Writings

How do you pass the time when you are under Covid lockdown during a bone-chilling winter in the middle of February in Northern Ontario? Walking outside becomes problematic, unless you are wrapped from head to toe in weighty, woolen layers of clothing. My husband and I had walked almost every day, enjoying the beautiful parks in our city, until the…

In a moment in time, a seismic pandemic strikes like a bolt of lightning and non-essential travel is banned. We leave Spain three weeks earlier than planned and say, bye-bye Mediterranean cruise. We narrowly escape the European epicentre, cross checkpoints, navigate crowded airports, and board the last repatriation flight to Montreal, late March 2020. My husband and I wistfully welcome…

I am four. It is my birthday and there is a Sesame Street themed cake, a pile of presents, and a smattering of cousins. I unwrap each present with swiftness and enthusiasm until the very last one. I can tell by the look in my mother’s eyes that this gift was a special one. Even though I cannot read yet,…

More than the greatest love the world has known This is the love that I give to you alone More than the simple words I try to say I only live to love you more each day. More than you'll ever know My arms long to hold you so My life will be in your keeping Waking, sleeping, laughing, weeping……

During this extraordinary and unsettling time, I have found my mind wandering to the rituals and activities that give me comfort and connect me to my past. In particular, this past summer, I was drawn to the routine and rhythm of gardening. I crave a sense of normalcy, a return to a simpler life, a connection to nature and to…

“T’avia sarbàtu du aranci. Mah…” says Zia Carmela. I saved you the last of the oranges. But… She sighs. I am talking with my aunt on the phone in Sicilian, our mother tongue. “Cu è? A nuòstra Francuzza?” I hear Zio Luigi in the background. I am in Montreal and they are in Joppolo Giancaxio, the small village where I…

There is more drama in plant life than meets the eye. For as long as I can remember, the end of May means that many inside plants can be moved to shaded areas of the garden and patio, where they can blend with the outdoor flora. As the Huron saying goes, “No branch is foolish enough to fight with the…

When I was completing the sixth volume of a series I set in a fictional village in Tuscany, I realized that it was time to let the people in these books go. I had seen them suffer during World War II when the series began The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany and, through the decades, they had married, had kids…

In kinder, gentler times, there was a man who came around on his truck to deliver what I liked to call the two Sisters of Soda: Mio and Brio. Mio was clear and fizzy and I loved her. I didn’t really know Brio. I was taught that after you suck on the siphon tube to get a good gulp of red wine flowing into an empty…

It is all a whirlwind; a life constructed in little vignettes, little parables that pass by like clouds in full bore – over in a second. We made our way south by southeast to North York and the aftermath of the windstorm the previous day. The usual post-blustery bedlam: cops with flashing lights making you wait and then waving you…

We’re waiting to catch a train to Venice, four of us: my husband and I, our son and daughter-in-law. We are excited to be headed to this most romantic of Italian cities and eagerly anticipating its famous pleasures: Piazza San Marco with its grand Basilica; the famous art collections of the Accademia and the Palazzo Ducale; the canals themselves, and…

“Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.” (Italian proverb)   Monday, 9 a.m. Not writing. Dim, dreary morning, the forecast calls for rain. The writer stands at the window. She prefers looking outside to staring at the blank page. A squirrel is stuck on the roof of the neighbouring shed again. It chirps in distress; the sound…

I walked the beach where Mario Ruoppolo recorded metaphors for Neruda. I put my feet in the sand where he spoke of his love for Beatrice Russo. I tasted the salt water and had a drink from the same bar he frequented at the Marina Corricella. I ate seafood for lunch and dinner and sipped grappa by moonlight, slept in…

Wine always reminds me of my grandfather. I can’t remember the first time I tasted wine, but fuzzy memories aside, I can say for certain that it was probably at my grandparents’ house. The red wine was heavily diluted with ginger ale, and the wine itself was homemade by nonno. Wine has always been at the centre of our family cosmology, whether sneaking…

I was standing outside the Palermo airport with my brother and sister, soaking in the scorching heat and the magnificent landscape. Sicily has such beauty to offer; from where I was standing, I could have taken any number of pictures that would have been postcard-worthy. I didn’t take any though, because my body was not yet used to the island’s…

As I sit to write this piece, I am hit by a cosmic, albeit familiar, question: Who am I, really? My identity was never a major concern for me until recently. I’ve always been pretty certain of who I am. I’m Giulia, of course. I had my adolescent identity crisis, but that was part of growing up. Everyone goes through…

When nonno Carmine Fortunato’s family stopped hearing from him, they thought what people often thought when a husband and father suddenly stopped writing: “He started a new life!” As if there was more than one life to live… So, his wife and daughters thought that he had met another woman; that maybe he squandered his money on her; that maybe he had…

The following account is a creative nonfiction short story inspired by an old box that Paula Mascioli found in her mother’s basement. Curious to see what was inside, she opened it to find a treasure trove of documents, old letters and papers her father had saved from the days of his father’s and uncle’s internment in Petawawa during the Second World War. Paula knew…

Inspired by the popular uprising which began in Tunisia in December 2010, the people of Egypt rose up in protest against the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in January and February 2011, resulting in Mubarak’s resignation and exile. Bill Barazzuol, an eye-witness to the events, filed this report. Edited by Ray Culos. January 25th, 2011 The successful Jasmine Revolution of Tunisia…

My grandmother's house is too warm. Too crowded. Our second cousins from New York, up for Canadian Thanksgiving, are in the room next door. Their laughter rises and falls like waves, leaking through the walls of the room where my brother and I watch TV. I’m six. My brother Ricky is nine. Our teenaged sisters are with the adults, pouring…

No one leaves country, home, all he has loved, unless driven by a powerful necessity. In the case of my people, it was poverty that compelled my maternal grandparents from Sicily, paternal grandparents from Calabria. But why three Giovannini brothers left Lucca with their father – Lucca, a rich town in fertile Tuscany – surely could not have been poverty?…

Italian Canadians offer good lessons in preserving Old World culture in the land of milk and honey. If someone asked me what I’ve been asking people for the past week, I know what I would say. Am I Dutch first or Canadian? Well, Canadian of course, but I am proud of my Dutch name. And no, I don’t speak any…

The Italian wedding in Canada has become a bit of a cliché. As a first-generation Italian Canadian, I've had both the pleasure and the misfortune of attending hundreds of weddings over the years. The result is that I can no longer distinguish one wedding for another. The memories all fade into one giant wedding with the same people that nobody…

On the Luganskaya Front An endless column ahead of me is standing still on the frozen trail to Lugansk. It is a column only in a manner of speaking. It would be better to call it an infinitum of wrecks lined up one behind the other. Wrecks… Everything is decrepit, worn out, perforated, consumed, and dented - a perfect match…

In the summer of love, I was 12 years old and living a white bread existence in the west end of Toronto the Good. Our house, a one and a half story, post-war ruddy brick and white lathe edifice, stood proudly on the corner lot of Holbrooke and Tenby, a "slightly irregular" testament to my father's stubborn conviction that he…

I have just returned from Woodbridge, where my mother and father live "behind the Wall." They were all dressed up and waiting when I arrived at about 3:30 in the afternoon, to take them out for dinner - my father in the tie and sweater I got him for Christmas, my mother in her hat. The funeral is not until…