina Fernandes. But it had to give up
at the end of 1973 for lack of community support. It wasn't only
in the realm of journalism that the Portuguese community developed
in the seventies.
Several
organizations came into existence at this time, such as the Clube
da Madeira, the Club Recreativo da Nazare, the Casa Benfica de Toronto,
the Interpreter Service, the Centre of Culture and Education, and
the Portuguese department at the West End YMCA.
*From
Portuguese Immigrants. 25 Years in Canada, by Domingos Marques and
Joao Medeiros (Toronto: Marquis Printers, 1980), pp. 136-41.
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