It’s 1964, Montreal. And a photograph shows me taking my first steps in my grandparents’ front garden. A year later, another snapshot – taken from the very same vantage point – reveals that all the houses across the street have been demolished to make room for the Décarie Expressway, a sunken highway that savagely cut through our Italian working-class neighbourhood. The expressway narrowly missed my nonni’s house, but left it dangling as though on a precarious perch. This large-scale destruction fragmented our close-knit community. And in its not-so quiet violence, recalled and replayed – in a concrete way – the trauma and loss that our people had experienced in leaving behind an Italy scarred by the ravages of war. The jubilant sounds of children playing in the laneways – and life as we’d known it – now replaced by the relentless vibration of snarled unseen traffic.
Despite the devastation of this so-called “urban renewal,” there was a curious upside. The conspicuously absent duplexes and triplexes had created a void of wide-open sky in their wake. And we claimed this golden opportunity to reframe our family photos. We no longer posed with our house in the background. Instead – like sunflowers seeking the light – we pivoted away from the bricks and mortar, and repositioned ourselves against the formless blue sky. Here, we appear curiously floating against an expanse of nothingness.
•••
I remember the freedom of feeling uninhibited. My nonni had a prized collection of Italian 45s and, as both DJ and performer, I would stage impromptu “shows” in the living room. To the delight of my family, I’d belt out Italian covers at the top of my lungs. And my no-holds-barred impersonations of Gianni Morandi, Adriano Celentano and Orietta Berti became my trademark. Abandoning myself to the music brought out the best in all of us. And for me, slipping into someone else’s skin dissolved the boundaries of the physical world. Every fibre of my little body swayed and gyrated. And with nothing to hide, I felt a deep sense of pride. I was loved and all was well.
Surprisingly, there was a curious – and curiously catchy – song about Canada in the mix. One of my all-time favourites, “Casetta in Canadà,” features an intoxicating samba rhythm – and a dark backstory I only understood years later. The song tells the phoenix-like story of a hardworking Italian immigrant who builds a dream home in Canada, only to have it torched by a jealous neighbour. But the charred remains are not the end of the story. Because undaunted, he rebuilds anew on the site of the old. Destruction and renewal. Hopelessness and faith. No matter the circumstances, we always rebuild. It’s the spirit of resilience that’s woven into my family’s DNA.
•••
A key can only unlock the door to a house that’s still standing. And the lonesome one that hung in my nonni’s home – amid Catholic icons and our family portraits – was decidedly impotent. The door it once opened was long gone, destroyed during World War II. And yet it remained for us a potent reminder of where we’d come from, all the while infused with the power to potentially open new “doors” elsewhere. But this key wasn’t the only survivor from that war-torn village. Somehow, the precious contents of our casetta in Italia had also survived – though you’d never have known it. Hidden away, as though locked in some fear-stoked purgatory, these keepsakes lived unseen in their original shipping trunks. I knew of course where the keys were hidden – in the top drawer of my nonna’s dresser – but a key can only unlock a world when you believe it’s there.
•••
There’s a photo of my mother posing in the garden of her childhood home, the one that would soon thereafter be destroyed. With a big grin, she stands in contrapposto, akimbo, hand-on-hip. Her posture is confident, cocky even. That was, of course, before the big cataclysm. Years later, my nonni were determined to rebuild a dignified home – brick by brick – in the void left by the one that had been taken from them. They eventually did, and I’d often join them on their annual summer pilgrimages. They’d share stories of the old house and about my mother when she was little. But never about the war. No matter how much I badgered them, my grandparents dismissed even the most passing references to la guerra. Some things are just too painful to unpack.
Rebuilding took well over a decade, and was fuelled by persistence, a profound sense of belonging, and an unspoken need to eventually rest alongside family in the village cemetery. That last part never came to pass. My grandparents are buried – not far from where they ended up – at the Côte-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal. Yet another compromise between two worlds.
The dream of returning “home” anywhere is often just that. A nostalgic fantasy.
•••
I was born in Montreal, but that Italian village also felt like home. Everyone looked and talked like us – emphatically and at full throttle. But none of it needed to be decoded. The dialect, the hand gestures belonged just as much to me.
And I’ve always been a good mimic. I love the feeling of getting inside someone else’s skin, and everyone around me would howl as I’d impersonate the locals. I was never self-conscious about any of it.
I had learned to travel nimbly between languages and cultures. But code-switching wasn’t something my grandparents could do. They resisted English and French whenever possible, defaulting instead to the dialect that connected them to the world they’d lost – the only world they truly cared to know.
•••
I always loved the first day of school. That is, except for the innocuous official form that put the fear of God in me. Date of birth, emergency contact number, and so on – that was the easy part. But I always pleaded with my mother not to be honest when it came to: What is your mother tongue? After all, “ITALIAN” – in all caps – was guaranteed to further single me out in a hostile world where I just wanted to blend in. In Montreal, I was miles away from the comfort of my Italian village nucleus – and yet somehow still at home in the twilight between these two worlds.
By a certain age, I’d become the de facto family photographer. Birthdays, weddings, confirmations, communions – I witnessed every event through the lens of my trusty Kodak Instamatic. But there are certain events that simply cannot be captured – though they become etched in the soul. Like when my nonna lay dying. She was no longer able or willing to speak. No more vowels, no more words. Her gaze fixed elsewhere, she’d already moved on to a space between this world and the next, gradually releasing her language and affiliations, her loved ones and all the burdens of the past. Those crystal blue eyes that had seen so much were now expressionless and growing dim.
•••
There’s a fragment of Super-8 film from 1972 that shows me in the back garden. And the moment I realize I’m being filmed, I look straight into the lens and strike a pose – just like my mom did in that old snapshot, hand-on-hip, akimbo, in contrapposto. In stark contrast, the next clip shows me again, only this time, kicking a soccer ball with bravado.
The transition is so abrupt and curious. And though I have no idea who was holding the camera – and though I don’t recall anyone in my family ever calling me out for behaving like a sissy – I suspect I was being directed away from a nine-year-old’s flamboyant display, and towards a more suitable masculine pursuit to be captured for all celluloid eternity. Just like my nonni who couldn’t alter their Italian identity, my queerness seeped out onto the altar of our everyday lives, even amid the stifling arcane world of pews, saints and gilded relics.
My queerness was always there, even as we pretended not to see it. And when I watch that brief sequence now – no more than a few seconds – I glimpse a joy and effervescence I wish had stayed with me. I never felt excluded or judged, at least not at that age.
What I felt then was a strength of spirit and pride that thrust forth with every gyration of my samba dance moves. There’s no antidote to sorrow but there’s certainly a reward – a pleasure even – in persevering. No matter the odds, no matter the context, my people have simply refused to give up. And along the way, they patterned a way of coping with loss and heartache that reframes my everyday challenges – as though against a wide-open expanse of clear blue sky.
Aveva una casetta piccolina in Canadà
con vasche e pesciolini e tanti fiori di lillà,
e tutte le ragazze che passavano di là
dicevano: “Che bella è la casetta in Canadà”
Ma un giorno, per dispetto, Pinco Panco l’incendiò
e a piedi poveretto senza casa lui restò.
“E allora cosa fece?” Voi tutti chiederete.
Ma questa è la sorpresa che in segreto vi dirò:
Lui fece un’altra casa piccolina in Canadà
con vasche e pesciolini e tanti fiori di lillà,
e tutte le ragazze che passavano di là
dicevano: “Che bella è la casetta in Canadà”
He had a little house in Canada
with fountains, fish and flowers everywhere,
and all the girls that walked by would say:
“Oh, what a lovely little house in Canada”
But one day, out of spite,
a jealous neighbour set his house on fire
and consequently the poor man was left homeless.
I’m sure you must be wondering what then occurred
I will tell you what he did:
He built another little house in Canada
with fountains, fish and flowers everywhere,
and all the girls that walked by would say:
“Oh, what a lovely little house in Canada
– Casetta in Canadà (1957)
Vittorio Mascheroni (music) & Mario Panzeri (lyrics)
* Excerpts from the script You Are Here(2010), a biographical essay-film about the search for home in an era of transnational displacement. Exploring his family’s immigrant narrative, the film chronicles Di Stefano’s journey that explores his ancestral home in Italy, his native Montreal, and other places where he has lived. He revisits family photos and films, and interprets them through a queer lens.
Originally published in Here and Now, Volume 2: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing (Longbridge, 2024)
John Di Stefano, PhD, is an artist/filmmaker, writer and academic. He currently teaches at Concordia University.
