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For centuries, letters of introduction were considered almost as essential as passports for travelling within what is now Italy. A grand tour not only required a large number of passports to get through its many States, but you were also well advised to carry several letters from ambassadors or consuls or well-connected friends. The addressees of those letters were local…

Guy Rex Rodgers is the founding executive director (2004-2021) of the English Language Arts Network, or ELAN; "a not-for-profit organization that connects, supports, and creates opportunities for Quebec’s English-speaking artists and arts communities.” He is the producer, writer, director and narrator of What We Choose to Remember, a 93-minute feature documentary that looks at the impact that non-Francophone immigration has had…

The inaugural Accenti Magazine International Festival of the Arts, held at the University of Calabria in June/July 2023, asked participants to answer a question: What does being Italian mean in the world today?  Click here to read Part II Organizers Licia Canton and Domenic Cusmano, of Accenti, worked with University of Calabria associate professor Mirko Casagranda to suggest an answer…

The commuter train was running a few minutes late. I texted Claudia to let her know. I was excited to see her. The train pulled into the station, creaking, and groaning to a stop. Hurriedly, I walked through the station and down several crowded side streets. Montreal in the summertime is always abuzz with festivals, tourists and office workers enjoying…

In one sense, 1972 is an extension of some of Domenico Capilongo’s past work. Once again, Capilongo writes about growing up Italian, specifically Sicilian, in urban Toronto. He has mined this vein before, for example, in I Thought Elvis was Italian and, in a roundabout way, in his short story collection, Subtitles and Other Stories. What is new in 1972…

The 1960s continued to see increasing numbers of Italians immigrating to Canada. Virtually all those who came, did so on the promise of a better future, and with the idea of returning to Italy – either permanently or just to visit – once they could show they had “made it.” Though few and far between, some Italians in Canada during…

Roberto Marra makes physical what is felt but not seen. We’ll come back to this. As an artist I am usually in the habit of looking rather than writing about the work of others. To ease in, I made lists of words while spending time with Marra’s paintings. Here is the first set: carve cut embed bury smother entangle grow…

         I             saw               in             the               sky                  a                  skein                      of                         geese                           like                             a                                neck-                                       lace                                         un-                                              done                                                under-                                                     sides                                                   wink-                                                     ing                                                   grey                                                and                                              white                                                     pearls                                                          the sky                                                              had                                                                 loosen-              …

  I would have known. Of course, I would. The bruises, black eyes, and lacerations would be easy to spot. I’d seen physical abuse on television. These things were not happening to me. We live in a nice neighbourhood. There’s no violence here. No abuse of any kind. I married when I was twenty-five years old. My husband, Justin, was…

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,…

Someone once said that all writers and artists, famous or not, share the same pain and the same dreams. They all struggle to have their work seen, heard, and appreciated. At one point in my life, because I was not famous and I had no chance of ever becoming famous, I pursued the concept of accomplished, as in: "Corrado Paina…

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…

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,…

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.…