Such Hardworking People

Such Hardworking People
Author: Franca Iacovetta
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 329
Release: 1992-03-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773563156

Iacovetta examines the changes many had to face during the transition from peasant worker in an under-developed, rural economy to wage-earner in an urban, industrial society. Their experiences in Canada, she reveals, were shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity as well as familial responsibilities, government policies, and racism. In addition to conducting numerous interviews, Iacovetta has drawn on recent scholarship in immigration, family, labour studies, oral history, and women's history. Although both women and men struggled and were exploited, Iacovetta shows that they found innovative ways to recreate cherished rituals and customs from their homeland and managed to derive a sense of dignity and honour from the labours they performed.

Arrangiarsi

Arrangiarsi
Author: Roberto Perin
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1989
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

Italians in Toronto

Italians in Toronto
Author: John E. Zucchi
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 281
Release: 1988
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 0773506535

Italians in Toronto provides an insightful account of how village and regional groups transplanted their communities into the city that is now one of the largest expatriate centres for Italians in the world. The history of Italian migration to Canada is the history of emigration from countless towns and villages in the Old World. John Zucchi traces how, in the New World, immigrants developed a stronger sense of Italian identity at the same time as they were being integrated into a new society.

Some Observations on Italian Immigrants in Toronto

Some Observations on Italian Immigrants in Toronto
Author: Canada. Dept. of Citizenship and Immigration. Economic and Social Research Division
Publisher: Economic and Social Research Division, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Total Pages: 48
Release: 1961
Genre: Immigrants
ISBN:

Staying Italian

Staying Italian
Author: Jordan Stanger-Ross
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2010-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226770761

Despite their twin positions as two of North America’s most iconic Italian neighborhoods, South Philly and Toronto’s Little Italy have functioned in dramatically different ways since World War II. Inviting readers into the churches, homes, and businesses at the heart of these communities, Staying Italian reveals that daily experience in each enclave created two distinct, yet still Italian, ethnicities. As Philadelphia struggled with deindustrialization, Jordan Stanger-Ross shows, Italian ethnicity in South Philly remained closely linked with preserving turf and marking boundaries. Toronto’s thriving Little Italy, on the other hand, drew Italians together from across the wider region. These distinctive ethnic enclaves, Stanger-Ross argues, were shaped by each city’s response to suburbanization, segregation, and economic restructuring. By situating malleable ethnic bonds in the context of political economy and racial dynamics, he offers a fresh perspective on the potential of local environments to shape individual identities and social experience.

Righting Canada's Wrongs: Italian Canadian Internment in the Second World War

Righting Canada's Wrongs: Italian Canadian Internment in the Second World War
Author: Pamela Hickman
Publisher: Lorimer
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2012-10-10
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 145940095X

Italians came to Canada to seek a better life. From the 1870s to the 1920s they arrived in large numbers and found work mainly in mining, railway building, forestry, construction, and farming. As time passed, many used their skills to set up successful small businesses, often in Little Italy districts in cities like Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Winnipeg. Many struggled with the language and culture in Canada, but their children became part of the Canadian mix. When Canada declared war on Italy on June 10, 1940, the government used the War Measures Act to label all Italian citizens over the age of eighteen as enemy aliens. Those who had received Canadian citizenship after 1922 were also deemed enemy aliens. Immediately, the RCMP began making arrests. Men, young and old, and a few women were taken from their homes, offices, or social clubs without warning. In all, about 700 were imprisoned in internment camps, mainly in Ontario and New Brunswick. The impact of this internment was felt immediately by families who lost husbands and fathers, but the effects would live on for decades. Eventually, pressure from the Italian Canadian community led Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to issue an apology for the internment and to admit that it was wrong. Using historical photographs, paintings, documents, and first-person narratives, this book offers a full account of this little-known episode in Canadian history.

The Italian Immigrant Experience

The Italian Immigrant Experience
Author: Canadian Italian Historical Association
Publisher: Thunder Bay, Ont. : Canadian Italian Historical Association
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1988
Genre: Canada
ISBN:

The Italians who Built Toronto

The Italians who Built Toronto
Author: Stefano Agnoletto
Publisher: Trade Unions. Past, Present and Future
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Construction industry
ISBN: 9783034317733

After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Toronto. This book describes their labour, business, social and cultural history as they settled in their new home. It addresses fundamental issues that impacted both them and the city, including ethnic economic niching, unionization, urban proletarianization and migrants' entrepreneurship. In addressing these issues the book focuses on the role played by a specific economic sector in enabling immigrants to find their place in their new host society. More specifically, this study looks at the residential sector of the construction industry that, between the 1950s and the 1970s, represented a typical economic ethnic niche for newly arrived Italians. In fact, tens of thousands of Italian men found work in this sector as labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and cement finishers, while hundreds of others became contractors, subcontractors or small employers in the same industry. This book is about these real people. It gives voice to a community formed both by entrepreneurial subcontractors who created companies out of nothing and a large group of exploited workers who fought successfully for their rights. In this book you will find stories of inventiveness and hope as well as of oppression and despair. The purpose is to offer an original approach to issues arising from the economic and social history of twentieth-century mass migrations.