Culture

​Luca inhaled deeply and then parked his cigarette in the ashtray. He turned to me, wearing a very decisive expression and said: “You know…” He paused. “…You are the son she never had.” “What do you mean?” I asked him pointedly. “You know it, the good son, the one she had always hoped for…but the one she never actually had,…

So many of my ancient order have passed on, not from the Covid, but from the life. I have received their spirts and by receiving them I am gifted by their hopes, and this now, for too many years. Grief begets mourning and mourning has its watershed, and when a man traverses the crest, he enters into a landscape of…

Read in English Se dovessi definire il periodo natalizio in una parola sarebbe: luce. Quella che illumina le strade, quella delle vetrine dei negozi, quella degli alberi decorati, quella dei balconi, quella dei presepi e quella nel cuore di ogni bambino che aspetta l’arrivo di Babbo Natale. Per molte persone significa fare regali, tempo di vacanze e riposo dal lavoro…

He calls me il vagabondo because he never knows when I will show up to visit. I have heard that I am “better than an Italian boy” and this is because I show up all the time. It is the way it is. It is not so hard to learn. He is used to me by now. There are many…

I am sent by my wife to retrieve the veal – 11 sweet, 7 hot, a small container of cipolle (the onion), and funghi (the mushrooms-in-oil), ten buns (and make sure they are soft). We phoned the order in yesterday, for our dinner is tonight. It is the celebration of the Fathers – the Father’s Day. For this, there are three…

They sailed across the Atlantic in multiple waves via chain migration. They cultivated the new land they fondly called home and raised their families there. My mom settled in Montreal in 1955, with great faith and golden dreams. She understood what it meant to be a foreigner in a foreign land, but she bravely laid the foundations, built a solid…

In December 2015 I sent out a celebratory email about the gingerbread houses I’d made with my nieces and cousins: Subject: Gingerbread House-a-Palooza! Message: What does it take to make three gingerbread houses? 21 cups flour 2 1/4 cups butter 7 eggs + 16 egg whites 5 1/4 cups brown sugar 16 cups icing sugar 3 1/2 cups molasses 20…

Forlorn, hopelessly hanging on, budding too late to reach their full glory, tarty green tomatoes are the latecomers of summer. Packed with promise, they usually wind up on the compost heap of autumn. This year our rainy Ontario summer will produce a bountiful harvest of firm, green, blemished tomatoes. All is not lost. You can preserve their potential in glistening olive…

“That’ll be €1.50 a litre”. We weren’t talking about the latest hike in gas prices but the cost of the wine sold direct from the cantina. Last year’s Barbera, 13 percent by volume and perfect for the dinner table, was the subject of discussion and with no little enthusiasm. Here the inhabitants of Novi Ligure, the “Novesi”, bring their bottles,…

All roads lead to Rome, as they say, but none compares with the experience of walking the Via Francigena. A thoroughfare for a thousand years, traversed by kings and paupers, merchants and bandits, this little-known route laces the Italian boot and ties together a rich and rewarding story. It isn’t the camino di Santiago, to be sure. You know that one, the…

Sagra dello Stocco Every August 9 on the eve of ferragosto, the Italian summer holidays, fish aficionados from around the world travel to Mammola, Reggio Calabria, for the Sagra dello Stocco or stockfish festival. Like many Mediterranean food festivals, this sagra includes traditional dancing, music and the perennial balli dei giganti – a parade through town with larger-than life figures in medieval costume carried aloft by…

It's a few minutes past six on a warm Vancouver evening in May outside Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre. Joe Finamore, President of Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre Society, introduces Father Louis Piran, pastor of St. Helen's Parish. Under clear blue skies the Scalabrinian prete, resplendent in his official garments, steps forward amidst an ambience of Italian pride to deliver his invocation.…

On a cold April Wednesday, when it seemed that winter in Toronto would never end, 145 women left the comfort of home and hearth and ventured out to the Columbus Centre to celebrate "Sacchetti's Women's Night Out." For organizer and originator Jane Sacchetti, this was the ninth successful evening in an annual event that started with a simple idea. She…