Culture is a system of values – economic values, aesthetic values, moral values etc – to want to preserve it is to want to archive it, to create a museum in which it will die in its own catafalque… – Jean Baudrillard IN THE PAST FEW YEARS I have made an annual return journey to the place of my birth,…
Read more
Fiorello La Guardia, the larger-than-life mayor of New York City, was the big draw at the Third National Conference of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities on June 10, 1940. It was definitely a coup to have one of the most sought-after speakers in North America travel to Ottawa. By coincidence, this was also the day that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini…
Read more
That autumn there was such a simple elegance to my own devastation that I didn’t think anybody else needed to know. I felt as if I had been ravaged beyond recognition. I refused to call my mother, and I refused to call my father, I refused to call my brother or my sister or even Tristan. Instead, one cloudy afternoon,…
Read more
While the earliest wave of Italian immigration to Alberta between 1896 and 1914 largely comprised labourers, there were skilled individuals among them. Italy had an established trade apprenticeship system, and skilled craftsmen such as carpenters, masons, metalsmiths, tailors, shoemakers, jewellers, watchmakers and others had standing in the community denied to unskilled labourers. In fact, mastro (master) was an honorary address.…
Read more