Settlement and Economic Life

Although early Italian contact with colonial Canada was characterized by the presence of explorers, soldiers, and churchmen, other types of settlement also took place. A few skilled immigrants, including tailors and chefs, took up residence in urban centres such as Montreal and Halifax. Moreover, individuals established themselves in areas as remote as the southern Gaspé, and it is likely that a group of Genovese founded Ketch Harbour, Nova Scotia, in the seventeenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, Italians could quite commonly be found in Canada in professions and trades that were characteristic of their compatriots throughout Europe and the Americas. They came as teachers of language and music, artisans, vendors, hoteliers, and street musicians. In many cases, the migrants arrived in Canada via London or New York and travelled from town to town as part of an itinerary that would eventually take them home with accumulated savings. In other instances, the move to this country proved permanent, and the settlers formed the nucleus of Italian communities.

Although, for the most part, the migratory motive was economic, an important minority were political exiles forced to flee authoritarian regimes because of their involvement in republican and democratic causes. Like Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had spent a number of years as a candle maker in New York in the 1840s, a steady stream of fuoriusciti were compelled to leave Italy because of their involvement in the Risorgimento or the uprisings of 1848. In Canada such men often provided for themselves by teaching. For example, the first known Italian to live in Windsor was one of these fuoriusciti. Matteo Palmieri, a Neapolitan, had fought with Garibaldi in 1849 and fled to France, England, and then Quebec, where he worked as a mine supervisor. Between 1868 and 1871 he lived in Windsor and taught Italian; he later retired there. The best known of the political exiles was Giacomo Forneri, who had been born near Turin and had taken part in the carbonari revolt of 1821. After fleeing to Spain and then to Belfast, he immigrated to Nova Scotia in 1852. A year later he became professor of modern languages at the University of Toronto, where he laid the foundation for Canada’s first department of Italian studies.

However, much more characteristic were the enterprising immigrants with business or artisan skills. In some instances, individuals from specific towns in Italy specialized in providing particular services that had been practised for generations and transported across Europe and North America. In Montreal from the early nineteenth century onward, the hotel trade was heavily in the hands of Lombards from the Lake Como area or Milan, and the city contained a sizable group of artists from northwest Italy – fresco painters, decorators, sculptors, and statue makers – employed by the Catholic Church to beautify its edifices. In the 1870s the Glionna brothers from Laurenzana in Basilicata, who had been engaged in that town’s characteristic trade as street musicians, after performing in Paris, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut, settled in Toronto, where they opened a hotel for immigrants. But such migrants were far from restricted to Canada’s two major urban centres. Itinerant artists were also employed in the churches of Trois-Rivières, Lapairie, and other Quebec towns. Ottawa was the base for other artists and musicians, including a woman organ-grinder in native Italian costume. In southern Ontario a troupe of Italian “gypsy” animal handlers, whose exhibitions included bears and monkeys, astonished the small town of Sarnia on their way to the United States.

On the west coast, Italians were first attracted to what is now British Columbia around 1860 by the Fraser valley and Cariboo gold rushes. Commonly arriving via San Francisco, they established businesses catering to the many migrants attracted by the territory’s mineral wealth and boom in railway construction. Among them were the trader and hotelier Giovanni Ordano, who settled on Vancouver Island in 1858; Genoa Bay is named in honour of his birthplace. On the mainland, Francesco Savona operated a ferry across Kamloops Lake on route to the Cariboo, and the village of Savona commemorates both him and his place of origin.

In Atlantic Canada, Italians were drawn to the Cape Breton Island economy, bolstered throughout the nineteenth century by coal mining. The first immigrants were the three Giovannetti brothers from Lucca, who settled in Port Morien in the 1870s and whose business activities came to include a shipping line connecting the island to Halifax. Nephews who immigrated later operated various barber shops around Dominion, as well as a livery stable and hotel. The family proved instrumental in the development of the substantial Italian colony that was to emerge in twentieth-century industrial Cape Breton.

The precursors of large-scale Italian migration could be found throughout nineteenth-century Canada. The 1881 census recorded a remarkable degree of dispersion, with Italians located in every region. While the two largest concentrations were in Montreal and Toronto, between them they constituted less than 13 percent of the total Italian population of almost 2,000. Nevertheless, as early as the mid-1860s, the colonies in Montreal and Toronto had contained in embryonic form the basis for later growth and development. In 1871, 55 Italians were resident in Montreal and 34 in Toronto. A decade later, they officially numbered 131 in the former city and 104 in the latter. By 1881 in each centre, Italians had settled into a variety of economic activities – ranging from fruit and grocery stores to restaurants and boarding houses – which could act as nodal points for new arrivals. Moreover, in each city there was a considerable degree of residential concentration: 55 percent of the Italians in Montreal lived in the east-end neighbourhoods of Saint-Louis and Saint-Jacques, and in Toronto a similar concentration existed in the centre of St John’s Ward.

By 1881 Montreal was home to the first Italian consul in Canada, and Italians showed obvious signs of community with the formation of the country’s first mutual-aid society, the Fratellanza Italiana (Italian brotherhood). Also, the city could already boast two pasta factories, one of them founded by Mario Catelli, a name that would become synonymous with Italian food products in Canada. In sum, on the eve of the first mass migration of labourers, Montreal and to a lesser extent Toronto contained the foundations for what were to emerge as major Little Italys in the New World.

In the period of large-scale migration that stretched from the mid-1880s to the Depression, a part of the Italian flow continued to be characterized by the traditional type of enterprising individual. In addition, other occupational specializations were directed towards Canada, foremost among which were the skilled building trades, dominated by Friulian brick makers, stonecutters, and terrazzo and mosaic workers, and the fruit trade, heavily represented by Sicilians, especially those from Termini Imerese. However, this skilled stream was far outnumbered by the approximately 75 percent made up of peasant migrants who came to work on Canada’s major building projects as part of the massive Italian “pick and shovel” brigade that soon covered North America. What primarily drew large numbers to this country was the same industry that had attracted Italian immigration to North America generally – railway construction and maintenance.

In 1879 Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had launched a national policy for the economic development of Canada consisting of a protective tariff to stimulate industry, the completion of a transcontinental railway, and settlement of the west. This ambitious project of nation building, especially the second plank – the binding together of Canada’s 6,500-kilometre length by a “band of steel” – was to have a fundamental influence on Italian migration. Completion of the main line linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in 1885 cost $98.5 million in public funds and loans, and two other transcontinental lines were to follow in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, the three trunk lines had to be supplied with feeder lines linking them to towns, mine sites, and farming communities, and the whole network had to be continually upgraded and maintained. Hence, railway investment, both private and public, remained high until World War I.

This railway boom, along with the discovery of coal, minerals, and precious metals that resulted from blasting through Precambrian rock and the western mountains for rights of way, laid the economic underpinning for the unprecedented flow of Italian labour to Canada. Italians formed part of the multi-ethnic workforce that built the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) during the 1880s, especially the difficult stretch through the Rocky Mountains. They reached the construction sites from central Canada and as part of the Italian stream into British Columbia from California and Washington states. After 1900 Italian migration reached several thousand per annum. Aside from the CPR, the major railways employing Italian labourers included the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Northern, the National Transcontinental, and the Grand Trunk Pacific (these lines, together with the Intercolonial but not the CPR, were amalgamated in 1917–23 to form the Canadian National Railways).

Railway construction and similar work building Canada’s industrial infrastructure were well suited to the majority of Italians who were sojourners at the turn of the century. Coming mainly from the middle stratum of tenant peasants, most immigrants initially intended to build a future by stabilizing their socio-economic position in the Old World, not by settling in the New. For many of them, the seasonal rhythms of railway work, its unskilled nature, and its relatively good wages fit well with their purpose of earning cash as quickly as possible and then returning to their home village to marry, build a house, or buy land.

In order to constitute work gangs quickly for onetime projects, the railways, especially the CPR and the Grand Trunk, relied on labour agents to recruit, assemble, and distribute men across Canada. In return for their activity, these agents were paid fees by both the employers and the men recruited. The railways, along with other major employers, depended on Italian and non-Italian labour agents, the most important of whom operated out of Montreal, where both the CPR and the Grand Trunk had their headquarters. The city’s two major Italian labour agents (or padroni ) had contacts with others in the United States and could recruit thousands of Italians from such cities as New York, Boston, Portland, and Chicago. Contact with steamship agents in Italy from Udine to Reggio Calabria also provided access to a large pool of willing new migrants. A miscalculation of Canada’s labour needs in 1904, when it was thought the CPR alone would require over 10,000 labourers, left many young men destitute in Montreal and resulted in a federal inquiry, which called for closer regulation of the labour bureau.

It was in part because of the activities of padroni that the great majority of Italians entered Canada via the United States rather than directly through Halifax or Quebec City. Out of 3,144 Italians employed by the CPR in 1903, for example, almost 2,000 came from the United States. While the large labour agencies of Montreal were capable of distributing workers across Canada, lesser agents in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia met the needs of more local employers, which included not only railways but also mines, steel mills, lumber camps, construction companies, and farmers. Padroni often also provided services as boarding-house keepers, immigrant bankers, translators, store owners, and subcontractors.

An instructive instance of recruitment by Italian immigrant employers who rose from the ranks is provided by the Veltri brothers of Grimaldi in the province of Cosenza. The younger brother, Giovanni, after working as a railway labourer in North Africa in the early 1880s, joined his sibling, Vincenzo, who had worked his way up to foreman, building branch lines in the American west. After establishing themselves as subcontractors, they crossed the border into British Columbia to begin a long career in railway construction. Their Welch Brothers Company, as the firm was then called, specialized in rock work and followed contracts across the west and into northern Ontario. Emerging as contractors in their own right, the Veltri brothers operated out of Winnipeg and Port Arthur (Thunder Bay). In 1906 they received a major contract from the National Transcontinental to build a long stretch of line from Reddit to Caribou Lake in northwestern Ontario. By the end of the project three years later, the brothers had built up one of the largest railway outfits, including ninety horses, which laid the basis for contracts that would see the Welch firm well into the post–World War II era.

Throughout their career the Veltris provided work and subcontracting opportunities to a long line of relatives and fellow townsmen, or paesani, some of whom returned to the home village and others settled across Canada from Vancouver to the Lakehead. The role played by well-placed intermediaries such as the Veltri brothers in facilitating Italian migration was exceptional. More commonly, throughout the early twentieth century, the padroni’s place between migrants and the host society was increasingly taken over by settled fellow townsfolk and relatives, who provided aid for employment, housing, and other matters within an informal system of rights and obligations, rather than as a paid service.

Canada’s unprecedented economic growth during the government of Wilfrid Laurier provided Italians with economic opportunities from coast to coast and underpinned their pioneering role in northern Ontario and the Canadian west. On the east coast, Italian settlers on Cape Breton Island were joined by a considerable number of compatriots, mainly northerners, at the turn of the century, when the Dominion Coal Company recruited for miners in Italy and Boston. At the same time, the newly opened steel mills at Sydney attracted many southern Italians. According to the Canadian census, by 1911 almost 1,000 Italians had settled in Nova Scotia, 400 of them around Sydney and another 300 in the Dominion area.

In the province of Quebec, Italians were heavily concentrated in Montreal. Some, however, did settle in small towns, such as the pulp and paper centre of La Tuque, where they had originally worked for the railway and where by 1911 they formed the second largest ethnic group after the French, with a population of 173. Italians held a similar position in Saint-Timothée, where many had been attracted to work on the Beauharnois canal. In southern Ontario the steel industry in Hamilton had drawn over 1,400 Italians by 1911, and widening the Welland Canal had resulted in a similar number settling in Niagara Falls, Welland, and Port Colborne in the Niagara peninsula. To the northeast of Toronto the Peterborough area attracted Italians first to work on the Grand Trunk Railway, subsequently to build lift locks for the canal, and then to be employed in the town’s Quaker Oats mills, giving the area an Italian population of 214. Even the small village of Port McNicoll on Georgian Bay, founded by the CPR in 1909, had some Italian families who provided room and board to the longshoremen from Montreal who came to work during the shipping season.

As in the west, however, it was in northern Ontario that Italians played a significant role in opening up new country. Indeed, if groups from the British Isles are considered separately, Italians formed the largest ethnic group employed north of Lake Superior – on the National Transcontinental Railway, at the mouth of White Fish River, and at Michipicoten Harbour. By 1911 they had been drawn to the Algoma Steel works at Sault Ste Marie, where they numbered 1,207, and to the nickel mines and smelter in the Sudbury district, where 620 settled at Copper Cliff and 236 at Creighton, making them the major ethnic group in the latter town. Further north, in the gold-mining district of Timmins, Italians numbered 340 in the Porcupine area. At the Lakehead, where they worked at the railway sheds and grain elevators, 917 lived in Fort William (Thunder Bay) and 472 in Port Arthur. Because they were among the first to develop the regions’ resources and on account of their considerable numbers, Italians in northern Ontario and the Rockies were most likely to consider themselves a settler people. Hence, their mentality was often that of pioneers who had a historic claim within the local society, rather than of immigrants who had to accommodate themselves to an already formed community, as was true in the cities and older parts of central Canada.

On the prairies the most substantial Italian presence was in Winnipeg, where the community numbered 769 in 1911, many of them involved in a host of food and other businesses. Elsewhere they formed small groupings in places such as Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, where Italian settlers convinced paesani from Ludlow, Massachusetts, to join them, and Medicine Hat and Lethbridge in Alberta, where they were active in both agriculture and urban trades. In the Rockies, navvies often turned into miners, such as in the coal-mining district of Crowsnest Pass. Italian enclaves were to be found in the Alberta coal-mining towns of Blairmore, where they numbered 224 in 1911, in Coleman (119 individuals), and in Lille (100), that town’s largest ethnic group.

Even more prominent were the mining communities in the Kootenay district of southeastern British Columbia. Again by 1911 there were 1,200 Italians in the coal-mining centre of Fernie, 520 at Revelstoke, and 460 at Cranbrook, which relied on base metals mining, and about 500 around Trail, site of the largest smelter in the British Empire. In the gold-mining town of Yale in the Fraser valley, almost 200 Italians made their home. Vancouver’s Little Italy contained over 2,500 residents, and almost 300 more were located in nearby New Westminster. On Vancouver Island 332 Italians had established themselves at Esquimalt, an important railway terminal and naval base, and another 177 were to be found at Nanaimo, where employment was provided by the coal mines. Near the Alaska border, large numbers were based at Skeena, with 410, and Prince Rupert, with 229, where the fishing industry provided many with work in the canneries. After World War I a considerable community evolved at Powell River, drawn by its large pulp, paper, and lumber mills.

In addition to their widespread presence in Canada’s resource-based towns during the age of industrial expansion, Italians were also to be found in the agricultural sector, although their numbers in this area were small. The early twentieth century saw the founding of agricultural settlements at Lorette, Manitoba, and in the Moose Jaw, Manito Lake, and Kinistino areas of Saskatchewan. However, Alberta was the prairie province most heavily colonized by Italians. By World War I the farming communities of Venice and Naples, north of Edmonton, had been founded, and settlement had occurred in the Lac la Biche district. In the southern part of the province, Italians had established farms at Turin, Bassano, Grassy Lake, and Iron Springs. In British Columbia, Italian agricultural settlement had taken root as early as the 1880s in the Okanagan valley, with the farming and ranching activities of settlers from the province of Alessandria in Piedmont. Later the Okanagan, like the similarly fertile and moderate Niagara peninsula of southern Ontario, became home to Italian vegetable, orchard, and vineyard growers. Such farmers supplied local canneries and wineries, and in some instances Italian-owned enterprises like Colona Wines of Kelowna grew to major stature. Italian vegetable producers also established themselves in the province’s Fraser valley and near Leamington in southern Ontario. Across Canada Italian truck farmers on the outskirts of urban centres ranging from Lethbridge to Ottawa and Montreal supplied the ubiquitous Italian greengrocers and local markets with fresh produce. In northern Ontario and the west, Italian dairy producers and general farmers were prominent in supplying the needs of mining and other resource-based towns such as Timmins, Sault Ste Marie, and Kamloops.

By World War I, 46,000 Italians had become permanent residents of Canada. Many others, omitted by the census, continued their pattern of sojourning from one job site to another, from hinterland to town, and from one continent to another. In 1914 an inspector with the Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione (a branch of the Italian ministry of foreign affairs) who visited various work sites across Ontario estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 Italians were employed on railway construction in that province alone. In winter they made their way not only to the major cities but also to towns such as La Tuque, Cochrane, Hearst, and North Bay, where a stable Italian population could provide lodging, traditional foods, and camaraderie. In Montreal in 1911 the census recorded over 7,000 Italians, but it can be estimated that another 4,000 were resident as sojourners. Similarly, Toronto’s Italian community of over 4,600 was augmented every year by a floating population equal in number.

Sojourners became immigrants as New World opportunities outweighed Old World ties. The permanent settlement of Italians was accomplished mainly through the informal ties that newcomers had with established immigrants who were either kin or fellow townsfolk. It was natural that newcomers would put down roots in places where trusted relatives or paesani could help to provide them with job opportunities, accommodation, and advice about mainstream society. As personal contacts gave rise to chain migration, each receiving town in Canada developed a unique mix of regional concentrations imported from Italy. Hence, in the early twentieth century, immigrants in Dominion, Cape Breton Island, were heavily drawn from the province of Treviso; in Montreal those from Campobasso and Caserta accounted for about one-third of Italians in that city’s two major enclaves; in Toronto immigrants from Trapani, Foggia, and Cosenza formed about 20 percent of the total; Sarnia’s Italians were mainly from Frosinone; Winnipeg had a strong contingent from Catanzaro; and Udine provided most of the Italian coal miners in New Michel, British Columbia.

By the end of World War I, not only Canada’s major cities but also many small towns had well-defined Italian enclaves, or Little Italys, which acted as residential and commercial centres for the evolving communities. Montreal’s Mile End district was the country’s most institutionally complete Italian community; the Italians of Copper Cliff’s the Hill lived on streets with names such as Venice, Genoa, Lombardy, and Marconi; the Moneta in Timmins was home to Italian gold miners seeking the Canadian dream; and in Trail the settlers from Cosenza, Udine, and other provinces lived together in the Gulch. Among the more important institutions giving coherence to the various immigrant communities were the Italian parishes such as Sydney’s St Nicola’s, founded in 1911, and North Bay’s St Rita’s, established in 1913; community organizations such as Windsor’s Dante Alighieri Society, founded to promote Italian culture, and Calgary’s Giovanni Caboto Lodge, a mutual-aid society; and newspapers such asLa Tribuna Canadiana (The Canadian Tribune; Toronto, 1908–35?) and L’Italia nel Canada (Italy in Canada; Vancouver, 1910–?).

World War I marked a major watershed in transforming migrant workers into permanent immigrants. The outbreak of hostilities in 1914 disrupted the transoceanic passenger trade, so that sojourners found themselves trapped and forced to settle in the New World. Although Rome’s indecisiveness about entering the war resulted in a backlash against those in Canada, once Italy became an ally in 1915, the tide turned and Italian immigrants were met with the most favourable response yet by the host society. This social reception, together with a shortage of labour and resulting high wages in factories, mines, and construction sites, provided a powerful impetus for migrants to join paesani in Little Italys across Canada. At war’s end, economic crisis in Italy, marked by high inflation, taxes, and unemployment, along with population increase, contributed to the decision of migrants to build their future in the New World. Moreover, restrictionist measures by the United States in the 1920s resulted in a modest diversion of Italian immigration northward to Canada, augmenting the movement in progress from Italy characterized by official Canadian preference for farm labourers.

Thus, while the 1911 census recorded an Italian resident population of 46,000, twenty years later the group had more than doubled to almost 98,200. By 1941 natural increase had brought the number to 112,625, although its proportion of the total population did not grow significantly and remained less than 1 percent. Regionally, the Italian element increased as follows between 1911 and 1941: in the Atlantic provinces from 1,378 to 2,794; in Quebec from 9,608 to 28,051; in Ontario from 21,440 to 60,085; in the prairies provinces from 3,475 to 8,368; and in British Columbia from 9,997 to 13,292. The threefold growth in Quebec and Ontario resulted primarily from influxes into the major centres of Montreal and Toronto, which increasingly attracted Italian immigrants because of their strong need for labourers, wage rates that outstripped those of the hinterland, and growing Little Italys that provided an expanding range of opportunities. Between 1911 and 1941 the Italian population in Montreal increased more than threefold from 7,000 to 25,000, and that of Toronto almost fourfold from 4,600 to 17,900. Montreal accounted for over 89 percent of the Italian population growth in Quebec, and the ethnic group made up 2 percent of the city’s inhabitants. In Ontario growth was more dispersed, but Toronto still took up almost 30 percent of the province’s increase.

Montreal and Toronto, as well as smaller centres such as Hamilton and Winnipeg, attracted Italians to work on the infrastructure that laid the basis for the modern city. Roads and sidewalks, sewers and tunnels, gas mains and electric lighting, new homes and public buildings all drew the labour of Italian immigrants. They built street railways and worked in the maintenance shops and depots of the urban rail networks. Indoor work was usually preferred to outdoor construction, however, and Italians made their way into factories or small business at the earliest opportunity. In Montreal the Angus repair shops of the CPR and Canadian Car, for example, became important employers, as did Canada Foundry and the Toronto Brick Company in Toronto. In both cities the textile and clothing industry was increasingly important for men and women.

Immigrants with trades often attempted to utilize them for self-employment. In the service trades, barbers, tailors, and cobblers established shops alongside the groceries, fruit stores, travel agencies, and similar small businesses that characterized Little Italys. Others took their pushcarts or businesses into the host community, thus adding to the perception that certain skills were characteristically Italian. In the building trades, skilled workers such as plasterers, bricklayers, carpenters, and terrazzo setters often tried to parley their skills into small construction firms. This pattern could be clearly seen in Toronto, for example, after a 1904 fire destroyed its downtown and during the housing boom that followed World War I. By the end of the 1920s, then, Italians had commonly made the transition from sojourner to settler, from hinterland to city, from construction work to factory and self-employment. In short, they had set down roots in an evolving industrial Canada.

Italian immigration to Canada after World War II was overwhelmingly permanent. A liberal family-reunification policy rendered unnecessary the reliance on labour brokers and intermediaries that had facilitated the earlier movement. The great majority of new immigrants were still drawn from rural Italy and from the southern regions. Of the 315,794 newcomers who arrived between 1946 and 1963 (one year after immigration policy narrowed kin sponsorship), over 51 percent entered the labour force and the remainder came as dependants. Among the former, more than 76 percent were destined for semi- or unskilled labour, 22 percent for skilled work, and about 1 percent for professional occupations. Within the unskilled category, more than 57,000 entered as general labourers, over 34,500 as agricultural workers (albeit for short periods), and about 18,300 women as domestics.

Of the 35,629 who immigrated with recognized skills, 30,879 were in manufacturing, mechanical, and construction industries. In particular, major occupational categories of incoming immigrants included 8,399 brick and stonemasons, 5,206 carpenters, 2,622 tailors, 2,621 auto mechanics, 1,604 shoemakers and repairmen, 1,068 electricians and wirers, 870 painters, decorators, and glaziers, 607 cabinet and furniture makers, 425 blacksmiths, 350 machinists, 277 plumbers and pipefitters, and 215 plasterers and lathers. Among women, by far the largest skilled category was that of dressmakers and seamstresses, with 2,385 reporting the trade as their intended occupation. Within primary industries 1,545 Italians entered Canada as miners, and in the skilled service industries 2,122 came as barbers, hairdressers, and manicurists and 794 as bakers.

While the occupational status of Italian immigrants in this period bore considerable resemblance to the prewar movement with regard to both skilled and unskilled labour, it is significant that substantial improvement occurred for a large component of the Italian ethnic labour force. In 1931 the primary – mining and quarrying – and unskilled occupational category in the census held 44 percent of all Italians, whereas by 1961 this proportion was halved to less than 22 percent. Hence, the relative over-representation in this low-skill category decreased from 26 to around 10 percent. Italians did much to fill Canada’s need for both skilled and unskilled labour at a time when critical shortages, especially in the construction and manufacturing industries, could have seriously curtailed post-war expansion. Particularly when the costs of socialization, education, and occupational training of immigrants saved by Canada are included, the economic contribution made by Italians is impressive.

In contrast to the earlier years, Italian immigration in the post-war period was directed to the industrial heartland of Canada. Ontario, experiencing a boom in its manufacturing, construction, and resource-based sectors, was the main destination. By 1981, out of a total population of three-quarters of a million (single origin), 65 percent of Italian Canadians lived in that province and 22 percent in Quebec, the majority in each case being concentrated in Toronto or Montreal. The logic of economics and chain migration catapulted Toronto into the premier position as a centre of Italian settlement in the post-World War II period.

Building on its successful past as a political, commercial, industrial, and financial centre, the city at the war’s end was poised for major economic expansion. Toronto and its suburbs contained a third of all manufacturing workers in Ontario, and within a 160-kilometre radius of the city was located one-third of the purchasing power in Canada. This concentration, together with abundant energy supplies, attracted large capital investment. In 1946, for example, 47 percent of Canada’s new industrial development took place in Toronto. Such wealth, in turn, could not but attract labour, whether from internal or overseas sources. Italians in particular responded to the demand in construction and factory work. Expanding on a pre-war colony of less than 17,000, the new influx boosted the Italian population of Metropolitan Toronto to around 300,000 by 1981.

The concentration in industrial central Canada was evident by the 1960s, when Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton between them contained 60 percent of the country’s Italian population, compared to half this proportion just before World War I. In both periods, however, the Italian concentration in the three cities was twice the relative proportion for Canadians as a whole. Moreover, while Ontario and Quebec contained around 65 percent of both the Italian minority and of Canadians generally in the early part of the century, the post– World War II period brought significant divergence. By the 1960s, although the proportion of the general population living in central Canada had remained unchanged, the ratio of Italian Canadians in Ontario and Quebec rose to over 85 percent.

Outside central Canada, Vancouver emerged as the major urban magnet. In 1941 the west-coast city contained 4,359 Italians, making up a modest 1.2 percent of the total population. By 1981 post-war immigration had increased the number of single-origin Italian Canadians in Vancouver to over 30,000, or almost 3 percent of the metropolitan population. Similarly, Montreal’s total of 25,351 Italians in 1941 expanded to almost 160,600 thirty years later and increased from 2.2 to almost 6 percent of the population in 1981. Most impressively, Toronto’s Italian community of 17,887 in 1941, or 2 percent of the total, saw great growth to over 10 percent of the metropolitan area’s three-million population in 1981.

Although the settlement pattern of Italians after World War II was more concentrated in Canada’s major cities than during the earlier period, the more recent movement was so massive that the number of Italians increased significantly in almost all centres where the pre-war settlers had established themselves. Medium-sized cities and towns with early settlements, such as Windsor, Fort William and Port Arthur, and Welland, saw a manifold increase in the size of their Italian communities. In Windsor by the 1970s three-quarters of Italian Canadians were post-war immigrants or their children. After 1941 the community more or less doubled every decade from 2,400 to 4,100 in 1951; 8,600 in 1961; and 17,900 in 1971.

In the west, growth was even more impressive as prosperity and opportunities attracted an influx of new immigrants who established viable Italian communities. Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton all witnessed the development of a significant Italian presence during the 1950s. Edmonton, for example, attracted large numbers of labourers, the first significant group arriving in 1954 with the R.F. Welch Company. The Italian community increased from 500 in 1951 to 4,425 in 1961 and 10,000 a decade later. Resource-based towns first discovered by Italians in the early part of the century, such as Trail in British Columbia and Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie in Ontario, also saw major growth in their Italian communities. Chain migration resulted in Italians accounting for almost half the post-war immigrants settling in Sault Ste Marie, so that by the 1960s the ethnic group emerged as the town’s second largest. In 1971 they numbered over 13,000 and comprised more than 16 percent of the total population, the highest proportion in Canada.

To this development was added a considerable Italian presence in hinterland towns that expanded during Canada’s resource development after World War II. Like their predecessors, post-war Italians played an important role in the exploitation of natural resources, particularly in northern areas. By 1971, 300 Italians had been attracted to the copper and gold mining in the Rouyn area of northeastern Quebec; another 300 were to be found in the nickel-mining town of Thompson, Manitoba, built by the International Nickel Company in 1954; 430 were located in the aluminum-producing town of Kitimat, British Columbia, established by the Aluminum Company of Canada around the same time; and roughly 200 lived in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, where gold mining provided employment. To some extent, internal settlement patterns within Canada corresponded to major demographic movements that affected all Canadians. In particular, some Italian Canadians in Cape Breton responded to static economic conditions by migrating to the “golden horseshoe” around Toronto; others from central Canada sought new opportunities by relocating during the petroleum-driven boom in Alberta; and those who had settled on the land were often swept along in the prevailing rural-to-urban current.

Within the major metropolitan centres of Toronto and Montreal, Italian Canadians by the 1970s had taken the process of residential mobility outward from the city core to the point where distinctive Italian-Canadian suburbs had been established: Woodbridge in the former case and Saint-Léonard in the latter. This process was clearest in Toronto, where the early downtown concentration in St John’s Ward, because of urban renewal, on the one hand, and the pull of better housing, on the other, had given way to a distinctive west-end Little Italy after World War I. This enclave on College Street remained the residential and commercial heart of the Italian community into the post-war period, when it was the major receiving area for a great many of the city’s Italian immigrants. In 1961 approximately 16,500 Italians lived in the district, and it required two Italian parishes to minister to its residents. On many streets bordering on the two churches, Italians formed 60 percent of the population. Concurrently, throughout the 1950s a steady stream moved northwest, converging in the less congested area around St Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street. By the 1960s this Little Italy had supplanted the one on College Street and was serviced by three Italian churches. Members of the ethnic group now comprised 54 percent of the population in the uptown area.

Riding the crest of economic prosperity, Toronto’s Italians continued to push their urban advance to the northwest at a rapid pace, attesting to the group’s drive to attain middle-class standards of living. Through the suburban municipalities of York and North York, Italians moved towards the metropolitan limits, where by the 1970s they formed up to half the population in neighbourhoods such as Downsview. From there, they shifted outside Metropolitan Toronto altogether, to adjacent towns such as Woodbridge, which because of its high concentration of individuals of the second generation, Italianate architecture, and various Italian-Canadian businesses has come to symbolize most vividly the mobility of Italian Canadians in the nation’s major urban areas.

The concentration of Italian immigrants in the construction, manufacturing, and mining sectors of the economy in the early years placed them squarely in the conflict between capital and labour. Historically, their role within the labour movement was ambiguous. Pre– World War I workers, especially newly arrived migrants, were used by employers in the classic strategy of playing ethnic groups against one another in order to keep wages down, retard union organization, and break strikes. Given that many Italians were sojourners who planned soon to return to their home towns, that they regularly encountered prejudice on the part of labour leaders, and that mainstream Canadian workers often boycotted their hiring, what is noteworthy is the extent of their participation in the movement. Indeed, building on a long tradition of popular protest, Italians were at times in the front lines of worker militancy. In 1904 about 20 Italians working at the smelter in Copper Cliff struck against a speed-up order, precipitating a strike that involved thousands of employees. Two years later, 150 Italian maintenance employees on the Grand Truck Railway near Kingston refused further work until they received a wage increase. And in 1907, 40 Italian navvies at Nanton, Alberta, struck against the CPR until unsatisfactory conditions at the work camp were improved.

However, the most celebrated example of Italian labour militancy occurred at the Lakehead. Over a period of a decade between 1902 and 1912, several hundred workers in the twin towns of Port Arthur and Fort William were in the forefront of a series of four bitter strikes against the Canadian Northern and Canadian Pacific railways. Fighting for better wages and an end to the withholding of “bonuses” from their pay, Italian labourers joined with Greeks, Finns, and others to forge a tradition of working-class militancy. In 1912 the recently established and Italian-led local 319 of the Coal Handlers Union began a strike against the Canadian Northern Coal and Ore Company over wages and recognition, ultimately achieving partial victory. Around the same time, Italians were taking part in major labour movements in western Canada. They were active in the ranks and as organizers of the United Mine Workers of America in the Kootenays. Also in British Columbia, in 1912 Italian navvies participated in the massive multi-ethnic strike against the Canadian Northern Railway led by the syndicalist International Workers of the World.

Italians were also active in the labour movement in the major cities. Such was especially the case in the clothing and garment industry in Montreal, where as early as 1909 they were a force within the Ladies Garment Workers Union. In 1912 Italian tailors joined with Jewish and French-Canadian co-workers in a general strike organized by the United Garment Workers Union. The strike was a success and reduced the work week from sixty to fifty-two hours, with compensation. Further, in 1921 Italians succeeded in establishing their own local, number 274, within the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). While pre-war Italian participation in Montreal’s building trades unions lagged behind that in the needle trades, there too they eventually played an important role. For example, Italians were prominent in organizing the Tile and Terrazzo Union, established in 1933 as a Catholic union in Quebec.

After World War II, Italian involvement in the union movement grew substantially. In Montreal by the late 1960s local 274 of the ACWA contained about 2,000 members, and another 2,000 Italians belonged to specialized locals in the needle trades. They formed about 40 percent of the Men’s Garment Workers Union and up to 30 percent of the International Ladies Garment Workers. The latter union had a total membership of 15,000, mostly women, and Italian immigrants worked alongside French Canadians, Greeks, Slavs, and Jews. Montreal’s Italians were also heavily involved in various building trades unions and the Hotel, Motel and Club Employees Union.

However, in keeping with its displacement of Montreal as the major centre for Italian immigration, Toronto emerged as the hotbed of union activity after the war. The 1960s saw the first concerted efforts to organize Italian workers. The clothing and textile industries, where in 1961 Italian women formed over 58 percent of the female labour force and men over 22 percent of male workers, had been characterized by widespread exploitation. Union officials claimed that 85 percent of garment shops in the city were non-union and that Italian immigrant women were often working up to eighty hours a week for 40 cents an hour, when the minimum wage for females was between 54 and 62 cents depending on experience. Subcontractors who used women to do finishing work at home were even more exploitative. Half the 1,200 homeworkers in the men’s sportswear industry made wages that were less than one-third of union shop rates.

Although not all issues of exploitation were met successfully, considerable organization and advances occurred. In 1960 the Fur Workers Union organized 200 workers in the synthetic fur trade, which contained many Italian women, and successfully won a forty-hour week and increased wages and benefits. Toronto’s leather workers were also organized successfully. By the late 1960s the ACWA’s Italian local 235 (founded after World War I) had a membership of 1,500, most of whom were women. Another 500 Italians were members of other needle trades locals. Moreover, the decade saw Italian unionists in campaigns to organize the related industries with high proportions of Italian immigrant workers. Important strides were made both by the Boot and Shoe Workers Union and the International Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Dye House Workers Union, which won a successful contract for 500 workers.

While the clothing and textile sector remained an important employer of Italians, especially for women, the centre of employment, and hence union activity, in both Toronto and Montreal shifted to the building trades. This was especially true in Toronto, where Italians made up almost one-third of the city’s construction workers by 1961. Early post-war organizing drives among Italian construction workers were led by Bruno Zanini, who signed up more than 1,000 bricklayers under an American Federation of Labour (AFL) charter in 1955, and Charles Irvine, an AFL organizer, who in 1957 brought several hundred Italians into the Plasterers and Cement Masons’ International Union and then headed a successful strike for increased wages and a closed shop. These achievements influenced other unions to hire Italian organizers to reach immigrant workers, beginning with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, which soon signed up approximately 500 for a new local in the residential field.

In the spring of 1960 the collapse of a water-main tunnel in Toronto’s Hogg’s Hollow area, which led to the death of five Italians, and a cave-in at a subway site a year later, which resulted in five more casualties, acted as powerful catalysts for the mass organization of Italian construction workers. Long-standing grievances ranging from unsafe conditions and below-marginal wages to the payment of kickbacks to secure work were still widespread, especially in the residential field, where Italians were concentrated. Under the leadership of Zanini and Irvine, an association of five Italian construction locals was established during 1960 to organize nonunion workers and end exploitation in the industry. Within weeks the Italian unions had a membership of 3,000, and a summer strike involving 6,000 was launched under the slogan “Canadian wages, Canadian hours.” A second major strike in 1961 led to the arrest of 100 strikers and a rally to express solidarity attended by about 17,000. Toronto’s Italian unions did not achieve all their goals in the course of the year-long agitation, but there were major victories: union membership was significantly increased; the strikes had led to a forty-hour week and an increase in wages of up to 22 percent, to $3.05 an hour for skilled labourers; a royal commission was appointed, which exposed exploitation and led to lasting reforms; and, as important, Italians gained the respect of organized labour and enhanced their collective self-confidence.

By the late 1960s Italians had won a leading role within the city’s union movement on the basis of locals with strongly Italian memberships. Outside construction, they had gained positions of authority in the Fur Workers Union, the Boot and Shoe Workers Union, the Bakery Union, and the Hotel, Motel, and Club Employees Union. However, it was within the building and related trades that this expansion in Italian membership and leadership was most pronounced. The unions involved included the Bricklayers’ International Union; the Plasterers and Cement Masons’ International Union; the Cement Masons’ Union; the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Labourers Union; the Marble, Tile, and Terrazzo Workers Union; the Painters and Decorators of America; the United Glass and Ceramic Workers; the International Woodworkers of America; the Wood, Wire and Metal Lathers International Union; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and the United Steelworkers of America. Dozens of Italian union officers were dedicated to the improvement of working-class lives. Particularly noteworthy was the service of John Stefanini, who rose from the rank of organizer to become business manager and secretary-treasurer of local 183 of the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Labourers’ Union of America. The local grew from a membership of 2,000 in 1961 (85 percent Italian) to 7,000 in the mid-seventies and about 13,000 a decade later, making it North America’s largest labourers’ union.

Even though Italian immigrants entered Canada’s economy at the lower rungs of the occupational ladder and made significant contributions to the labour movement, most sought to move out of their working-class status at the earliest opportunity. As former farmers and artisans, they had come to this country with the outlook of small property owners and with a powerful work ethic. They were provided the opportunity to succeed by a fluid socio-economic structure and a flourishing economy, which saw Canada’s gross national product increase from $16,343 million in 1949 to $62,068 million in 1967.

Both Old and New World factors combined to create rapid and significant upward mobility for post-war Italians in this country. A popular, though also problematic, route towards improved socio-economic status consisted of self-employment, especially for the immigrant generation. Traditionally, it had involved the retail businesses of Little Italy, ranging from Milanese fashion outlets to Sicilian ice cream parlours, but the post-war period witnessed a major increase in the number of immigrants who used their background in the construction trades to set themselves up as subcontractors, especially in the burgeoning residential field. The construction industry also led naturally to involvement in land development and real estate. By the late 1970s almost 20 percent of Italian Canadians in Toronto were self-employed. For the second generation, mobility increasingly came to encompass higher education and entry into the professions, especially teaching, engineering, accounting, and law.

The extent and degree of upward mobility for Italian Canadians can be appreciated by considering census data for the post-war period. In 1961 for Canada as a whole, about 44 percent of males of Italian origin were skilled construction workers or factory operatives, over 19 percent were common labourers, and almost 9 percent were in various service trades, such as barbering and restaurants. Among females of Italian origin, 43 percent were factory employees, mainly in the needle trades, 23 percent were in service occupations, such as laundry workers, and over 15 percent were clerical workers. As would be expected given the background of the majority of Italian immigrants, they were over-represented as low-skilled, manual workers and underrepresented in the professional and financial strata: by 10 percent in the former case and 5 percent in the latter. Nevertheless, by relying on traditional skills, a significant number had made their way into the ranks of small business. In Metropolitan Toronto by 1961 Italian males formed 13 percent of all food retailers, 31 percent of shoe repairers, and 42 percent of barbers. More significantly, they comprised 37 percent of all general contractors and 27 percent of specialized trade contractors within the construction industry.

In Montreal by the late 1960s, Italians were well established in the city’s business sector and to some extent in the professions. A community survey revealed that within the construction industry, they owned, at a conservative estimate, 130 firms, the major fields aside from general contracting being tile and terrazzo, bricklaying, road and pavement, and landscaping. Italians owned almost 400 establishments in the food sector – over 250 grocery stores and fruit markets and almost 120 pizzerias, restaurants, and banquet halls. Within the needle trades there were at least a dozen each of Italian clothing contractors and custom-tailoring establishments. Other small businesses included insurance and travel agencies, shoe and clothing stores, furniture outlets, upholstering businesses, barber shops, beauty parlours, florist shops, photography and printing outlets, auto sales businesses, and service stations. With regard to professional occupations, Italians were well served with over sixty doctors, almost half of whom were associated with the Italian hospital, Santa Maria Cabrini. Engineers and architects, numbering about thirty-six, were the next most numerous professional group, followed by about twenty lawyers and notaries, eight accountants, and four pharmacists.

Census figures reveal that major strides in upward mobility were made by Italian Canadians during the 1970s and 1980s. In the fifteen-year period between 1971 and 1986, they increased their proportion in the nation’s managerial, professional, and technical occupations from 7 to over 17 percent and in clerical, sales, and service jobs from 31 to over 41 percent. Conversely, the proportion of Italian Canadians in blue-collar work – manufacturing, construction, and transportation – dropped from 60 to 40 percent, while those in primary jobs remained around 2 percent. Although Italians made significant gains compared with Canadians as a whole, even in 1986 they were 9 percent below the national level with respect to the managerial and professional strata and 12 percent above the national average with regard to blue-collar employment.

However, if the Canadian-educated Italians are separated out from the ethnic group, not only is the occupational discrepancy vis-à-vis the mainstream Canadian population greatly diminished, but significant intergenerational mobility is revealed. In 1986 about one-quarter of Canadian-educated men and women were in managerial, professional, and technical occupations, compared to a small proportion of around 6 percent for the immigrant generation. Canadian-educated Italian males had virtually reached parity with Canadians generally, but females were 5 percent below their counterparts. Within the upper-level category, the most prominent profession for Italian-Canadian men and women was management and administration, which accounted for 12 percent of the total for men and 8 percent for women.

The white-collar category of clerical, sales, and service accounted for almost 35 percent of Canadian-educated Italian males and 69 percent of females, much higher than the approximately 22 and 44 percent respectively for the immigrant generation and also higher than the 26 and 59 percent for the general population. With regard to blue-collar work, 38 percent of Canadian-educated Italian men and almost 7 percent of women were in this category, close to the overall Canadian proportions. These figures marked a significant decrease from the ratio of Italian immigrants in the stratum, which was around 70 percent for males and 50 percent for females. The decrease by almost 43 percent within one generation of the proportion of Italian women engaged in manual labour was quite remarkable.

This profile of employment mobility is reflected in the educational attainment of Italian Canadians. In 1986 over 12 percent of male and 10 percent of female children of immigrants had received a bachelor of arts or higher degree. For sons this ratio was identical to the national average, and for daughters it was slightly above (by 2 percent). The educational improvement of Italian Canadians was even more striking given that of the immigrant generation, among whom 59 percent of men and 78 percent of women had only an elementary school education.

With regard to income, a third major indicator of socio-economic status, the general level reached by Italian Canadians in 1986 was equivalent to the mainstream Canadian average income of almost $15,700. However, the income of Canadian-educated Italians was lower than the overall Canadian figure: $14,844 compared to an average of $15,693 for men and $10,220 compared to $10,681 for women. Moreover, Canadian-educated Italian males had incomes that were similarly lower than their immigrant fathers, whereas the females earned more than their mothers. By the 1980s many immigrant men were at the height of their earning power, while their sons were still establishing themselves. Daughters, on the other hand, were entering white-collar careers, in contrast to the intermittent factory work that employed their mothers.

In Toronto the income of men of Italian origin was enhanced not only by self-employment but also by work in Italian businesses and traditionally Italian occupations. Many immigrant entrepreneurs who had set up small businesses, especially in the construction and food industries, prospered in the post-war boom and became major employers, providing jobs to large numbers of other Italians. The size of the city’s Italian population, which accounted for 37 percent of the nation’s total, enabled the community to develop an ethnically based economy that, far from acting as a barrier to mobility, often enhanced it.

Examination of the three standard indices of socioeconomic status – occupation, education, and income – shows that Italian Canadians experienced impressive upward mobility in the post-war period. Both significant intergenerational improvement and rough parity with mainstream Canadians were attained by the mid1980s. However, for Italian Canadians a fourth measure of mobility must be considered which often underlay the others and was at the centre of their self-definition of betterment. For them, home ownership was frequently the goal most sought after, and it reflected both their small-propertied past and the importance of family values.

By the 1980s Italian Canadians had attained the highest rate of home ownership in Canada. In 1981, 86 percent owned their own homes, an increase of almost 10 percent from a decade earlier and well above the national rate of 70 percent. In Ontario generally and in Toronto in particular, 90 percent owned their own homes, compared to 71 percent for the province and 67 percent for the city. Moreover, the houses acquired by Italian Canadians were at the upper end of the market. Of the ethnic group as a whole in 1981, 37 percent owned homes worth $100,000 or more, compared to 22 percent for Canadians generally, and only 6 percent owned homes worth less than $35,000, compared to 17 percent nationally. This spread was particularly notable in Quebec, especially Montreal, where over one-quarter of Italian Canadians owned houses at the top end of the market, compared to 7 percent provincially and 14 percent for the city, with a roughly converse relationship at the low end. Thus, in terms of their own chief measure of mobility, Italian Canadians have succeeded remarkably well in improving their lives. More generally, major socio-economic indices show that significant upward redistribution has catapulted the ethnic group quite firmly into the middle class mainstream.