Politics

Prior to World War II, politics for Italians in Canada revolved around two poles. Though they were connected, one centred on Old World conflicts and ideologies and the other on New World self-interest and opportunities. In the nineteenth century, politics in Italy had a greater influence on Canadians than on the small number of Italians who had established themselves here. Before Confederation the few Risorgimento exiles who made their way to British North America were drawn into the religious antagonisms of the country as English-speaking Protestants supported the unification of Italy and the absorption of papal territory and conservative Catholics opposed it. Indeed, when the revolutionary monk Giovanni Gavazzi visited Canada in 1853, his anti-papal speech in Montreal touched off one of the most tragic episodes in Canadian history. A confrontation between Irish Catholics and the militia left sixteen protesters dead and thirty-six wounded.

The immigration of peasant workers and the growth of Italian communities after 1890 brought with them the transplantation of Old World parties and ideologies. In the early twentieth century, radicals in Toronto formed a branch of the Italian socialist party, and anarchists were to be found in a number of Little Italys. Their presence was insignificant and remained peripheral to the mass of Italians too busy making a living to have time for ideology and often too preoccupied with returning to their home paese. The advent of World War I, however, led to the rapid politicization of Italian immigrants. As was true in many other ethnic communities, a wave of nationalistic fervour ran through Canada’s Italian enclaves as individuals mobilized for the defence of the homeland. The task of “making Italians” left over from the Risorgimento was largely brought to fruition by the war, which did much to dissolve regional loyalties in the name of patriotism. A major manifestation of this new-found patriotism was the expansion of the Order of the Sons of Italy into Canada in 1915. Another was enlistment in the Allied cause.

In May 1915 the Canadian and Italian governments organized a special train, “il treno degli italiani,” to travel from Vancouver to Montreal to pick up reservists and volunteers for the Italian army. The response was enthusiastic, and throughout the war years more than 8,000 returned to the homeland to fight. Moreover, almost 2,000 Italian Canadians volunteered to serve overseas in the Canadian army. The patriotism fostered by World War I was one of the community pillars that Italy’s new fascist government was able skilfully to exploit a few years later by equating Italian national feeling with the regime. As both fascists and anti-fascists intensified their propaganda campaigns in Canada’s Little Italys, the inter-war years emerged as a period of particularly bitter divisiveness for Italian Canadians.

The Italian Fascist Party organized fasci (fascist clubs) in Italian communities in Canada. Their establishment was opposed by socialists, Communists, and anarchists, who came together to form anti-fascist associations such as the Mazzini Society. Both camps ran their own newspapers: the fascists’ Il Bollettino (The Bulletin; Toronto, 1926–45?) and the socialists’ La Voce operaia (The Workers’ Voice; Toronto, 1933–34), the latter being the first of three leftist newspapers established during the 1930s. In addition to the left-wing resistance to fascism, there was also opposition by committed liberals and Protestant, anti-papal Italian Canadians.

There can be little doubt, however, that Mussolini’s right-wing populism and ambitions for Italy as a world power attracted the sympathy of most Italian Canadians. Intra-community rivalry, as indicated by support for transplanted political parties, subscriptions to Italian-language newspapers, the position of Italian-Canadian associations and leaders, and attendance at political speeches and banquets, point to the general appeal of the Mussolini regime. In the 1930s the fasci in Canada had a following of around 3,500, whereas the left-wing groups measured theirs in the hundreds. World War II radically changed the political alignment within the community and discredited political involvement with the homeland. The disaster of the war ensured that henceforth Italian Canadians of both pre- and post-war generations would adopt a position of vigilance – and even distrust – towards interference in community affairs on the part of Italian governments or parties.

The homeland politics that were played out in Canada before 1940 were heavily orchestrated by men who had undergone their political formation in Italy. The leaders of the fasci were often recent immigrants who had been veterans of World War I, involved in establishing the fascist movement, or at least educated in Italy. Similarly, almost 40 percent of Italian anti-fascist activists in Canada had documented prior political experience in the homeland, especially the socialists, who were more than twice as likely to have had Italian experience and who led much of the Italian-Canadian resistance.

More enduring than the involvement in homeland politics was the participation of Italian Canadians in the political world of their adopted country. This less dramatic activity was humble in origin, developed gradually, and left a legacy far beyond the immigrant community. Once Italians in Canada had undergone the material and psychological transition from sojourners to settlers, they entered the political process in earnest. Although some had sought the transplantation of Old World ideologies and movements, more substantively Italian immigrants participated as citizen electors, petitioners and lobbyists, minor appointed officials, and brokers between their community and Canadian parties. Beginning in the 1920s, the first Italian Canadians were elected to political office as school trustees and aldermen.

Toronto provides an illustration of the political maturity reached by Italians by World War I. As a young journalist for the Daily Mail and Empire, future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, in an 1897 article favourable to the city’s Italians, had noted the presence of Michael Bosso, a grocer who, in addition to helping immigrants find work and homes, acted as court interpreter and encouraged many to become naturalized in order to take full advantage of their rights as citizens. In the same decade the Liberal Party organized support within Little Italy through the president of the Umberto Primo society, Donato A.G. Glionna, who by 1910 became vice-president of the Centre Toronto Liberal Association. The Conservative Party followed suit around 1908, utilizing the auspices of the Italian National Club, founded by wealthy Italians, and funding the influential La Tribuna Canadiana (The Canadian Tribune; Toronto, 1908–29?).

The transplantation of fascism after World War I and the founding of a local fascist club in 1926 were to some extent offset in the 1930s by small, but active groups of anarchists and Communists, the latter affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada, which had been established in 1921. Moreover, Canadian social democracy was launched in 1932 with the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). This organization too spawned an Italian affiliate when members of the socialist-led Mazzini Society organized an Italian CCF Club in Toronto. During World War II both right- and left-wing radical parties were proscribed by the Canadian government, and both movements faded in the Italian community, as they did in the general society. Social democracy, however, survived and prospered, and, as the New Democratic Party (NDP) after 1961, it attracted many newly arrived Italian voters.

Interestingly, in electoral politics Italians did not attain their first significant successes in the large cities, where they were linked by political brokers to the major parties. Rather, they did best in those regions where they had played a pioneering role – in northern Ontario and even more in the west. Throughout the 1930s several Italians were elected to local councils in Fort William in Ontario, Mayerthorpe and Coleman in Alberta, and Trail and Revelstoke in British Columbia. In each instance, Italians also captured the mayor’s office, the first being Bruno Le Rose in Trail in 1930, a feat he repeated for five terms. At the provincial level, Italians were first elected to office in the west. In the late 1930s Angelo Branca, at age thirty-four, became the youngest attorney general in British Columbia history under the “little New Deal” administration of Premier T. Dufferin Pattullo. In adjacent Alberta, where the populist Social Credit Party had come to power, a local businessman and former mayor of Mayerthorpe, Angelo M. Montemurro, was elected as part of the new movement in the 1940s.

The loyalty of Italian Canadians during World War II and Italy’s emergence as an ally within NATO did much to erase the stigma of fascism from the community and to encourage increased participation in political life. In many centres, especially the major cities, the post-war influx of immigrants provided a renewed political base for Italian-Canadian politicians. During the 1950s and 1960s members of the community were elected to local governments from New Brunswick to Vancouver Island. Again it was the hinterland regions where they were well integrated that led the way. In Timmins, Leo Del Villano was elected mayor in 1958 and commenced a long tenure that spanned almost two decades. In Trail voters chose their second Italian-Canadian mayor, and three of the city’s aldermen were compatriots, all of them members of the Colombo Lodge. Sudbury, Brandon, Lac la Biche, and Nanaimo also voted in Italian-Canadian mayors. Similarly, an Italian Canadian became mayor of Kingsville (south of Windsor), Ontario, in the 1960s, and advances also occurred in the Niagara peninsula, where Welland elected four Italian-Canadian aldermen and councillor Laura Sabia of St Catharines became president of the Association of Graduate Women of Canada. In the major cities the post-war revitalization of Little Italys ensured local victories in Toronto, Hamilton, and Montreal; in the last city an Italian Canadian was elected mayor in the suburb of Greenfield Park.

The 1950s and 1960s also saw Italian Canadians elected at the provincial and federal levels. In 1952 Philip Gagliardi of Mission City, British Columbia, was elected to the provincial legislature for the Social Credit Party, and he became the first post-war cabinet minister of Italian origin. While “Flying Phil” was atypical of the community with regard to his evangelical Protestant faith, his experience as a businessman in the construction field was not, and for a decade and a half it stood him in good stead as minister of public works and then of highways. During the 1960s two other Italian Canadians were elected in British Columbia: Herb Capozzi, a former football player from Vancouver; and Dr Lorenzo Giovando from Ladysmith. In Alberta, Mike Maccagno was elected to the legislature in 1955 and became leader of the provincial Liberal Party in 1966, the only Italian Canadian to reach such a position. In Quebec Camillo Martellari, a contractor and former Montreal councillor, campaigned successfully for the Union Nationale party in 1966. The following year, Dante Del Monte, who had served in the Canadian navy during the war, was elected to the Ontario provincial legislature for the opposition Liberals in Toronto’s heavily Italian west end.

Parallel developments took place in federal politics. During the election of 1957, Quinto Martini, a Hamilton realtor, broke new ground by winning a seat for the Progressive Conservatives. Also in the 1950s, Hubert Badanai, Fort William’s popular mayor, was elected for the Liberals and rose quickly to become assistant to the minister of manpower and immigration. Western Hamilton was the scene of an important battle over the issue of immigration in 1962. Ellen Fairclough, the Conservative member, as minister of immigration and manpower, had called for a limitation of the sponsorship of relatives to immediate family members in order to alleviate the recession of the late 1950s. The proposal was widely attacked, however, as prejudicial to Italians, who currently outnumbered the British as immigrants and whose heavy reliance on the sponsorship system meant that they had the most to lose from the proposed legislation. Although the revisions were withdrawn, Joseph Macaluso, a young Liberal lawyer, defeated the minister in her Hamilton seat, and his victory came to symbolize the growing clout of Italian voters.

Federally, the Italian vote solidified around the Liberals, who were increasingly seen as distinct from the Conservatives. The latter were now associated with unemployment (which severely affected the sensitive construction sector) and restrictionist immigration policy, and they were also perceived as pro-monarchist and supporting big business. The Liberals were considered Canadian nationalists (they gave Canada its distinctive flag in 1965 after weeks of stormy debate), as having an open door on immigration, and as willing to use the state to reinforce social security and stimulate economic growth. To this mix, which appealed to the average Italian immigrant, were added two additional ingredients that further increased support for the Liberals. These were the assertive stance on multiculturalism initiated under Prime Minister Lester P. Pearson and continued under his successor, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

During the memorable election of 1968, the Italians of west-end Toronto chose alderman Charles Caccia as part of the new Liberal team. Over the next decade, he rose through the ranks to become the first member of a federal cabinet of Italian origin, initially as minister of labour in 1981 and later for the environment. Throughout the Trudeau era the Liberals came to dominate politics in the large Italian communities of the major cities. Italian Canadians were increasingly involved in the party structure as campaign workers in federal ridings such as Vancouver East, Hamilton East, York South, and Mont Royal. Moreover, the late 1970s saw the first appointments of Italian Canadians to the Senate. Pietro Rizzuto, a businessman of Sicilian background from Montreal, and Peter Bosa, a former alderman of Friulian origin from Toronto, were given lifelong positions in the upper chamber by the Liberals.

In the Conservative landslide of 1984 that ended the Liberal regime, heavily Italian-Canadian ridings proved to be among the most steadfast for the Liberals. In Metropolitan Toronto, which had twenty-three seats, the Liberals were swept aside except in six strongly Italian ridings in the west and northwest, three of which were won by Italian Canadians. Newcomer John Nunziata soon emerged as one of three front-line opposition critics dubbed “the rat pack” for their aggressive questioning in the House, and Sergio Marchi commenced a well-crafted career that would lead to his appointment as minister of immigration after the Liberal comeback a decade later. The 1984 contest also resulted in three Italian Canadians being elected in greater Montreal, but here the results were split two to one for the Conservatives, in tandem with the national trend.

In the subsequent election of 1988, again won by the Conservatives but with a reduced majority, the Toronto area clearly emerged as the powerhouse of the Italian-Canadian vote. The group’s large size at over 300,000 (of single origin), its continuing residential concentration in spite of upward mobility, its general unity behind the Liberal banner, and the presence of candidates drawn from a new generation of articulate professionals ensured that the years of political apprenticeship would finally produce impressive results. Within the Toronto area, elected Italian Canadians doubled their number to six, and two more were chosen in Thunder Bay and London. In the rest of Canada, only two were successful, again with a split vote in Montreal. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in the early 1990s furthered the representation of Italian Canadians in Ottawa by appointing Consiglio Di Nino, the founder of the Cabot Trust Company (and Conservative Party organizer), to the Senate. More important, Vancouver lawyer and former University of Toronto vice-president Frank Iacobucci was the first Canadian of Italian descent appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

During the election of 1993, which returned the Liberals to power, Italian-Canadian candidates won twelve seats in Ontario, about equal to the total number of seats in Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan. Eight were from the Toronto area, and to the earlier Thunder Bay and London seats were added two more from the Niagara peninsula. Outside Ontario three other Italian Canadians were elected, two in Montreal and one in Vancouver. Significantly, women made important strides in the election. A former president of COSTI social services and the former director of Vancouver’s Italian community centre joined the woman who already represented a Toronto area riding.

The political influence of Italians at the federal level was reflected in provincial contests. Here, however, members of the community, like other Canadians, often voted differently from the way they did nationally. During the 1970s in Ontario, with the provincial Conservatives in power, the Italian vote was focused on the NDP, and in Toronto four Italian social democrats were elected. Outside the city, Italian-Canadian Liberals represented Niagara Falls and the Leamington district south of Windsor. In the next decade the Italian vote was split between the NDP and the Liberals during the inconclusive 1985 election. However, the Liberal minority government found a strong player in lawyer Gregory Sorbara, who was appointed Ontario’s first Italian-Canadian cabinet minister when he was given the portfolio for colleges and universities; he was later a chief contender for the leadership of the Liberal Party. In 1987, the Italian vote swung solidly in the direction of the Liberals, who now won a convincing majority. A total of eleven Italian Canadians were elected to the legislature, with new representation from Guelph, St Catharines, and Ottawa. The 1990 election was a watershed that produced Ontario’s first social-democratic government. Italian Canadians maintained their share of seats, but they now reverted to the NDP. Seven of the eleven seats were won by social democrats, five of these in the provincial capital and the other two in Sault Ste Marie and Windsor. Tony Silipo, who represented west-end Toronto, was appointed minister of education; he later became a key candidate in the party’s leadership race.

Meanwhile in Quebec, Italians also made political strides, although on a more limited scale and at a slower pace than in Ontario. A major factor behind this difference was the sharp divisions that existed among Italians over the language issue. In 1974 the Liberal government introduced legislation making it mandatory for immigrant children to attend the French-language school system. Stiff resistance to the legislation led many Italian Canadians who had supported the Liberals to cast their lot with the Union Nationale instead, thus splitting the group’s vote. Indeed, in Saint-Léonard in west-end Montreal, where Italians formed one-third of the population, this split ironically resulted in a victory for the Parti Québécois, which had the most assertive language policy. Italians now faced a separatist government whose ultimate aim was to take Quebec out of Confederation altogether, a challenge to which they responded by a renewed rally around the federalist Liberals. Hence, they were able to send half a dozen representatives to the Quebec national assembly when the provincial Liberals regained their majority in 1985. John Ciaccia, who had held on to his Mont Royal seat throughout the 1970s, became Quebec’s cabinet minister responsible for trade and a stalwart of the federalist option. During the 1994 election, which was again centred around the issue of sovereignty, another Italian Canadian acted as Liberal campaign coordinator and chief strategist. While the Parti Québécois received a second majority, the popular vote, significantly, split almost evenly between the two parties at about 44 percent each.

The maturity of Italian-Canadian participation in federal and provincial political life throughout the 1970s and 1980s was mirrored at the municipal level, where strides were made from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Port-Cartier on the Gulf of St Lawrence. The growth in political integration could be readily seen in Toronto. In 1960 only one Italian-Canadian alderman (Joseph Piccininni) had sat at city hall; within one generation the city’s Italian community had a dozen local representatives, one-quarter of whom were women. By 1981, 85 percent of Italians held Canadian citizenship, and by mid-decade they had attained a level of political representation commensurate with their numbers. In the 1985 municipal elections in Metropolitan Toronto, out of ninety-six positions, Italians were chosen in twelve. This figure represented more than 13 percent of the political positions, compared to their 11 percent of the population.

More generally, in the Ontario provincial elections of 1987 and 1990, Italian Canadians won 11 seats out of a total 130, or 8.5 percent of all seats, considerably better than their share of the total population at 6.5 percent (multiple origins as reported in the 1981 census). At the national level, in the 1993 election a record 53 Italian-Canadian candidates ran for the House of Commons and were successful in 15 ridings out of a total of 295. Hence, they filled 5 percent of the federal seats, a proportion that compares favourably to their numerical standing at 4 percent of the overall population (1991 multiple responses).

While the general patterns of Italian-Canadian electoral victories provide a good indication of the political trends within the group, they belie the many complexities involved. Given the size of the community, at almost 1,148,000 (multiple responses), it is not surprising to find a great deal of political heterogeneity, though majority positions emerge. In the heavily Italian riding of Saint-Léonard during the last federal election, Italian candidates represented all four major parties, including the separatist Bloc Québécois. Similarly, in the Toronto suburb of north Etobicoke, three Italians were candidates, including one representing the western-based Reform Party.

Furthermore, since the Canadian political system delegates different responsibilities to the federal and provincial levels of government and issues vary from one region to another, Italian Canadians vote pragmatically depending on the concerns involved and the chances that a party has to govern. The fact that they have generally supported the Liberals at the federal level and have tended towards the NDP in Ontario and British Columbia provincial elections in part reflected the perception that the social democrats, lacking a truly national presence without Quebec, could not win on the federal stage. Moreover, it has been the Liberal Party that has initiated and maintained the most open policies of immigration and multiculturalism (both federal concerns), while in the provincial jurisdictions of labour, welfare, and education the New Democratic parties in Ontario and British Columbia have been the most assertive. In Quebec, although the Italian vote followed the rest of the country in supporting the Conservatives federally in the 1980s, it backed the Liberals provincially since they came to be seen as the best guarantors of national survival and a tolerant language policy.

A third complexity arises with regard to class. While there is considerable political division among Italian Canadians along class lines, the manner in which this split is translated into voting patterns is far from clear. The simplest correlation takes place with regard to the NDP, which relies heavily on the support of the union movement and working-class voters. However, this support is in flux with the recent drift away from labour towards politics based on special-interest groups and a retreat from Keynesian to classical economic policies. The pro-business vote, ranging from the owners of major enterprises (often in construction and land development) to small shop owners, has traditionally backed the Conservatives in Ontario, the Union Nationale in Quebec, and the Social Credit Party in British Columbia. Increasingly, however, this support has been shared with the Liberals. In between, the growing middle class, characterized by suburban home ownership and white-collar or professional employment, has quite solidly supported the Liberals. A considerable exception, however, has been public-sector professionals, who have provided votes and leadership for social democracy.

Finally, it must be noted that when reference is made to Italian-Canadian political representation, at least three main generations and perspectives are involved. First, in the 1950s and 1960s, the political leaders were generally pre-war, Canadian-born, and well integrated. For these individuals, ethnicity was either largely secondary, as was often the case in the small towns of western Canada, or was utilized as a resource for the building of electoral support, as typically happened in the larger centres. While at times the differences between the Canadian-born leaders and the new immigrant voters led to conflict, each needed the other in the political arena, and, on the whole, effective alliances were formed. In essence, the early Canadian-born politicians played an important function in integrating the newcomers and helped to fashion the ethno-political consciousness of the group.

As the immigrant community matured, political representatives from its own ranks came to the fore. The 1970s and early 1980s witnessed the rise of Italian-born politicians who were able skilfully to capitalize on their informal links with fellow newcomers: the ties of friendship, kinship, and regionalism. More significantly, the rising leaders were able to exploit the new institutional infrastructure erected by the post-war immigrants, which, after all, they had frequently helped to build and maintain – community centres, social-service agencies, labour unions, social clubs, and the Italian-language media. Moreover, the 1970s saw the emergence of a cadre of socialists and intellectuals who worked through the labour movement, and in Ontario launched the weekly Forze Nuove, to recruit immigrants for social democracy. All in all, this leadership was singularly effective in building the political machines necessary for the effective mobilization of the Italian-Canadian vote, though the direction of this “block vote” differed depending on class concentration and jurisdiction.

While the Italian-born politicians well understood the blue-collar, immigrant concerns of the post-war Italians, both in temperament and outlook they were less successful with the succeeding generation. During the past decade they have been increasingly replaced by a younger cohort either born or socialized in the New World, whose political formation is rooted in post-war Canada. Although the new leaders effectively used the institutional structures of the group, as a rule they have not, like their predecessors, come to politics from positions in the community. Rather, most have moved laterally into the political world from the mainstream professions. Often lawyers or teachers and increasingly female, this articulate group is more representative of middle-class, second-generation Italian Canadians than of the immigrant working class that dominated in their parents’ day. The new leaders have proven as effective as the immigrant politicians in representing the collective interests of Italian Canadians. Moreover, to the extent that they act as advocates for a nation defined by its ethno-cultural diversity, they are helping to articulate a new reality for Canada which may yet prove a necessary response to the charter-group duality that has for so long split the country along ethnic lines.