This project is funded by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Community Historical Recognition Program — CHRP).

Edited by Licia Canton, Domenic Cusmano, Michael Mirolla, Jim Zucchero

GUERNICA
TORONTO • BUFFALO • BERKELEY • LANCASTER (U.K.)
2012

Copyright © 2012, the Editors, the Authors, Translators, Association of Italian Canadian Writers, Accenti Magazine and Guernica Editions Inc. All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

Michael Mirolla, series editor
Licia Canton, editor
Domenic Cusmano, editor
Jim Zucchero, editor
David Moratto, book designer
Guernica Editions Inc.
P.O. Box 117, Station P, Toronto (ON), Canada M5S 2S6
2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, N.Y. 14150-6000 U.S.A.

Distributors: University of Toronto Press Distribution,
5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto (ON), Canada M3H 5T8
Gazelle Book Services, White Cross Mills, High Town, Lancaster LA1 4XS U.K.
Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA 94710-1409 U.S.A.

First edition.
Printed in Canada.

Legal Deposit — First Quarter
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012930743
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Behind barbed wire : creative works on the internment of Italian Canadians / edited by Licia Canton ... [et al.].

(Essential anthologies series ; 1)
Issued also in electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55071-388-6
1. Canadian literature--Italian Canadian authors. 2. Italian Canadians--Literary collections. 3. Canadian literature--21st century. 4. Italian Canadians--Evacuation and relocation, 1940-1945. 5. World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, Canadian. 6. World War, 1939-1945--Italian Canadians. 7. World War, 1939-1945--Canada. I. Canton, Licia, 1963- II. Series: Essential anthologies series (Toronto, Ont.) ; 1.

PS8235.I8B44 2012

C810.8'08951071

C2012-900448-0

Acknowledgements

The Association of Italian Canadian Writers (AICW), in partnership with Guernica Editions and Accenti Magazine, wish to thank the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Community Historical Recognition Program — CHRP) for making this publication possible. We are grateful to Marianna Simeone (CBC journalist), Filomena Rotiroti (Quebec MNA) and Salvatore Bancheri (Director, Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian Canadian Studies, University of Toronto) for writing letters of support. Heartfelt thanks to the contributors for their co-operation. We acknowledge the work of Venera Fazio, Anna Foschi, Agata De Santis, Giulia De Gasperi, Sayeeda Alibhai. For their assistance and excellent advice, we are grateful to Claire Andrews, Laura Clarke, Loe Garavito-Bruhn and Isabel Zucchero. Special thanks go to Program Officer Thérèse Rochefort. We could not have completed this project without the unconditional support and encouragement of our families, especially Holly and Charlie; Liana, Dario and Decio; Jackie, Medea and GianCarlo.

CONTENTS

Preface

LICIA CANTON

Introduction: Looking Back, Moving Forward

JULIE CAMPAGNA

Sculpting Truth: Introduction to the Sculptures

DOMENICO CAPILONGO

• camp petawawa moon

• hour of the round up, 1940

• nessun dorma, camp petawawa, 1940

PIETRO CORSI

Roberto Pio Cassanelli, Master Body Builder and Dance Teacher:
From Italy to Tripoli to London, Then on to Camp 43 on St. Helen’s Island

SHELDON CURRIE

Excerpt from Down The Coaltown Road

GIULIA DE GASPERI

• Pensiéri • Worries

DELIA DE SANTIS

An Ordinary and Innocent Outing

TERRI FAVRO

Angel of Petawawa

VENERA FAZIO

Song of My Heart

ANNA FOSCHI CIAMPOLINI

Dancing with the Devil:
Conversations with Vancouver’s Italian Canadian Witnesses of the War Internment

LORETTA GATTO-WHITE

Strangers

FRANK GIORNO

Horses for Mussolini

DARLENE MADOTT

Introduction to John Madott’s Horses — Drawing — 3 Versions

MÉLANIE GRONDIN

Introduction to Guido Nincheri’s Letters

PAULA MASCIOLI & GIULIA DE GASPERI

Hello to Our Friends if There Are Any Left

GARY CLAIRMAN & MICHAEL MIROLLA

W.O.P. = P.O.W.
The Internment of Italian-Canadians During WWII

JOSEPH RANALLO

Remembrance Day

E. MACRAN

Translation by Licia Canton
An Excerpt from Diario di una emigrante

ERNESTO LIVORNI

Translation by Isabella Maria Livorni and Elena Lucia Livorni
Where One Hears a Noise Like This

RENE PAPPONE

Excerpts from the forthcoming novel The Italian

Preface

In April 2011, the Association of Italian Canadian Writers (AICW), in partnership with Guernica Editions and Accenti Magazine, undertook a national literary project to increase public awareness about the internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War. During this period, about 7,000 Italian Canadians were identified as enemy aliens and obliged to report regularly to the RCMP. Approximately 600, almost all men, were sent to internment camps in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. None of the internees was ever charged, yet some were held for more than three years. The internment years not only impacted the families of the interned, it slowed the progress of the entire Italian Canadian community for decades.

Behind Barbed Wire is a collection of short fiction, memoir, poetry, drama and visual art inspired by the internment. Beyond Barbed Wire, a co-publication with Columbus Centre of Toronto, is a collection of essays examining the internment from historical, social, literary, and cultural perspectives. The volumes are simultaneously published as print and e-books. A series of articles in Accenti Magazine previewed the two companion volumes, launched across Canada in March 2012. The project is funded by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Community Historical Recognition Program — CHRP).

We are extremely proud of our literary project, which was completed in record time. By breaking the silence of past decades, our project bridges the generations and encourages a better understanding of the past so as to avoid repeating the same mistakes. This project has also given us a unique opportunity to build bridges between individuals and communities across Canada, while emphasizing the endeavours of creative writers, artists and scholars who often work on the periphery of the Italian Canadian community. Let us continue to build bridges. Let us work together on new ventures, not only among writers and artists, but also with other Italian Canadians and organizations at large.

Note: Style choices are those of the individual contributors.

—The Editors

LICIA CANTON

Introduction: Looking Back, Moving Forward

Although their body of works is relatively new, Canadians of Italian origin have influenced the evolution of writing and literary criticism in Canada. In 1978, the publication of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco’s anthology Roman Candles brought together previously unheard solitary voices and, by so doing, gave a sense of direction to Italian Canadian writers. Before the 1980s, Italians in Canada wrote in isolation. Since the 1980s, the appearance of specific collections and anthologies has had an important impact on the visibility of the Italian Canadian community’s literary voices. Some of these titles include La Poesia italiana nel Quebec (Caticchio 1983), Quêtes: Textes d’auteurs italo-québécois (D’Alfonso, Caccia 1983), Italian Canadian Voices (Morgan Di Giovanni 1984 and 2010), Ricordi: Things Remembered (Minni 1989), Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (Pivato 1991), Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (Pivato 1994), Social Pluralism and Literary History (Loriggio 1996), The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (Pivato 1998), Pillars of Lace: The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Women Writers (De Franceschi 1998), Sweet Lemons (2004) and Sweet Lemons 2 (Fazio, De Santis 2010).

A number of national magazines have focussed on issues of a literary and intellectual nature, thus providing a forum for Italian Canadian writers: Vice Versa (1983 to 1997), Eyetalian (1993 to 1998) and Accenti Magazine (since 2002). Publishing houses have also contributed to the evolution of Italian Canadian letters. Since 1978, Guernica Editions has published over 400 titles and 500 authors, many of whom are of Italian heritage. More recently Quattro Books (in 2006) and Longbridge Books (in 2008) have appeared onto the publishing scene. Founded in 1986, the Association of Italian Canadian Writers (AICW) has played a key role in promoting Italian Canadian literature and bringing together a community of writers, critics, academics, and other artists of Italian heritage. The following publications have resulted from biennial gatherings of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers: Writers in Transition (C.D. Minni, Foschi Ciampolini 1990), “Italian-Canadian Issue” in The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad (Pivato 1998), The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange (Canton 2002), Writing Beyond History (Canton, De Santis, Fazio 2006), Strange Peregrinations (De Santis, Fazio, Foschi Ciampolini 2008), Reflections on Culture (Canton, Fazio, Zucchero 2010), and Writing Our Way Home (Canton, Lamberti, Morgan Di Giovanni 2012).

In “Becoming a Writer,” Marisa De Franceschi emphasizes the perseverance necessary to pursue the literary craft: to be a writer one must develop “The skin of a crocodile, / The shell of a turtle, / The stamina of a bull” (23). This is particularly true of Italian Canadian writers because the cultural community and heritage which inspire their works also discourage writing as a profession. The community prides itself on its money-making professionals, not its struggling writers. Yet, by the very act of writing, Italian Canadian authors simultaneously fulfill an intense personal need and contribute to the evolution of the Italian Canadian community. Through their works Italian Canadian writers pay homage to those who came before them. They have given a voice to immigrants and their descendants who have been caught between cultures, searching for an equilibrium. Some are still hanging on to the values of their immigrant parents while aspiring to reach the goals that come with postgraduate education. The challenge remains in negotiating between the modern and the traditional, the outside and the inside, the past and the future. Italian Canadian authors and their protagonists have contributed to (re)defining Italian Canadians.

The internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War played a role in the evolution of Italian Canadian letters, or rather in postponing its birth. The community’s shame during and after the internment resulted in silence. “This shameful episode led many Italians to take the extreme measure of denouncing their heritage, even going as far as changing their names to sever any connection to their Italian roots” (Iacobacci 15). And as Venera Fazio writes: “The Italian communities across Canada collapsed ... The progress of the community, as a whole, was thwarted ...” (“City of a Perilous Legacy”). After the internment, for the most part, the individual and community focus was on forgetting, or burying, the dark period.

Mario Duliani wrote about his experience as an internee in La Ville sans femmes (1945), with his Italian version appearing one year later. The two books are not exactly identical for Duliani changed words and phrases when he produced his Italian Città senza donne (1946). (See essays by Fabiana Fusco and Jim Zucchero in Beyond Barbed Wire.) Antonino Mazza’s translation, The City Without Women (1994), is in fact a third version since he used both the French and Italian as source texts. Susan Iannucci points out that Duliani’s text is “a self-vindication, a public act of Canadian patriotism, which is to set him straight forever with the authorities” (211).

Duliani’s decision to take such a stance in writing about his experience behind barbed wire may have further contributed to the ensuing silence, and thus prevented others from writing from a less pro-Canadian perspective. The post-internment climate did not encourage Italian Canadians “to speak up” or “to speak out.” In a 2003 interview with Venera Fazio, Antonino Mazza illustrates the “shame surrounding the subject” that lasted decades, thereby discouraging discussion and writing on the internment. “In the Italian community where I grew up,” says Mazza, “people knew about the camps. They would whisper about it, but not talk openly. They tried to keep it a secret ...” (“City of a Perilous Legacy”).

This volume, Behind Barbed Wire, presents fiction and nonfiction, poetry and drama, and visual art — works which bring to life the internment of Italian Canadians. Through words and images, writers and visual artists attempt to reconstruct a hidden past and give a voice to those who were silenced by shame or the inability to speak up. These works interpret the painful reality that Italians in Canada lived during, and after, the period of the internment.

The titles of poems included in this volume clearly indicate the emotion and climate of the period: Giulia De Gasperi’s “Pensiéri / Worries,” Loretta Gatto-White’s “Strangers,” Domenico Capilongo’s “hour of the round up” and “nessun dorma.” In his poem “Horses for Mussolini,” Frank Giorno pays homage to internee James Franceschini.

Pietro Corsi introduces us to Roberto Pio Cassanelli, a body builder and dance teacher, who was interned on St. Helen’s Island. Mélanie Grondin contributes letters written by Guido Nincheri, the “Michelangelo of Montreal,” while he was interned. “Of all the humiliating moments Italian-Canadian artist Guido Nincheri may have gone through in his life, this was surely the most humiliating one of all, because he never, ever told his family,” writes Grondin. In “Dancing with the Devil,” Anna Foschi Ciampolini writes about Vancouver’s Italian Canadians affected by the internment. As one interviewee says:

“Those were difficult times for our community ... The RCMP came to arrest some of those poor fellows. Most people in our community were just busy working at two or three jobs trying to save money, rather than meddle with politics, but that’s how it was.” He paused for a moment, and then added: “Yes, that’s how it was. It was a long time ago. Anyway, they were not mistreated in those camps. Maybe it’s better not to talk about it anymore.”

Joseph Ranallo’s “Remembrance Day,” is about remembering those who experienced war in different parts of the world and looking towards a future of peace. The story also illustrates the resignation and resentment which the internment elicits. Mr. Canesci’s comment, “They were good to me” at Camp Petawawa, provokes an angry response:

“How can you say that?” John Battista retorted. “They took away your most prized possession, your freedom. You had no criminal record. You were almost born here. You spent most of your life in Canada. You were the Consulate’s representative. There isn’t another person in Trail who is more loyal to Canada than you are. They used the War Measures Act to arrest you without cause and without reason. You should be furious.”

“Hello to Our Friends, If There Are Any Left,” by Paula Mascioli and Giulia De Gasperi, tells the life story of Paula’s grandfather, internee Leo Mascioli. A creative nonfiction account, it is a good example of an internee’s desire to bury his experience. The story is inspired by an old box of documents and letters that Paula Mascioli found in her mother’s basement. From this box of papers, Paula pieced together what happened years ago and recreated an episode in the life of the grandfather she never met.

Delia De Santis’ story — “An Ordinary and Innocent Outing” — illustrates the uncertainty and fear of the early days when men left their home on a regular outing and did not return. Venera Fazio’s “Song of My Heart” remembers those “more fortunate” individuals who were not interned but who had to report regularly to authorities. In his story “Where One Hears a Noise Like This,” Ernesto Livorni describes an internee’s despair as he is unable to comprehend his confinement and unable to reach his family. Terri Favro’s “Angel of Petawawa” recounts an Italian Canadian soldier’s journey home from Petawawa and the events surrounding a friend’s internment.

A number of excerpts from novels that set characters within the internment years are included in Behind Barbed Wire. In 1979, Elena Randaccio published Diario di una emigrante under the name E. MacRan. Diario di una emigrante is narrated by Climene, who describes in detail how her husband Beppe is taken away by two policemen and interned for three years. In his 2002 historical novel Down the Coaltown Road, Nova Scotia writer Sheldon Currie describes the struggle of Italians in industrial Cape Breton during the years of the internment. Rene Pappone contributes an excerpt of his forthcoming book The Italian which brings characters to life during the internment.

This volume also includes an excerpt from a film script that is set inside Camp Petawawa. In W.O.P.=P.O.W.: The Internment of Italian-Canadians During WWII, Gary Clairman and Michael Mirolla present a fictionalized account of the day-to-day life experienced by Italian-Canadian internees. Originally written in 1994, the script evokes humour as well as tragedy as the internees from all walks of life struggle to cope.

Julie Campagna presents sculptures which interpret the emotion associated with a difficult truth. “The challenge for me as a sculptor and observer is to try to find a way to relate to a world that feels worlds away,” says Campagna. And Darlene Madott introduces “Horses,” a pen and ink drawing by her late father John Madott, that celebrates the perseverance of Italians in helping create the Canada we know today.

No doubt, the internment years have influenced the identity of the Italian Canadian community and affected its progress. We cannot erase the painful experience of individuals and families, but we can grow as a community by revisiting and speaking about the period. In bringing together the works of established and emerging writers and artists to break the silence of past decades, Behind Barbed Wire bridges the generations. The many different contributions reflect the various ways of approaching the subject of the internment and commemorate those who suffered. The appearance of Behind Barbed Wire — and its companion volume of essays Beyond Barbed Wire — marks the passage of Italian Canadians from victims to agents of social change. The two volumes are important contributions to Canadian letters and to the history of Italian Canadians. They revisit a painful period so that we can all move forward.

Works Cited

Currie, Sheldon. Down the Coaltown Road. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002.

De Franceschi, Marisa. “Becoming a Writer” in Random Thoughts. Montreal: Longbridge Books, 2010.

Fazio, Venera. “City of a Perilous Legacy.” Accenti Magazine, Issue 1, March 2003.

Iacobacci, Pasquale L. “Symbol of Resurgence: Montreal’s Casa d’Italia.” Accenti Magazine, Issue 19, Fall 2010: 14-17.

MacRan, E. (pseud.) Diario di una emigrante. Bologna: Arti Grafiche Tamari, 1979.

JULIE CAMPAGNA

Sculpting Truth: Introduction to the Sculptures

With thoughts of war in my mind, I looked for themes in my work that dealt with resilience and courage, fragility and sorrow, conflict and rage. Whether it is through countries, families, neighbours or oneself, the potential for war seems to lurk just beneath the surface of words.

The sculpture “Weapon” is about the repercussions of judgment. An exaggerated hand with a finger pointed in blame is propped and aimed like a rifle at the viewer. The figure is on the verge of falling backward, barely able to sustain the weight of this ridiculous body part.

In “Faces of Destruction,” I examine the idea of one who is unchangeable through a form that changes. A human body is constructed from a grenade and comes with pin, cap and removable heads. Regardless of which expressive head is threaded onto the grenadebody the outcome remains the same — the form is set to explode.

The two characters which make up “Company” are extreme opposites. One figure holds tightly to his being with suspicion in his eyes and nothing in his bowl, the other looks out wildly, in want, spiralling out of control. They are at odds with one another but are nonetheless couched together.

•••

“Earth and Sky” is about perseverance: the figure looks out towards tomorrow yet feels the weight of yesterday in today’s heavy, useless, hands.

Reading can inspire thought. I seek out books to gain some sort of understanding about the world in which I live and the creature that I am. There are times when an author articulates what is in my mind even though I had never thought of it before, provides an insight so great that a truth is revealed — comforting or terrible. “Search and Rescue” is about that kind of discovery, that kind of power.

Figure 1 (Top): Shell
Figure 2 (Bottom): Company

Figure 3 (Top): Grenade — Faces of Destruction 1
Figure 4 (Bottom): Grenade — Faces of Destruction 2

Figure 5: Withdrawal

Figure 6: Taught

Figure 7: Fold

Figure 8: Earth and Sky

Figure 9: Weapon

Figure 10: Monologue

Figure 11: Search and Rescue

DOMENICO CAPILONGO

camp petawawa moon

no one can sleep
without wives
without the touch
of lovers

the moon
an empty plate
is claimed by every man
in this forgotten moment

secrets of the heart whispered
to this lone luna

messages sent across kilometres
across cities of war
sealed in silent
starlight kisses

hour of the round up, 1940

it’s time to dig up all your pomodori. turn the radios down low. take all your laundry off the line. hide the prosciutto under the bed. mop your floors and pull the curtains closed. it’s time to get nonna out of her black dress and tell her to stop humming tarantellas. burn all your letters and bury all the books in the backyard. talk with your hands stuck deep into your pockets. smile at all your neighbours without letting them see your teeth. lock your vino in cantinas and raise the union jack. it’s time for you to register. for your photograph. your fingerprints. it’s time to let the RCMP know when you’re in the washroom. you are the enemy. the alien. please don’t let the children know they are italian. the time has come for all of this.

nessun dorma, camp petawawa, 1940

My head was still resonant with song ...

— Mario Duliani

they sent hundreds of italian men to petawawa. to sit out the war just in case they tried to start a revolution. just in case they turned the whole place upside down.

they sang on the train going up
sang in corners of the camp like shy birds
blew out a village tune at midday
threw together a mandolin band
plucked the corners of their hearts
like lost balding barbers of seville

at night without women no one slept
they hummed a baritone of blues
arias of ancient operas never written down

these spies
these forgotten fascists
of backyard gardens
and homemade wine
sang until il duce hanged
sang until the gates swung open
until they felt their wives
sleeping quietly beside them again

Bodybuilder extraordinaire Roberto Pio Cassanelli, age 27
Photo courtesy of Marie Caluori-Cassanelli

PIETRO CORSI

Roberto Pio Cassanelli, Master Body Builder
and Dance Teacher: From Italy to Tripoli to London,
Then on to Camp 43 on St. Helen’s Island

It was in the spring of 1959 that I first heard of the internment of Italian Canadians at the onset of the Second World War. I had recently arrived in Montreal, via Halifax, to work at the weekly newspaper Il Cittadino Canadese, then on St. Lawrence Blvd., across from Dante Street, in what was, and still is, the heart of the Italian community.

Founded in 1941 by Antonino Spada, the Italian language newspaper had recently been sold to Nick Ciamarra and, together with the travel agency and the print shop, to Emilio Putalivo, printer extraordinaire. Already well into his sixties, Spada was not one to sit idle and do nothing. His visits to the newspaper were a daily routine. So much so that, while dreading his presence, we would worry when he didn’t show up before noon.

Spada was well known for his antifascist sentiments and for his hatred of Mussolini’s dictatorship. This helped explain why, when other prominent Italian Canadians were forced to the internment camps, he was left alone and allowed to found the newspaper in time to cover the war in progress. He loved to chat and exchange views on the most important daily events, particularly those involving the Italian community. Above all, he delighted in saying this and that about what was being written in the pages of Il Cittadino. To be blunt, he liked to provide unrequested (but welcome) constructive criticism. He loved to do so in riddles, like a good teacher or a good trainer would. And a teacher and a trainer he was. At least, that’s how I like to remember him. He was also a good community historian, as his book The Italians in Canada (Montreal, 1969) illustrates.

He loved to chat, as I said, but refused to freely talk about the internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War. A horrible human injustice, he would say, if and when solicited. His attitude reflected the spirit of the community at the time: lay low, do not say more than you need to say about those sad days.

That was way back then — until November 1990, when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney saw fit to publically declare the internment an injustice, although not officially in parliament. Antonino Spada’s unspoken sentiments, and those of hundreds of thousands of Italian Canadians, were finally vindicated.

I left Montreal and did not hear again about the Canadian internment camps for enemy aliens until I came to California and ran into Roberto (Pio) Cassanelli. Upon learning that my first stepping stone into this continent had been Montreal, he commented: “I was there too — Camp 43 St. Helen’s Island, Enemy Alien prisoner No. 242.” Remembering Spada’s few words about the internment camps, I asked Cassanelli to tell me more about his experience in Camp 43. And he gladly did so, with the gentle words and manners that distinguished him throughout his life.

Born in Gussola (Cremona) in 1913, he was the last of ten siblings. His elder brother, Nino, had started working in hotels as piccolo di camera at the tender age of 12 and, when Roberto became of age, had already made a career in the hospitality industry. (He later became owner and operator of a fine hotel in Bordighera, a few steps away from the beach). He insisted that his younger brother follow in his footsteps and at age 16 sent him to work at the Hotel Savoia in Rome. After a few months, he dispatched Roberto to Tripoli, to work at the Grand Hotel there. Having gained more experience, he was first sent to Belgium at the Hotel de la Plage, and then to the Grand Hotel Britannique of Ostende. Back in Italy, he happily wandered from Cortina d’Ampezzo’s Miramonti Majestic Hotel to the Majestic Hotel Diana of Milan; from the Excelsior in Florence to the Miramare Continental Palace in Sanremo; from Viareggio’s Grand Hotel to Salsomaggiore.

At the beginning of 1939 his destiny was to take him to London, where the hospitality industry thrived and life was good. Just what he had been looking for all along. His Alien Certificate of Registration No. 736439, issued on June 12, 1939, dates his arrival in Dover on March 14 of that year and residing at 14 Eatham Street W.C. 2, London.

London was to be quite good for him, away from the vigilant but loving supervision of his elder brother Nino. While working as a waiter at the Ivy Restaurant on West Street, he started training his body to become as strong as his mind. A London trade publication shows how he had been able to build his physique, with dumb-bells, to a fit “10 stone 7 lbs at 5’6” tall, expanded chest measurements 43.”

His happiness was not to last long, however. A diary written years later shows how he ended up at Camp 43 on St. Helen’s Island. This was an abandoned piece of real estate in Montreal that was later to become, together with the newly created Île NotreDame, the site for Expo ‘67.

At this point, let Roberto Pio Cassanelli tell the story of his confinement in Camp 43:

One morning, Saturday June 15, 1940, at 7 am, two policemen picked me up at my house and took me to the police station. I will always remember their words: “Don’t worry fella, we don’t take too much time with you, it’s only for questioning, which will take about a couple of hours.” That couple of hours was to be five long years. Not trusting them, I took with me a suitcase with all that I may have needed for a long time. On June 23 I was transferred to Burry Int. Camp and Wednesday July 3, at 10 am, I was dispatched to Liverpool for an unknown destination.

Locked behind bars in the bowels of a ship, together with 400 other unfortunate human beings, thirsty and famished having been fed raw potatoes on a daily basis, after 10 days we were told that we had reached our destination in Quebec, Canada. It was the 13th of July, 3 pm. We could consider ourselves lucky since another ship, the Arandora Star, carrying German and Italian prisoners, was torpedoed and sank.

(The British liner Arandora Star, 15,501 GW tons, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank off the West Coast of Ireland, while carrying 1,500 German and Italian aliens to be interned in Canada. On board the vessel were also British soldiers acting as guards, a crew of about 300. No estimate of the total casualties has ever been released).

We left port by train for an unknown destination, escorted by fully armed soldiers. That same day, Saturday July 13th, 1940, 11 pm, we arrived at St. Helen’s Island Int. Camp 43, or Camp “S”, Montreal P.Q. We were badly treated. They looked at us as if we were animals, seated on the bare ground all night long with nothing to eat or drink. We couldn’t even talk to each other. Those who dared, including some priests who were with us, were brutally beaten.

We were made to undress, inspected one by one, and ordered to take a cold shower. They gave us prisoners’ garments, each with a number (mine was 242). Then they sent us to a big dormitory, gloomy and filthy: 400 people in such a small place, in which the most common decencies were minimal, with a courtyard no bigger than 100 meters. And to think that Canada is such a big country! It was shameful, to be treated without a glint of humanity, behind barbed-wire fence. In winter time, with all the ice and snow on the ground, we were forced to live indoors for weeks on end. It was not easy to get along: the more a man knows other human beings, the more he loves animals instead. We were kept in those conditions from that day in 1940 through 1943.

The camp was right across the city of Montreal, divided only by the St. Lawrence River. At night we could see the lights of the big city. Life must have been so nice there! On Sundays, while locked up in this cage like beasts, we could see people peacefully promenading on the bridge (Note: the Jacques Cartier Bridge). How bitter life was; and how odious the human being!

It was under these conditions that, three months later, I was informed of my mother’s death and, six months later, my father’s.

Summer 1943. Given the turn of events of the war in Europe, many prisoners were allowed to return to England, mostly Italians who were born there. We were transferred to Camp 70, Fredericton, where we arrived on November 4, at 6 pm. The camp was located in the middle of a forest, cool and humid. We lived in barracks together with Germans. There was a bit more space to move around in this camp. And, I have to say, though always a prisoner, I was in a privileged position since I was made in charge of the overall administration of the Italian internees.

July 1944. Casa Savoia made a turn-around during the night of the 24th. The Duce was arrested on the 25th, then freed by the Germans. He tried to escape to Switzerland, but was arrested again and killed by Italian partisans. The Italian armistice was signed September 3, 1944, to become effective Sept. 7th. We remained in Fredericton during 1943, ‘44 and ‘45, then German armistice, May 8th 1945, 3 pm: surrender without conditions. The commander of our camp gathered all the prisoners to announce this big event. He told us that both Mussolini and Hitler had been defeated, and that Fascism was dead.

May 17 we were told that all civilians would be returned to the U.K. Friday May 18th, 1 am, we left Camp by bus and we arrived at St. Johns at 6 am. We left St. Johns at 7 am, arrived Halifax at 7 pm. At 8 pm we boarded the vessel “Ashton Castle” for the Trans-Atlantic crossing. The overall conditions were much better this time around. We arrived in Liverpool on Friday, June 1st, and disembarked at 5:45 am.

After touching English ground again after five long years, the moral and physical suffering of the last five years seemed a dream. I have often thought, since then, how can a human being survive through such ordeals. Dreams and nightmares. This horrible furrow forever embedded in my mind.

So, we disembarked at 5:45 and were conveyed to the Isle of Man, where we arrived the same day at 8 pm, Ramsey Camp “N”, House No. 10. On the 27th of July I was informed of my imminent release. I left camp on the 30th, and on Tuesday, August 1st 1945, 6 am, I left Ramsey. At 10 pm, August 1st, I was back in London and was able to resume work.

Years later, Roberto (Pio) Cassanelli moved to New York, where he worked at the Stork Club, at the Savoy Hotel and at the Ritz Tower. Then on to California, where he became a dance teacher and owner/operator of a dance studio in the San Fernando Valley under an Arthur Murray franchise. He passed away on Sept. 12, 2008.

SHELDON CURRIE

Excerpt from Down The Coaltown Road, a novel
about the internment of Nova Scotia Italians.

Had Gelo visited the wash house on that day he would have seen the front page of the Sydney Post-Record that one of the miners nailed to the wall:

Rome, June 10 - (AP) - Italy joined Germany tonight in war against Great Britain and France.

Premier Mussolini made the announcement to Fascists gathered throughout Italy that the fateful declaration had been handed to the Allied ambassadors.

The formal welding of the Rome-Berlin axis in the steel of war was set officially for tomorrow, but Berlin reports claimed Italian troops already had entered France through the Riviera.

Gelo was never in the house when the news was on the radio. Like his father, he visited the house for bed and board. He saw the Newsreel Movietone News at the Savoy Theatre but he paid little attention to it. Sadie berated him for his inattention but he didn’t care. He was called wop, dago, and bohunk more often now, and not so often in jest, but he brushed it off. He learned from his Indian friends how to deal with it. It was only scum. It washed off. It thickened your skin. He was content. He was not prepared for the shock of the afternoon. The shock of his life.

Gelo kicked open the gate with the toe of his gumboot, strode through the picket fence surrounding his front yard, up the path between the rows of marigolds, climbed the front steps on his side of the company house, and as he pushed open the door with foot and hand, caught a glimpse of an RCMP car turning the corner at Coal Road, rumbling over the tram tracks and heading down Belgium Town Road. He needed a bite to eat. Then he’d head for ball practice. But he’d check out the Mounties first.

When the front door burst open Anna looked up from her task in the kitchen, beating egg whites and dropping them into gallon hanks of red wine. She was in a temper. In most Italian families men made the wine. But her husband, Tomassio, as she often complained to Red Ceit, her next door neighbour and best friend, couldn’t or wouldn’t stand still long enough to make a milkshake let alone spend the time to see wine from grape to bottle. In fact complaining to Red Ceit is what Anna was doing when Gelo flung open the front door: “And the few times he did make the wine it tasted like paint.”

Anna knew the secrets of making good wine. She learned from her mother, who had also married a man who couldn’t keep still or stay in the house any longer than it took to tie his shoelaces. The secrets of making good wine were simple, but you could not get them past a deaf ear. From her position in the kitchen she could see Gelo burst through the front door.

“What’d I tell you a thousand times? Don’t use the front door. Get those gumboots off right there or get out and go around the back.

“I’m going right out. Chuck me an apple.”

“Chuck me an apple,” she mimicked. “Chuck me an apple,” she repeated to Ceit, who was standing warming her hands over the kitchen stove. Giving her son a stern look, she said: “You get in here and eat and don’t you dare track mud over my clean floor. Wait till I get newspapers.”

“I gotta go. The Mounties are up the street. I gotta go see what’s going on.”

“Eat first. Spaghetti. In the pantry. I told you not to use that door. Go around.”

“I forgot. I haven’t got time to go around.”

“What did I do to deserve the likes of this child?” Anna was looking at Ceit but she was addressing the gods. “He talks back to his own mother. I spend half the day cooking and he wants an apple. You forgot. You forget everything. You forget that I have to spend all day working so you won’t starve to death. You can’t be bothered is what your problem is. If I have to wash that floor again I’ll scream.”

Suddenly the back and front doors burst open and RCMP officers filled the doorways. Anna, Ceit and Gelo froze in their spaces. Anna, one knee on the floor, half a broken egg in each hand, was in the process of separating the white from the yoke and letting it flow down to one of the cereal bowls by her knee. She looked over her shoulder and stared agape at the uniformed presence in her back doorway. Ceit froze over the stove, the boiling water she was pouring into the teapot, filling it, overflowing it. The overflow danced and sizzled on the hot lids. Gelo, halfway across the front room toward the kitchen, stopped, then stepped back as if pushed by the uniformed man in the back doorway. Instinctively, he turned to run, and again froze at the sight of the officer filling the front doorway.

The officer in the kitchen crossed his arms over his chest as if to further bar the back door. His mouth twisted in a derisive grin, his head swung slowly, eyes scanning in mock wonder, the rooms, the domestic paraphernalia, the creatures, framed in their fear.

“Get in here and sit down,” he ordered Gelo. “At the table.”

“You, off your knees and sit at the table. And you Ceit, you get on the couch there by the stove.”

“Gelo, go get the priest,” Anna said in a stage whisper.

“Nobody goes anywhere. Sit and stay put.” The officer’s menacing mouth forced Gelo to a chair at the table.

“Where’s your husband?”

Anna stared. She’d heard rumours the Mounties would “round up the Italians” after Mussolini got in the war with Hitler. Was this it?

“Who wants to know?” Ceit shot at him from the couch where she’d sat herself down in an uncharacteristic moment of intimidation.

“I want to know,” the officer replied with an extra surge of menace.

“And who are you?”

“You know perfectly well who I am.”

“Yes, I know who you are you fat tub of lard. You’re the brave man that beat up that boy at the rink last Saturday. I suppose I should be scared too. I wouldn’t put it past you to beat up on a woman, if she wouldn’t be too big and tough for you.”

He turned to Anna. “Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t know.”

The Mountie put his hands on the table and leaned over Anna. She put her hands over her face, her elbows on the table. “Was he home today? He’s not at work.”

“He went to work.”

“You just said you didn’t know where he is.”

“I don’t know where he is. Did you try the Italian Hall?”

“What do you think?” The Mountie asked.

Ceit twisted her face in derision at his sarcasm. “Nice talk,” she said.

“What did he do?” Anna said.

“Nothing yet, I hope.”

“Nothing — what do you want with him?” Ceit demanded. “Did you come bursting in here for nothing?”

The officer ignored Ceit. The second officer at the front door stood with his hands behind his back, barely able to conceal his embarrassment. He straightened up, pursed his lips and looked at the floor.

“If you know where he is you better tell us,” the officer, bending over Anna, talked to her ear. “If not, it’ll be so much the worse for him if we have trouble apprehending him. We’ve come to put him under arrest.”

“What did he do?” Anna spoke through her fingers.

“Nothing that we know about yet.”

“What are you doing here then?” Ceit demanded. The officer ignored her.

“He’s under arrest for nothing?” Anna asked.

“Suspicion,” the officer said.

“Suspicion of what?”

“Espionage.”

“What’s that?”

“Spying.”

“Spying? Tomassio? A spy?”

“Of course he’s a spy,” Ceit said. “I heard him just last week on the phone down at the Coop. He was calling Mussolini. He was giving him the names of all the ball players on his team. And their middle initials. Come Christmas Benito’s going to send them all a card.”

“That’s enough out of you Ceit. Shut up.”

The noise from Anna’s breathing was beginning to get their attention, rasping over her throat on the way to her lungs and moaning through her nose on the way out. She put her hand over her heart. “Gelo,” she gasped, “go get my pills in the pantry.”

Gelo leaped from his chair and dashed to the pantry. He knew his mother had no pills in the pantry or anywhere else in the house. “Spaghetti is my pill,” she told Ceit whenever her friend urged her to make the whole family take cod liver oil. “Olive is my oil, Ceit, just like Popeye.”

Gelo slipped the hooks off the window screen in the pantry, straddled the window sill, dropped to the ground, ran to the ball field. Except for Ceit’s laugh, silence filled the kitchen while they waited for Gelo to come back with the priest.

But Tomassio landed first. When Tomassio’s shadow fell through the window and onto the kitchen floor as he approached the back door, the officer moved forward a step, the door opened, Tomassio entered, the edge of his swagger somewhat blunted after being fired from his job in the mine. He saw Ceit on the couch by the stove. He saw Anna in a chair at the table. Then he saw the officer at the front door, and he felt the hands from behind on his shoulders, and he knew, and he began to turn and to swing when the hands came down and the officer’s arms encircled his body, trapping his arms against his ribs.

But Tomassio’s arms, strengthened by fifteen years of loading coal with a pan shovel, flung off the officer’s arms like two noodles of spaghetti. Then he reached back and wrapped his hands around the officer’s neck and somersaulting him to the floor, straddling him, sitting on his chest and pinning his arms at the wrists to the floor. The other officer jumped on Tomassio’s back.

Father Rod arrived, wearing a sweatshirt and the pants of an old ball uniform. He came in the front door with Gelo. His black eye patch and the Boston Red Sox ball cap combined to give him the look of a jaunty pirate in a movie for children. Gelo jumped the officer on Tomassio’s back and started to pull him off, but the officer turned on him and pinned him to the wall with his billy club. He stared Gelo in the eye and said: “This is bad enough son, don’t make it worse.”

Father Rod put his hand on Gelo’s shoulder. “Let him up Tommie. Let’s get this straightened out.”

“I think Tomassio got him straightened out pretty good already, Father,” Ceit said.

“Let’s keep it calm and cool Ceit. Don’t fan the fire.”

The officer’s face was crimson. The menace in his eyes turned to frustration and rage.

“Och, s’bochd sin, Dick,” said Ceit.

•••

All afternoon the sun tried to burn through the damp air turned red by the gravity-chained smoke from the stacks at the steel plant. The handyman’s truck waited like a faithful horse by the step of the administration office of the county jail. He sat in the office drinking tea and chatting with the jailer.

“I can’t do nothing ‘less they get that junk out of the cell.”

“We can’t put them in with regular prisoners. No room anyway.”

“I can’t haul junk. I got a sore back.”

“I got a sore back myself,” the jailer said, and to illustrate he placed his two hands on the top of the table and levered himself up until his legs straightened and he let himself go and sat back in his chair. “I couldn’t get out of this goddamn chair if I didn’t have the table.”

“What about those galoots in the yard?”

“Who are we making room for anyway?”

“Dagos.”

“What? Italians?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d they do?”

“Nothing, far’s I know. They think some might be spies.”

“Spies. Isn’t that kinda stupid?”

“Well, Mussolini’s in the war now.”

“Yeah. Mussolini lives in Italy, last I heard. It’s stunned.”

“Did you see the paper?”

“I heard it on the radio. It’s stunned.”

“Yeah. Stunned as it gets. My next door neighbour, Joe Baloney I call him, I can’t figure out his last name, works at the steel plant. His boy Joey’s in the army. Got on a boat for Europe yesterday. Too bad he didn’t wait a day. Could spend the war in jail. Lot safer.”

“So when do they get here?”

“Today they tell me. I got no place to put them, just the yard. I hope it don’t rain.”

During the aftersupper evening four RCMP officers in two cars delivered four prisoners for temporary incarceration to await transportation to Petawawa: Balboa Passerello, a shoemaker, carrying a beatup duffel bag; Danny Piva, a musician carrying a black clarinet case; Pete Di Vito, carrying an ancient suitcase; and Tomassio, carrying nothing.

“No room in the inn,” the jailer said, “so I’ll have to put you in the yard. I got Hudson Bay blankets if it gets chilly. If it rains, which it looks like it is, I’ll bring you in here and somebody is gonna have to stay up all night to keep an eye on ya. You’ll be gone before too long.”

“Where we going?”

“Petawawa.”

“Where the hell is Petawawa?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere near Ottawa. Or maybe Quebec.”

“Why can’t we stay here? Closer to home.”

“This is a jail.”

“Well, what’s Petawawa?”

“Internment camp.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Jails are for criminals. You guys didn’t do nothing.”

The jailor boiled the kettle and served them tea. “You fellas want to play cards?”

“You got a cribbage board?” Balboa asked.

“‘Fraid not.”

“That’s ok. We’ll play scopa. Maybe later.”

“So what’s the story here?” Danny asked. “Because we’re not criminals they can lock us up and send us away. If we were criminals they’d have to give us a trial.”

The jailer shrugged his shoulders.

Once in the yard, Balboa, Danny, Pete and Tomassio sat together against the far wall near the roadway where they could hear the car tires slap the potholes. They tried to stare into the dim future through the wet, red darkening air. At dusk they heard the gates open and a car drive down to the office. Soon, the steel-barred door between the yard and the cellblock clanked open and four new prisoners stepped into the dim space. They huddled together near the door and talked in whispers. The Italians listened but could make out nothing until one of the new prisoners yelled out a message clear enough.

“Hey dagos, how’s Mussolini doing? Ya call him up lately?”

“Who are those guys?” Pete said.

“I know one of them. I fixed his shoes. He’s a moonshiner from Coaltown.”

“I think I know who you mean. He just got out of jail, didn’t he?”

“For moonshining?”

“No. Him and his buddies beat up on some gypsies. They say he shot one but they couldn’t pin it on him. Couldn’t find the gun. After they let him go somebody slashed his tires and he blamed it on the gypsies and went after them and that’s when the cops nailed him.”

“Hey dago, got any spare spaghetti?”

“Do we have to put up with this?” Tomassio said.

“You better put up with it, Tommie, they’re trying to goad us into a fight.”

It was getting darker, and the menacing figures at the other end of the compound, all wearing dark clothing, were almost invisible and indistinguishable. They gave up their taunts for a while but the Italians could hear them mumbling among themselves and knew it was only a matter of time before they would be at it again.

“There’s four of them and four of us,” Tomassio said. “We might be better off taking them on.”

“Okay for you maybe. Me, I’m a clarinet player,” Danny said. “I’ve never been in a fight in my life.”

“Hey dago, you got any cheap wine?”

“Well I can’t put up with this,” Tomassio said and stood up.

“So what are you going to do?” Pete asked him. “Take them on yourself? Somebody slipped those bastards in here with us. They might have a knife or something.”

One of the men separated from the group and walked toward them. The space was about a hundred yards long and when the man was halfway they could see the smirk on his face from a glimmer of a streetlight shining over the wall behind them. He folded his arms over his chest and cocked his head.

“Hey dago, you got any brown women for sale?”

Tomassio pushed himself off the wall and began walking toward the man but when he had covered half the distance the man retreated, and when Tomassio reached where the man had been standing he stopped and waited a few minutes. Then he went back and joined the others.

“This is gonna get worse,” Balboa said. “You can see how it’s going.”

“Could we talk to them maybe?” Peter suggested. “Let’s go over and talk to them.”

“Talk to them,” said Danny. “You can hear the kind of talk they got. Listen, if you go over there go over to fight because that’s the only thing you’re going to get. And since you haven’t got a hammer or a hoe, you can take my clarinet, put it together and use if for a stick. And be ready to win or be dead.”

“Well, I’m getting out of here,” Tomassio said. “I haven’t even got a tooth brush or a change of socks.”

“Sure. Walk over the wall.”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Sure. How?”

“Did you see that clothesline down there, the other side of them, way to their left?”

“Sure,” Balboa said. “You’re gonna cut down the clothesline, make a lasso, catch something on the top of the wall, shinny up and away you go. I’m sure those guys will be down at their end cheering you on. Us too. Maybe Danny could play some escape music on the clarinet.”

“That’s a pretty saggy clothesline, I bet there’s a clothes prop somewhere down there. Do me a favour. You three go down the other side and distract them. It’s dark enough now. They’ll think I’m with you. Keep together. Talk to each other or mumble to keep their attention.”

“Sure. You’re gonna leave us here, at their mercy. You’re the only one of us with any hope of handling them.”

“If I get out, I’ll try to get help.”

It was a hope. Perhaps their only hope. The jailer had promised to take them in if it rained and the rain was holding off for the moment. But it was getting colder and the jailer had not yet appeared with the promised Hudson Bay blankets.

Looking like an official delegation, the three men walked with what appeared to be purpose and intent down along one wall. Tomassio, with his dark clothes and Mediterranean face, melted into the dark red air and sidled along the opposite wall toward the clothesline.

By the time the hoodlums twigged to his movement, Tomassio was running with the clothes prop in hand and was half way up the length of the yard, streaking for the wall. While they watched he polevaulted to the top of the wall, let the clothes prop fall to the ground, turned and waved a flamboyant goodbye to all and dropped to the ground beside the highway. He ran toward downtown Sydney because he knew they would expect him to run the opposite way toward Coaltown. He turned off Prince Street and ran down George until he reached the steps of the cathedral where he hoped to find his cousin, Father Mancini, who worked there for the bishop. Perhaps he could help.

GIULIA DE GASPERI

Pensiéri

Uncuò piove.
Stàltri dentro a xogàr a scóa.
Sentà qua, me vardo intorno,
Ma continuo a no capir.
Còssa ne xe successo?
Parché semo finii qua?
E càsa? Me fémena e i me fiòi?
Fio spinà tuto intorno.
Come i criminai.
I me ga portà via sensa na spiegazion.
Stufo, sporco, ancora coa polvere dòsso.
A giubba rossa che me ga portà via
iera un me amìgo.
Amìgo?
De chi posso fidarme dèsso?
E domàn?

Semo vegnui qua par star mèjo,
no par star pèxo.
A xe dura, ma ierimo drio farghea.
A guera xe na bruta bestia.
Senpre.
Dapartùto.
Ma parché pagar noiàltri? E e nostre faméje?

•••

Mussoini xe là, lu nol se preoccupa de noiàltri...

Me bastaria saver que me fémena e i me fiòi sta bén.
Chissà sel prete el ghe da na man.
E a Saea? Che a sie ancora vèrta?
Xa tirava bruta aria prima, pensate dèsso.

Ucio, che riva a posta.
Speremo che me rive nove bóne.

Pregarò Sant’Antonio parché el me fassa ritrovar queo che go perso.
A speransa.

Worries

It is raining today.
The others are inside, playing scopa.
Sitting here, I look around,
But I still do not understand.
What happened?
Why are we here?
What about home? My wife? My kids?
Barbed wire all around.
Like criminals.
They brought me here with no explanations.
Tired, dirty, dust still on me.
The RCMP who took me away
Was a friend of mine.
A friend?
Who can I trust now?
And tomorrow?

We came here to fare better,
Not to fare worse.
It is hard, but we were making it.
War is an ugly thing.
Always.
Everywhere.
Why do we have to pay for it? Why our families?

Mussolini is over there, he doesn’t care about us ...

•••

I just need to know that my wife and my kids are all right.
I wonder if the priest is helping them.
What about the Hall? Would it be still open?
It did not look good before, imagine now.

Wait, the mail is coming.
I hope there is good news.

I will pray Saint Anthony to help me find what I have lost.
Hope.

DELIA DE SANTIS

An Ordinary and Innocent Outing

So much was falling apart already in our family. My father said it was the war over there. My mother had just lost her job as a housekeeper for one of the wealthiest English speaking families in town. They didn’t give her any specific reasons for letting her go, just that she wasn’t needed anymore. She had not stolen any silver goblets or fine china from their house, nor had she slacked on her work. My mother was a neat little lady, always well groomed; and she was soft spoken, not loud like some of the other Italian women in our neighbourhood. She would have been an asset to any well to do family as a servant.

“It’s that damn Mussolini over there,” Papa said, pushing back his plate of home made fettuccine. Most of the times he would eat two plates of the pasta my mother made, but now he couldn’t finish one.

“Eat,” Mama urged. But he was already getting up. He went to get his cigarettes from the drawer. With the matches in his hand, he paced around the kitchen for a minute, all distraught.

“How can I eat when there is so much going through my mind?”

“So you think it’ll help if you starve yourself?”

“Maria ... have you seen all the stuff that’s been written in the papers lately? They say one thing in the Italian papers and another in the English ones. None of it is good. We haven’t even seen the beginning of what’s coming yet.”

My father bought some of the small Italian bollettini being published in Canada, but actually he mostly read the Canadian newspapers, the ones his customers left at his shop when they were waiting to pick up their shoes. He would read for hours in the evening, until he fell asleep in his chair — it annoyed Mama to always have to wake him to make him go to bed. He had learned to read English much better than he could speak it — Mama could do both, but not as well. Neither one of them had gone past the fourth grade in school back in Italy, but Papa was the one who would have become something if he would have had the opportunity to study. Mama managed well simply by being practical.

“Giuseppe, when have I ever had time to read newspapers?” she finally said. “How could I, with two households to run? You tell me.”

I was finished with my homework, but didn’t close my books. I tried to appear hard at my studies to please my parents, while dreaming of Mary Helen, something I was doing more and more everyday.

“I know, Maria. I know. If it hadn’t been for this dream we had for so long, to have Angelo go to medical school, you could have stayed home like a lot of the other Italian women.”

I had no big desire to get interested in what was going on in the world, but I knew now that I had to speak, say something in response to what my father had said.

“Ma, Pa’ ... I don’t have to go to medical school. I can do something else. I can learn a trade — you know I am good with my hands. Or I can always go in the army.”

“You keep quiet young man ... because I don’t like what I see — as far as you’re concerned.”

I didn’t know what he was referring to, but what I did know was that when my father got into a bad mood, it wasn’t good to argue. So I turned a couple of pages in my science book, and picked up my pen, as if about to make more notes ... but really my mind was going back to Mary Helen’s blond hair, her blue eyes, and her curves, every one so perfect, smooth, underneath the silkiness of her dress.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me,” he said. He was beginning to get angry.

I wished my mother would turn around and take over the battle for me. She was standing at the sink, swishing water over the supper dishes. Mama did everything so fast, so much so that my father refused to walk with her anywhere, as he could never keep up with her. When he asked her to slow down, she always replied that it wouldn’t hurt him to let the muscles in his legs loosen up.

I gave a silent sigh of relief when Mama at last threw a dish towel over her shoulder and swung around to look at my father. It happened just as he was about to light another cigarette.

“Fai, fai,” she told him. “Keep lighting. Your lungs must be black as coal by now. And we won’t even talk about the money that goes into buying your cigarettes. But tell me, Giuse’, what has Angelo done, he’s always been a good boy?”

Maybe feeling a little pinch of guilt about the expense of his habit, he calmed down and went to the sink to put out the match. “E va bene, stick up for him. But maybe you’ll understand if I tell you I saw him with an English girl the other day. He thinks I don’t have eyes. Besides, compare Giovanni told me — “

“Compare Giovanni told you what? You believe all your compares, the Italian friends? Watch out, Giuse’. You trust your own too much.”

“You’re wrong, Maria. I trust no one. It has come that we can’t even trust these walls. Do you understand that, son?” — and he pointed his finger at me. “Yes, You!”

“Pa’, I haven’t done anything. The girl you saw me with is Canadian, but so am I. You seem to forget that I was born in this country.”

“I don’t forget anything, son. Call her what you want, canadese, inglese ... but these are dangerous times, and I am telling you that you’re playing with fire.”

I couldn’t keep myself from getting into it now. “It’s because you don’t like the English, isn’t it? You hate them. It has nothing to do with Mussolini, the war in Europe, or anything. What have you got against the English?”

“Touchy touchy, young man,” he said, staring at me wideeyed. “Maybe you’re in love with her then? Are you? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s enough with that superior tone, Giuse’ ... Angelo, your father doesn’t hate the English. If he disapproves it’s because of the difference in our culture. The English have done nothing to us.”

“Foolish woman. You just lost your job with an English family, for no just reason, and you call that nothing?”

“Giuseppe, listen to me. If you think I am not upset about losing my job, you’re wrong. Why do you think I haven’t been able to sleep since it happened? But ... how do we know it’s not for a just reason? Maybe they have to be careful, too. Think about their position — they’re connected with people at the comune, the police, the government ...”

“And so? We’re Canadian citizens like everyone else. Our very own son is willing to go in the army — didn’t you hear? — and tell me, whose side would he be fighting for if he would be sent overseas? Wouldn’t he be fighting for this country, for Canada?”

“Giuse’, open your eyes really good, that’s what I say. You, of all people, you read what goes on in the world everyday — and still you don’t understand. This political situation isn’t easy for anyone. But, let’s forget about my job, I’ll find something. I am ready to work at anything that will bring me a dollar. Besides, my mother used to say, one door closes and another opens.”

“Well, there better be lots of doors opening, Maria, because ...

and I wasn’t going to tell you this ... the shop ... most of the English customers are not coming around anymore. They’re boycotting us. Some of them were my best customers.”

“Not just some ... all of them were your best customers, Giuse’. The English are the ones who are not afraid to pay, and they appreciate every little thing you do for them. The paesani always want a deal ... always trying to get things done for cheap. And they’re critical and jealous ... Yes, I knew what was happening. I have known for a while. I knew no one was stealing money from the cash register — the take at the end of the day just hasn’t been the same anymore — I too have eyes to see.”

“I figured you knew. Women always know everything.”

“I was only speaking the truth, so no need to be sarcastic, or offended.”

“Well, in that case, I’d best go out for a while. A game of briscola at the club will take my mind off all this crazy stuff, not to mention your impertinence ... and your son’s foolish head.”

Mama followed Papa to the door. “Giuse’,” she said gently, “Angelo is not just my son. He’s our son. And it has nothing to do with his head. It’s his heart. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what it was like when we were young. We were crazy about each other, remember, our hearts so full of love?” And she put her arm around his waist and pulled him close to her.

He gave her a half embarrassed lovelook and then as if to say “what the heck,” he leaned into her, rubbing her cheek with the bristles of his chin.

“Oh, Maria,” he sighed. “I almost wish we could go back to the days when we were really poor, no money at all ... there was peace then. Now countries are at war, and families can’t even trust each other. Are we at all human anymore?”

“I know. I know. But listen Giuse’ ... why don’t you stay home tonight? Do you have to go to the club? I heard that the police are keeping a close watch on the Italian clubs, and there’s always danger in being in groups ... not to mention that some of the members think nothing of boasting about being fascists.”

“Yeah, some of them think Mussolini is their God,” he said impatiently. “And even some of the priests have fallen for it ... but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a little bit of fun to forget my troubles.”

“Well, va bene ... I know you get annoyed at me when I try to tell you what to do. And you deserve to go out now and then — you haven’t been anywhere for while. Some of the husbands I know go and play cards almost every night. But promise me you’ll be careful and keep your opinions to yourself. There’s a lot of jealousy among our people. I wish it weren’t so, but they will stab you in the back if they have to.”

“Maria, you know my opinions stay in this house. Don’t worry. I know what to do, and I won’t stay very long. And you — you’d better see if you can drill some common sense into our son’s head. Do you hear me, Angelo?”

My mother turned around, as if she’d forgotten I was there, and that’s when I saw her eyes were wet with tears. Just then, I impulsively picked up my father’s cigarettes and matches from the table and ran to him with them.

“Pa,” I said, “you forgot these.”

A strange look came over him, one of not understanding the need for my gesture, a gesture that I didn’t understand myself, even though I knew that my mother’s tears had everything to do with it.

My father put the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, looked at me, and nodded, his head going up and down a couple of times, as if to say: Grazie ... thank you.

Then, he held the door partly open for a long time, and I thought he was going to change his mind, but he didn’t. He stepped outside instead, and slowly pulled the door shut behind him.

I wished he hadn’t gone. But he had, and there was nothing my mother and I could do. But when I turned around, I saw my mother with her hands covering her face. She was starting to sob. Not loudly, but sobbing nevertheless. My mother was usually not one to waste time with tears. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I went back to the table, to be with my books. It was one time I didn’t mind not having my own bedroom where I could sit and study on my own — I slept in a fold up bed in a corner of the large square kitchen — and now I was glad to be there, in that room, where everything was familiar to me: the smell of the food my mother cooked, mixed with the lingering stink of my father’s cheap cigarettes, all mingling with the smell of leather and shoe polish drifting in from the shop at the front of our house. So much of it was of us.

Opening my math workbook, feeling the need to look over the homework I had hurriedly finished earlier, I found several mistakes, and began making corrections. Meanwhile, my mother had gone back to the sink to dry the dishes. When she was done, she began to clean out cupboards and drawers, to keep herself busy. I could see she couldn’t have stayed still, doing her knitting, something she did almost every night after the supper clean-up.

Done with all my corrections, I started looking at a biology book I had recently picked up at the library. I had not read much of it yet. Secretly, I did want to be a doctor, but it was easier to let my parents believe it was all their idea. It made them feel proud to have a son who was going to be a doctor. I was their only child, and I had come along when they’d almost given up hope of having any children.

I closed the book. Mama was making me nervous, as she kept looking at the clock and making repeated trips to the window to see if my father was coming back.

“Ma ... it was already late when he left.”

“Yes, certo, of course ...,” she said, reluctantly going back to the counter.

She was putting things back in the drawers, when suddenly she stood still, a handful of spoons held tight in her right hand. First she stared at the wall, at nothing, then straight at me.

“There will be hunger for many Italian families,” she said. “This morning three Italians were arrested a few blocks from here ... tre padri di famiglia, breadwinners. Nobody knows where they were taking them. Your father doesn’t know about it yet ... but you ... you need to know that your father is right about the English girl. You were born in this country, but you’re still the son of Italian immigrants. You’re still Italian. How can that change? And it won’t be long before her family will have something to say about it, too. To them we are the enemy.”

That’s all there was. Words my mother had probably carefully prepared in her mind while scrubbing the shelves and drawers. Nothing more needed to be said. Nothing was expected back. Slowly I began to see that what she had said was right. It was not a black and white situation we were in, and it would have been naïve to contradict her.

Suddenly the thought of love started taking on a different meaning. Maybe I loved Mary Helen, maybe I didn’t. Time would tell. For now, I just wanted my father to come back soon. I wanted to hear the door open and see him standing there and say to my mother: “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t be long?”

Instead, there was waiting, and more waiting, with Mama first pacing back and forth, and then looking worriedly into the darkening street. My father’s going out, an ordinary and innocent outing, had filled our kitchen with the heavy silence that dreading the unknown brings.

TERRI FAVRO

Angel of Petawawa

She looked like a pin-up of Betty Grable, hair curled into seductive blonde sausages, naked shoulders like two perfectly rounded scoops of ice cream.

“Need a ride, soldier?”

Mario tugged off his cap. “Oh, only if I’m not taking you out of your way, M ... Miss. I’m headed to ... to St. Catharines.”

The lady laughed. Mario smiled, not certain what was funny.

“What do you think, Charlie?” she said.

“You kiddin’? It’s two hunnert miles in the opposite direction.”

The deep voice came from behind the wheel, a peaked cap outlined by moonlight. Confused, Mario reached for his papers until he realized the driver wasn’t an officer but a chauffeur.

“Get in, young man,” said the lady. “Tonight of all nights, it’s impossible for a Canadian soldier to take us out of our way.”

Peering in at the lady through the open window of the roadster, Mario thought he saw a skinny white dog baring a mouthful of needle sharp teeth.

Saying a quick mental prayer that this wasn’t a dream — patri, figli e spiritu sancti, he opened the back door.

The roadster was a midnight blue Rolls: pre-war model, thirty-seven or -eight. As Guglielmo had told Mario when they were still working at the foundry, the minute Hitler invaded Poland, Rolls Royce stopped making cars and started cranking out Spitfire engines. Those Brits, they don’t miss a trick, said Guglielmo sliding his thumb sharply down his cheekbone.

This was the first Rolls Mario had seen outside of a movie house and the only vehicle of any kind he’d seen in two hours of hitchhiking with nothing but the creak of cicadas and the clack of his boot heels for company. To pass the time, he had fallen into humming a dreamy hymn to home cooking, his footsteps a metronome: ri-SOT-to, po-LEN-ta, agno-LOT-ti, zabag-LION-e, mine-STRON-e and a particularly wonderful BOUILL-ia-baise when his mother could get the fish. Belly empty, his mouth began to water.

With his head stuffed full of the rhythm of a breakfast of hot cas-TAGNA con leche, he didn’t notice the approaching car until the headlights caught him full in the face. He was so startled that he forgot to stick out his thumb. As the car slowed, then stopped, he stood on the gravel edge of road that fell into a weedchoked ditch, one of many that Guglielmo had dug in and around Petawawa.

The roadster’s headlights were the only glimpse of light beyond the harvest moon that hung in the sky like the red circle on the back of Guglielmo’s shirt, that time Mario passed him a pack of smokes through the barbed wire fence. A gift from Guglielmo’s wife Anna, mailed to Mario for safe passage; this little act of kindness could have got Mario into trouble — even taken into custody — but, with his blonde hair and Canadian Infantry uniform, the guard had assumed that Mario was just a soft-hearted Canuck sharing tobacco from his care package with some poor bastard of a P.O.W. Or so the guard would think as long as he didn’t hear the rag ends of Mario’s accent: flattened, clipped, beaten down in the forge of the Ottawa Valley, but not completely gone. New acquaintances in Petawawa often squinted at him and asked: What are ya, a Frenchman?

No words were exchanged as Guglielmo took the Chesterfields from Mario: he simply touched his nose twice before turning away. That’s when Mario saw the red target between Guglielmo’s shoulder blades, and watched him saunter over to the guard and proffer a few smokes. The guard looked away as he slipped them into his tunic pocket. Even behind barbed wire, Guglielmo knew how to grease the wheels.

The back of the roadster was as roomy as a good-sized pantry, with a butter-soft leather seat as wide as the chestefiore in Mario’s parents’ front parlour. When he crawled in next to the lady, he glanced a bit nervously at the skinny white dog, until he realized it was a length of fur ending in the head of a sharp-toothed rodent. A fur, on a hot August night? And since when did fur coats have teeth?

“Why are you staring?” asked the lady.

Mario nodded at the fur. “I ... I ... I thought it was a dog.”

Up front, the driver snorted.

The lady frowned and rapped on the sliding window between the front and back seats.

“That’ll be enough,” she told the driver, then turning to Mario, added: “It’s a mink stole.”

For a moment Mario wasn’t sure he had heard the word correctly.

“A meenka?” he tried.

“Mink,” repeated the woman, then added: “A nasty little animal with sharp teeth and lovely fur.”

Mario nodded. In Petawawa he had met lots of animals you could describe this way, beautiful but malevolent. Once, on maneuvers, he came face-to-face with a beast with bristling silver fur, canine in appearance, but too wild for a farm dog.

The dog-like animal had stared at him, mouth half open to reveal a picket fence of gleaming teeth. Mario thought he heard a low growl. It occurred to him that this dog might actually be a wolf, something he had never seen in Canada although his father had told him about hunting them with shotguns back in the Old Country. Pop had probably never been as well-armed as Mario was as a private in the Canadian Infantry. Even the old Franchi was confiscated from the hall closet once the family was put on the list of Enemy Aliens.

Unlike Mario, the wolf was accustomed to moving fast in deep snow. Mario gripped his rifle a little tighter but after a few careful paces forward, the dog-like beast stopped and almost seemed to grin at him as if to say: If you and I went to your mamma’s house for a meal, would she give me something good?

And then, thinking better of Mario and his gun — which he’d only ever fired at straw men in farmer’s fields — the animal turned tail and ran, setting off a fall of icing-sugar from some low-hanging branches. Mario was left alone in hipdeep snow with his silent weapon and a pounding heart.

That had been ages ago, January, before the thick heat and blackflies made Mario long for the deathly cold of a Northern Ontario winter. Even though he was still in the Army, everything else had changed since then. In May, the Germans surrendered and Mario’s heart was filled with joy thinking he’d be able to go home, until his regiment received news that they’d be moving west to help the Americans, as he explained in a letter to Juliana. He was going to British Columbia, and from there, to Japan.

All that changed again in early August when the Americans dropped a super-weapon on Hiroshima and again on Nagasaki. Mario guessed that the Americans had figured out how to split the atom — no surprise there, with the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi on their side. Mario paid attention to such things.

Like a magician conjuring doves from a box, the lady produced two crystal glasses, rims spreading like lilies, and handed one to Mario. From a bucket of ice at her feet, she picked up a heavy green bottle and filled both their glasses.

“So, soldier, what shall we drink to?”

Mario, always a little shy with strange women, said: “Whatever you please ma’am.” Then braver, added something he’d heard the other guys say: “It’s your party.”

The driver made a derisive sound, somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. The lady rapped again on the sliding window.

“That’ll be enough,” she said, then turned to Mario. “Don’t mind Charlie, he’s a vet, too, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” said Mario. “What theatre?”

“Not this lousy War,” answered the driver with a touch of scorn in his voice. “The Great War. France. I was at Vimy.”

Mario felt put in his place.

The lady lifted her glass and gave him another smile. “How about we toast to the end of the lousy War?”

“Sure,” he said, uncertainly. He was worried that he might not be demobilized, peace or no peace. There had already been talk of his regiment being re-enlisted to fight the Russians. Nonetheless, he lifted his glass and took a sip: fizzy sweetness filled his mouth, like Brioschi mixed with white wine. It was the first time he’d ever tasted champagne.

The lady watched him over the rim of her glass. “We haven’t been properly introduced, have we? You can’t keep calling me ma’am and I can’t keep calling you soldier. I’m Alice Fraser. And you?”

“Muh ... muh ... muh ...”

The darn stammer again — it always happened when he was nervous. To make matters worse, he couldn’t decide whether today he should be ‘Mark’ or ‘Mario’.

The stammer decided for him. “Muh ... muh ... Mario.”

“Ah, a French-Canadian boy. Thought so! You have the teensiest bit of an accent.”

Mario sipped his drink. No point in explaining things to her. What was he anyway: Italian? Canadian? British subject? Enemy alien? Safer to change the subject.

“Puh ... peace!” exclaimed Mario. “I can’t believe it.”

“How can you not? The world is going crazy! It’s parties from one end of Renfrew County to another! I should imagine that’s why you went AWOL and started hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere.”

Mario lowered his glass, resting it on his knee; whatever was in this stuff was going to his head.

“No, Miss Fraser. I duh ... didn’t go AWOL. I ... I found a noncom to sign a 72-hour leave, so long as I go back to Petawawa.”

For the first time the lady’s movie star smile collapsed into a puzzled frown. “But the War’s over, sweetie.”

Mario took a deep breath, suddenly aware of just how bone weary he was. He waved his hands, trying to find the right words. He still hadn’t been able to teach himself not to gesticulate, as they called it in Basic Training. “I got to be demobilized first. Paperwork, ruh ... rubber stamps. My discharge papers.”

Alice Fraser shook her head at him. “Then why in heaven’s name go to St. Catharines tonight? Some good parties going on in Ottawa where I live. We could go there now and have you back in Petawawa tomorrow, although I can’t guarantee you won’t have a sore head.”

Mario slid his hand down the stem of the glass. Good crystal, something he used to see when he caught a glimpse of the officer’s mess, a spread of heavy white plates and shining glassware, as glittering and luxurious as any table he had ever seen, even if the food looked miserably bland — boiled beef, mushy peas.

Juliana would love a set of glasses like this one. For their wedding, they had used his mother’s wine glasses bought at Eaton’s after one of his father’s little houses had sold. That would have been, what, 1938? When Mario was eighteen. A different time, a different world, when Pop could still make a living in construction, hiring Irishmen who’d been laid off from pick-and-shovelling the Welland Canal.

“I got a telegram from my mother this morning,” he told the lady. “My wife, she’s in labour. Our first baby. Maybe she’s even had him by now. Or her.”

The woman smiled down into her glass. “Well, well. A married man. What are you, eighteen? Twenty?”

“Twenty-five,” declared Mario, slightly offended: why did everyone always take him for a kid?

“For a man of your years you certainly are sweet looking. I guess the War was easy on you.”

Mario felt an uneasy sense of stepping into deep, deep water.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she said softly. “Am I making you nervous?”

“Nuh ... no,” Mario lied.

Alice Fraser lifted her glass. “And what would your little wife say to all this?”

Mario searched for an answer.

“She ... she’d say: Thank you for bringing her husband home.” He paused. “She ... she’s been real worried since I wrote her I was going to Japan.”

Alice Fraser shook her head and gave a laugh; not one of merriment. She almost sounded angry.

Mario threw back the rest of his drink. He had to get the hell out of here. Now.

“Ma’am ... muh ... miss ...”

“Alice.”

“Miss Alice ... I ... you, can let me off right here.”

Alice Fraser sighed. Sipped her drink. “I said Charlie and I would take you home, and take you home we shall. How long were you out there on the highway?”

Mario checked his wristwatch. “Two hours. And a half.”

“You must be all-in. Why don’t you get a little shut-eye? It will be hours before we’re anywhere close to St. Catharines.”

With that, Alice Fraser removed the glass from his hand.

As if granted permission, Mario laid back his head on the seat and closed his eyes. Exhaustion did the rest.

He found himself at Club Italia, 1939. Only this wasn’t a dream, not really, but a memory. The night Mario first danced with Juliana. Gu, as always, was greasing the wheels.

“Go dance! The girls all got eyes for you,” he kept urging Mario. “They think you look like Leslie Howard, that nob in Gone With The Wind.”

“Ah ... ah ... c’mon, Gu,” muttered Mario, embarrassed.

“È vero! And Anna says that one, the little firecracker in the red skirt, wants you to ask her to jitterbug.”

Mario had known Juliana most of his life, really. Their families were paesani. But with her thick black curls and shapely legs, she seemed out of Mario’s league. Besides — and this was unusual for the girls from the neighbourhood — Juliana had her grade eight and was almost finished high school. She wasn’t just a cute little thing; she had a head on her shoulders.

“But I don’t know how to jitterbug,” protested Mario, letting Gu propel him forward with a laugh.

Then, the dream rushed him forward in time. He was at the foundry, the winter they took Guglielmo away.

There was no rhyme or reason to these things. Both Mario and Guglielmo had been fingerprinted the year before; both had been warned to report to the local police station every time they left town. But only Guglielmo was taken into custody.

Old Mister Sands provided a partial explanation: “We’re doing a lot of machining for the Forces. I need you. You’re skilled labour, Mark. You’re worth more to the War effort here than cooling your heels in some camp.”

“What about Guglielmo — I mean, Bill? He’s a good worker too. He was here before me.”

Sands shrugged. “You fit in better than Bill does. You seem more like a Canadian. You should thank your mother for your blonde hair and blue eyes. Customers don’t even think you’re Italian. And Bill’s always hanging around at that club. Maybe he is a Fascist, who knows?”

Mario looked at his boss in surprise. Sands sometimes seemed to forget that Mario was the immigrant and Guglielmo the one born in this country.

“Mr. Sands, Bill’s no Fascist. The Fascists were the reason my folks left Italy. They ... they tortured one of my Pop’s cousins ... they ... they do this awful thing with castor oil — “

Sands raised his hands. “Simmer down, I read the papers you know.”

“Guglielmo — Bill — he’s not like that.”

Sands crossed his arms. “Yeah, but what about the rest of them hotheads, filling the young guys’ heads with ideas? This is War, son. They could be fifth columnists.”

Mario struggled to control his emotions: he knew exactly why Sands was uncomfortable with Gu and his friends. Their slick black hair, their loud laughter, their religion, their language, their music, the way they whistled at women in the street. Drinking homemade wine out on the sidewalks in the evenings, when the police weren’t looking. Dragging tables outside to eat, sometimes with old Caruso records blasting on the gramophone.

“It’s a social club, Mr. Sands. They play cards and talk and have a little fun. Is that against the law in Canada?”

Sands shrugged again. “That’s what they claim they’re doing. But who knows what they’re babbling about? They could be plotting anything.”

Mario went back to work without a word. As he set up a part to be machined, he noticed that his hands were shaking.

That evening, at the kitchen table with Ma and Pop, there was a knock at the door; Ma stiffened, eyes wide, her hand on Mario’s arm until Pop opened the door to one of the neighbourhood kids.

“Signora Carlucci tol’ me, come get you, Mario,” said the kid, scratching his neck. “The Mounties, they wrecked their furnace.”

Mario got up and went for his jacket. Ma got up and followed him.

“Non vai,” whispered his mother, clutching his arm. “È pericoloso.”

“You end up in jail too, you not careful,” warned Pop.

But Mario had already put down his fork and was pulling on his boots. “If I end up in jail, I end up in jail. Guglielmo’s wife is in the family way. You want me to leave her to freeze to death?”

“Sette zu, her people will help her,” insisted his mother.

Mario looked down at Ma. She wasn’t hard hearted. She had lost two older children to illnesses in the Old Country and lived in terror of losing Mario, too. She gripped the sleeve of his coat.

“I’m just going to fix their furnace,” Mario assured her, gently unfastening her fingers.

In the end, his father came with him, the two of them trudging through wet snow drifting to their ankles, hands in their pockets as they marched in silence the five blocks to Guglielmo’s house, a tiny stucco bungalow not far from the foundry. Anna met them at the door, her face red with tears and worry, her pregnancy hump protruding through the shawls that covered her. The house was freezing.

When she saw Mario she burst into tears. “Bless you, bless you! Everyone else is too afraid to come!”

In the basement, they found the boiler broken in pieces, scattered haphazardly on the dirt floor. Mario crouched down and surveyed the damage. It was going to be hard working down here in this low space; every time he stood, he smacked the top of his head on the ceiling pipes.

“Why they’d do this?” muttered Mario, rubbing his eyes. “Taking a man’s furnace apart and not putting it back together? Makes no sense.”

“They say they look for guns,” whispered Anna.

“You know where they take him, Missus?” asked Mario’s father.

Anna wiped her face with her shawl. “They no say. But the neighbour next door he say they take his father to Toronto, then make them go up north. A place with an Indian name.”

Petawawa, said Mario to himself. He’d heard of others being sent there, starting in nineteenforty, not long after they’d closed down the high school for a week and dispersed the older Italian male students, including Guglielmo and himself. When the school re-opened, it was without the Italian boys, Mario’s hopes of a university education disappearing overnight. A few of the guys from the neighbourhood had disappeared, too. That’s when the word Petawawa starting going around. A camp where they sent soldiers but also prisoners of war.

Mario and his Pop worked through the night, calling on a friend down the street who had been a welder. As the house grew colder, Mario’s fingers began to go numb. Finally, he sent Pop home with Anna on his arm. Once his mother saw the pregnant woman, she’d look after her, danger or no.

After that night, Mario took care of Anna and her son, or tried to. When the bank account went empty, Mario sent a little extra from his paycheque. He talked to the priest, to the neighbours. He even got Sands to chip in.

Pop worried. “You gotta stay clear of this business or they take you too.”

“Guglielmo got me my job after they threw us out of school,” insisted Mario. “You just want to leave his wife and child to starve?”

“Her paesani should help her.”

“Her paesani are afraid.”

“You oughta be afraid too,” Pop pointed out. “They take you, maybe me too. Then what happen to mamma? Something happen to you, it kill her.”

And there the conversation ended.

When Mario’s draft notice finally came in the mail, he showed it to Sands. The old man shook his head.

“Those idiots! You’re worth more building parts for tanks than riding in one.”

“Don’t think I’ll be doing that either,” said Mario, examining the paper. “It says something about Military Intelligence.”

Sands spit into the sawdust on the foundry floor. “You know what they say about Military Intelligence? It’s a contradiction. Anyway, good luck to you, Mark. You get out of this in one piece, there’s always a job for you here.”

And with that, Mario followed Guglielmo to Petawawa, his early months in the Forces overlapping with the final months of Guglielmo’s detention. After that one visit through the barbed wire fence, Mario was relieved to receive a letter from Anna, telling him that a judge had signed Guglielmo’s release. They could simply find no reason to keep the man locked up.

But a few months later, another letter came from Guglielmo himself, saying that he’d been drafted into the Canadian expeditionary forces. He wrote to Mario that, when he showed up at home in uniform, his little boy started crying at the sight of him.

I guess I’m a real Canadian now, he wrote to Mario in a letter heavy with blacked out sentences. The censor made sure that almost nothing was left of what Gu wanted to say.

When Mario married Juliana, Guglielmo stood up for him before they shipped him out to Sicily. A friend took a snapshot, Mario and Guglielmo both in uniform, Juliana’s hand through Mario’s elbow.

Guglielmo was sent home six months later, minus an arm. Despite not being “in one piece,” Sands grudgingly did the right thing and offered Gu his old job back. But the gulf had grown too wide. Gu signed up for correspondence courses in accounting and agreed to help get Mario’s father’s construction business back on its feet.

This War won’t last forever. When it ends, they’re going to need houses for all the vets, he wrote to Mario. Anyway, whoever heard of a one-armed ditch-digger? I’m better off using my head than my back.

Mario awoke in the car to a soft, floral-scented weight on his shoulder: Alice Fraser asleep, her mouth open, snoring softly. The empty champagne bottle rolled at her feet.

Gently Mario adjusted her so that she was arranged more modestly on the seat.

Up front, music softly played. Moonlight Serenade. They must be within broadcasting range of Kingston or Toronto or some other big city.

“Where are we, Charlie?” Mario asked in a low voice. “Just comin’ to the edge of Hamilton. Almost home, buddy.”

He looked down at Alice Fraser asleep beside him, her blonde curls in disarray.

“She doesn’t seem very happy,” commented Mario.

“No reason to be,” said Charlie. “Lost her fiancé on DDay.”

“Oh Jesus,” said Mario, breaking his own rule about taking the Lord’s Name in front of women. He said a silent prayer of thanks that he was being sent back home, to his mother and Juliana.

Up front, he could just see the outline of Charlie’s jaw. They were on the Number Eight Highway now, familiar country, the headlights catching the rows of fences and fruit trees that rolled for miles. Good land around here, thought Mario approvingly, peach orchards and strawberry fields. It was even decent earth for grape growing, something Pop wanted to get into in a big way. The August air wafting in through the window smelled of home, sweet with that heavy smell of ripening peaches.

“Y’know, Charlie,” said Mario. “Muh ... miss Fraser was wrong. I’m ... uh ... not ... Fuh ... French-Canadian. I was buh ... born in Italy.”

“Yeah, I figured it was something like that,” said Charlie. “Anyway, war’s over for you now, so who cares?”

“Right,” agreed Mario. “So, you say you saw action in France? What regiment were you in?”

Charlie cleared his throat. “Didn’t say nothing about action. I was in the Construction Battalion. Digging trenches, building shelters.”

“Ah, an engineering unit,” said Mario, nodding. “I ... I’d like to be engineer myself one day.”

Charlie snorted. “Engineering’s a nice way to put it. Ditch digging, more like.”

Mario chuckled and looked out the window. He was beginning to like Charlie. Next to him Alice Fraser groaned in her sleep. Mario put a hand lightly on her head which lay somewhat immodestly on his khaki covered thigh. But he didn’t try to move her, instead praying for her future happiness.

“Brace yourself. We’re coming into town,” announced Charlie.

They could hear the crowd on St. Paul Street before they saw it. Shouting, singing, music, the roar so loud Mario could feel it in his bones. And then, thumping: the revellers pounding the car doors and jumping on the hood. Someone spraying beer through the open window, shouting: Get out here soldier!

“Jesus,” said Mario, breaking his rule again. The car was stuck fast in a throng of people. Mario looked out in amazement at the joyous faces and dancing bodies pressed against the sides of the car.

“Don’t think we can go much faster than you can walk, pal,” observed Charlie. “You want to hoof it to the hospital from here?”

Charlie turned around to look back at Mario, a smile on his face.

It was only then that Mario realized that Charlie was a black man. He opened his mouth to express his surprise, then shut it. What was there to say? They were both vets, after all.

Mario nodded. “Thanks, Charlie.”

As he picked his duffel bag off the floor of the car, Alice Fraser sat up blurrily, her hand on her forehead. Mario took her hand in his, and kissed it.

“Thank you, Miss Fraser. I wouldn’t’ve made it home tonight without you. You’ve been an angel God sent to help me, I think.”

Alice Fraser shook her head. “You’re the angel, soldier. Get along to your wife, now.”

Mario tried to open the door, but the pressure of the crowd was too great. Finally he pushed his duffle bag through the window and followed it out, feet first. The crowd caught him and carried him away; he found himself swimming in the direction of Hotel Dieu hospital, bodies buoying him up.

Ahead, on the hospital steps, he could see his father standing next to Guglielmo, whose left sleeve was pinned emptily to his shirt. When Mario finally staggered up the stairs, they both rushed down to embrace him.

“Buona fortuna! You have a daughter!” shouted Guglielmo, pounding his back. “If you’re lucky she’ll have Juliana’s looks and your brains.”

Mario kissed his father, whose face was streaked with tears — the first time he’d ever seen Pop cry. “How’s Juliana doing?”

Pop wiped his face with the back of his hand. “She good, even though the doc almost didn’t make it through the street. She give us the first Canadian baby in the family.”

Guglielmo laughed. “Hey, we’re all Canadians now. Go see your little girl.” And with his good arm, he pushed Mario firmly through the hospital door.

Dedicated to the memory of my father, Attilio ‘Tee’ Favro, enemy alien, private in the Canadian Infantry, electrician and plant engineer, whose wartime experiences and long journey home on the night of August 15, 1945 inspired this story.

• Angel of Petawawa was first published in Accenti Magazine's Winter 2012 issue.

VENERA FAZIO

Song of My Heart

In memory of Ziu Carmenu (1883-1969)

Friday nights, June 1940 until September 1943: Seven o’clock , City Hall, my body cleansed of quarry dust from Canada Crush & Stone, shirt and pants pressed and clothes-line fresh, the policeman, not much older than my Giovanni, with list of names in hand swivels in chair, while I stand with identification papers.

My name: Carmelo Donato. To him I am Chuck/ Charlie/ Carm/ Carmen/ Mel. Donato is spit out as Doughnato or Dunnato.

I come to Canada in 1930 with wife Rosa two sons, and daughter. My wife, she cry for her family in old country. Five years, we save money and then buy olive grove close to Rosa’s parents. Rosa, she happy, but I hear my children chanting in the street with the older children, singing their loyalty to Il Duce and the future Roman Empire. My boys ask to wear black shirts just like some of their friends. I worry Mussolini and Hitler too much like brothers. Bring family back here to Dundas in 1939.

No, we no plan to go back to Sicily.

No, I no know fascists at quarry or in town.

After he checks off my name with his pencil, I hurry home, my heart singing: One more week Giovanni and Carlo safe from Italian army, no mention of sending us back to Italy.

ANNA FOSCHI CIAMPOLINI

Dancing with the Devil: Conversations with Vancouver’s
Italian Canadian Witnesses of the War Internment

The most powerful man in Vancouver’s Italian community was staring at the rookie interviewer from behind a massive mahogany desk in his downtown Law Office. I had been warned that he would not give me an interview, since I was doing a research on Italian Canadian pioneer families on behalf of the Italian Cultural Centre Society, a recently formed community organization that had contrasting views and goals from those upheld by the man whose name was pronounced with deference even by his enemies. These differences of opinions had opened a rift within the Italian community, creating a sort of cold war between the supporters of the old Boss and the group of more recent immigrants that started and supported the Italian Centre. But Angelo Ernest Branca, Gladiator of the Courts,[1] the first Italian Canadian to be appointed to the Bench of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of British Columbia, had never shied away from a good fight. Maybe, he was simply curious to meet the emissary of the other side, this freshofftheplane young woman who had just enough nerve to pick up the phone and request a meeting with him.

I was no match for him. I was not a professional researcher. I had done some interviews for the local Italian newspaper but overall, my best asset was the fact that I was completely new to the Vancouver scene. I had been hired to work on the research project, financed by a government grant, mostly because I had not yet squabbled with anyone or pissed off anyone in the Italian community. I had heard so much about Judge Branca and, at the same time so little, as if there was an edge of mystery surrounding him, that I ended up creating, in my mind, an image of this formidable man that was rather close to that of Don Vito Corleone who liked to make offers one could not refuse.

I thought he would have all the answers I needed for completing the tassels of the mosaic that was the history of Vancouver’s Italian community since the early 1900s. There were missing pieces and unsolved mysteries in the picture that I was trying to complete. I was particularly curious about the Second World War period, when the RCMP had rounded up 44 local Italian Canadian men and sent them to an internment camp on suspicion of harbouring sympathies for Mussolini and the fascist regime and plotting against Canada. Till then, every time I had touched upon the Internment, I had received only vague comments and details from all the people I had interviewed. Consequently, I had high expectations from this meeting with the judge. And there I was, sitting across his desk, armed with pen and paper and ready to take notes.

Judge Branca did not have anything in common with Don Vito Corleone. Although he was in his early eighties, he was still a good looking man, a Spencer Tracy type, with an imposing frame and piercing eyes. In his youth, he had been an amateur middleweight boxing champion and used to say that by the fifth round he had beaten everyone he had fought against in the ring. He leaned over and asked with his authoritative tone how long I had been in Canada and where I was from. When I replied: “I am from Florence,” he snapped back:

“Ah, the city of thieves! La città dei ladri!”

I took it badly. In an indignant tone, I replied:

“This is the first time I ever heard someone calling my city that! The city of arts, maybe that’s what you wanted to say!”

Undaunted, he insisted:

“No, no, it’s the city of thieves! I was there with my wife a few years ago and our entire luggage got stolen at the train station.” It certainly wasn’t easy to last till the fifth round with Judge Branca. But I was determined to continue with my questions even though I suspected that I might come out as the loser in this little sparring match.

When I was preparing for the interview with the Judge, I had jotted down some questions about the internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War, when the Canadian Government applied the War Measures Act to arrest hundreds of men of Italian origin, many of them Canadian-born, without even charging them with any criminal offense. When I started working on the research project, I knew nothing about this episode of Canadian history. As a student at the public school in Florence in the 1950s, and 1960s, the history textbooks did not mention it at all. In fact, there was little acknowledgement of the mass exodus of impoverished emigrants that started as far back as the late 19th century. We did, however, know every detail about the fall of the Roman Empire, the Ottonian dynasty and the Risorgimento. But the wheels of time and history had mysteriously stopped turning after the Great War of 1914-18. Whatever happened after that was condensed in a scanty paragraph.

I asked many questions about the events of the 1940s to the Vancouver community elders that I interviewed. I was always warmly received in their immaculately kept homes, offered coffee and homemade cookies and was regaled with the most interesting tales of their life as immigrants in Vancouver’s bygone days. One 96yearold man, who had arrived in 1905 and built a small fortune by starting a commercial truck fleet, told me how he met his first wife, when he was lodging at her boarding house, and how they were overcome by passion in her kitchen. He leaned back in his armchair, eyes half closed, and sighed with delight: “Signo’, me la son fatta! Ma’m, I fucked her!”

Despite his sharp memory, when I asked if he knew any of the Vancouver internees, he couldn’t or wouldn’t be of much help. It was very much the same with everybody else. At the mention of the war years and the internment camps, faces would become inscrutable, eyes would roll upwards and they would say that they did not remember much, did not know much, and it was better to let it be. “Lasciamo stare,” they said.

Angelo Branca leaned over and looked at me. His eyes turned cold and he spoke calmly and firmly: “You are asking me about the arrests and the internment of the Italians. Canada was at war with Italy. When a country is at war, it must take every necessary measure to ensure its safety.”

I wanted to answer: “Like arresting innocent people?” But I did not have the courage. He was a legend, a man of conviction. He spoke out of his deep loyalty and his passionate love for Canada. He quickly changed the subject and started talking about his preferred topic: multiculturalism that was indeed a good thing, if immigrant communities would take full financial responsibility to preserve and promote their culture without using taxpayers’ money. The reference to the Italian Centre was fairly transparent. Our conversation ended shortly after.

In a parking lot behind his store, another man spoke vehemently against the injustice committed so many years ago against peaceful people who came to Canada to work. He had been a fascist but swore he would never commit any act of treason against Canada. He proclaimed everyone should be entitled to his or her own beliefs. “It’s too painful to talk about this thing. I’ll say no more. I am proud of who I am. I never did harm to anybody and I am not a voltagabbana! E se prima ero fascista, ora sono fascistone![2]

Perhaps it was a casual remark from another interviewee that revealed to me just how deep the wound in the community was and how it still hurt. We were sitting in their kitchen, at a table covered with a lace tablecloth; the man and his wife exchanged glances, and then he said:

“Those were difficult times for our community. The war and all that was happening back in Italy ... The RCMP came to arrest some of those poor fellows. Most people in our community were just busy working at two or three jobs trying to save money, rather than meddle with politics, but that’s how it was.”

He paused for a moment, and then added: “Yes, that’s how it was. It was a long time ago. Anyway, they were not mistreated in those camps. Maybe it’s better not to talk about it anymore.”

“Why shouldn’t we talk about it? “

“Because, you see ... because there are things that we don’t really know ...”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, for example, how was the RCMP getting the information about the people they arrested? Who gave them those names? Nobody knows for sure. That’s all I know about the internment camps. Listen to me: it’s over and done. It’s better not to talk about it; it’s better to let it go. Meglio lasciar stare, capisci?”

More than the prison years, more than the distance from their families or the loss of property, it was the loss of innocence, the shadow of the doubt, the suspicion that the devil could have been among them that had left such a painful legacy. Maybe, the best defence against it was silence, just as back in Italy there was still silence and fear about the terrible events that took place over there during the war, the evil that the textbooks of our generation did not mention as if it never happened.

I never met Angelo Branca again. He died in 1984, just one year after our conversation in his law firm office, where he continued to work till the end.

Many of the elderly people that opened their doors to me when I was working on the interviews have passed away. In the course of the years, the material and the tapes I collected were partially lost or damaged during the various office renovations at the Italian Cultural Centre and only the memory survives, the memory of these lives lived with dignity and hard work, some touched or forever altered by the shadow of the war, a collective tragedy far greater than any of the hopes and dreams they had nurtured in their new land.

Endnotes

1. From the title of Vincent Moore’s biography, Gladiator of the Courts: Angelo Branca. (Vancouver, Douglas & McIntyre, 1981)

2. “I am not a turncoat! If I was a fascist before, now I am a big fascist!”

LORETTA GATTO-WHITE

Strangers

Huddle, huddle
they’re here ... all around us, but
it should be only us
who pass hand to hand, grasping,
Arms around arms; confining;
safe in what we know,
Our big laughing mouths,
the drawing-in of everything
of whispered secrets half-believed,
of half-felt pain
unrelieved. Daggers drawn,
well concealed, intentions formed
but not revealed,
Bloodless wounds
never heal ... Hold, Hold ...
Fast to them,
after all, they’re not strangers

FRANK GIORNO

Horses for Mussolini

Franceschini had a heart as tall
As the majestic Majella
That giant Abruzzese rock
Protecting Adriatic shores
From which his spirit sprang
With a few cents in his pockets
He grew the American Dream in provincial
Empire ridden Canada — a few acres of snow —
That Franceschini made passable with roads as solid
As the Appian Way in Ontario, in Quebec,
In Nova Scotia and across the Yukon
Building stretches of the Alaskan Highway for grateful Uncle Sam
Once, Vincenzo Franceschini, but now and forever James

James Franceschini loved his horses
Champions in America
Madison Square Garden Number One
Vanquishing Vanderbilts
A onetime day labourer
Married to Annie Pinkham of Chandos Avenue, Toronto
Defeating his betters
Robber Baron daughter and others of the Mayflower horsey set
The wealth Big Jim made from building the roads
That ended the railway barons’ monopoly over the farmer’s food
Didn’t harden Jim, didn’t make mean the Abruzzese generosity
If you liked his horses, Big Jim gave you two

•••

As he gifted fascist Parini in Toronto
Visiting friendly Canada on a visa in 1933
“Bei cavalli, belle bestie,” Parini said
Big Jim gave Parini two horses
Parini he gave one to Mussolini
Il Duce always got his slice of pizza
Even if he wasn’t invited to the party
He was the party!

Il Duce was beloved by
The English world —
Better a black shirt thug
Than a commie Red
High praise resounding
From true blue Empire Club podium
In Orange Toronto that toasted
“... the best men of the younger generation of Italians”

The Canadian Army also loved Il Duce too much
And enlisted a jumping show horse — “Mussolini”
Damn stallion never won, but he was so much fun
The Duke of Windsor and Mrs. Simpson
Loved Il Duce and the Fuehrer
They sent not horses to Mussolini
But themselves on a dreamy fascist honeymoon
Sieg, Sieg, Sieg Heiling from Milanese and Venetian Squares
And clasping hands with dear, dear Herr
Hitler in the Third Reich
That Fuehrersy, Wuehresy he was such a pal
Of King Eddie the VIII and his American vamp

•••

When war came ... ‘cause surely war will come
Franceschini got a number and bunk bed
In barbwired Petawawa —
Still building warships and landing strips for the Empire
While Big Jim’s cement plant and horses
Were sold for thirty pieces of silver
And Big Jim left to die
The Duke and Mrs. Simpson were punished too —
Banished to the Bahamas as Governor and Governess!
And that Canadian army horse named “Mussolini” —
Ground into dog food — he never won anything, anyway

Mackenzie King released Big Jim to die
But King should have known better
The children of the Majella
They don’t die easily; they wrestle death to the ground
Big Jim lived to build roads and his horses
Champions once again —
From Mackenzie King and prime ministers big and small since
None big enough to speak the truth of Justice Hyndman’s pen
Big Jim: “James Franceschini is forever an innocent man”
A modern day Job
Wronged on both sides of the Atlantic and three seas in between
Furious bombs rained on his Pescarian property
In the shadow of the Abruzzo mountains
But the spirit of the Majella is strong
And though wronged
Big Jim rose with the morning sun

DARLENE MADOTT

Introduction to John Madott’s
Horses — Drawing — 3 Versions

My father John Madott passed away on July 28, 2011, in his 94th year. From his hospital bed at York Central Hospital, aware of this Call for Submissions, and in particular Jim Zucchero’s specific invitation that he submit. Jim wrote me an e-mail, on the occasion of my father’s last art show (from the hospital on Italian Cultural Day), as a result of which invitation, he began planning his last work. The original is of two horses, pen and ink. Lorenzo Migliore has added the barbed wire, an artistic idea which we discussed and he interpreted.

The concept is that Italians were the “work horses” of the nation, building the Canada we know today. So, while my father did not put a face on the Italians behind the barbed wire, he rendered the horses. I specifically discussed this concept and submission with my father, when his hands failed him, the week prior to his death, as he was lucid to the very moment of his death. He signalled his affirmation to it, with his eyes, and indicated: “Good idea.” I specifically asked and received his permission to this editorial change of the original.

My father served for five years of the war in the Sault St. Marie and Sudbury Regiment. He spoke of having, on one occasion out west, guarded the way as Japanese were interned, of one Japanese soldier returning home on furlough to find that his parents’ farm had been confiscated, on the indignities Italians suffered during the war, notwithstanding that their sons fought and died for freedom and democracy.

• First published in Accenti Magazine Winter 2012.

Madott Drawing 1

Madott Drawing 2

Madott Drawing 3

MÉLANIE GRONDIN

Introduction to Guido Nincheri’s Letters

Of all the humiliating moments Italian Canadian artist Guido Nincheri may have gone through in his life, this was surely the most humiliating one of all, because he never, ever told his family. His children knew he had been beaten up by his dad for not wanting to join the family’s textile business; beaten until the stick broke, until the teenager developed a hunchback. They knew he’d lived under bridges and on park benches at the beginning of his studies at the Florence Academy of Arts. But this, they didn’t know. And nobody would have ever found out if Italo Tiezzi, the son of Gino Tiezzi, also an Italian Canadian on his way to Petawawa, hadn’t told the artist’s grandson years later.

Sitting on the train to Petawawa in early August 1940, accompanied by burly RCMP officers, this short, frail, fifty-five-year-old man from Prato carried a sign that identified him as a traitor to the Canadian nation. In full display, the sign attracted the ire and the spit of all the loyal Canadians on that train that day.

But, until recently, Nincheri had also been a loyal and sought after Canadian. A citizen for the last seventeen years, he had been dubbed the “Michelangelo of Montreal” and his studio abounded with commissions, even during the Great Depression. His work — stained-glass windows, sculptures, decorations and frescoes painted in true ItalianRenaissance fashion — adorned some of the most important churches in Montreal, as well as the rest of Canada and New England.

His first important mandate had been the decoration of StViateur d’Outremont, a mandate that firmly established his reputation. This was followed by SaintLéon de Westmount, then managed by Father Oscar Gauthier. But the crown jewel of his work, his gift to the Italian community of Montreal, was one of the churches “che sono legate alla storia della comunità italiana in America e che servono sotto un certo aspetto a darci un quadro sulla formazione dei nuclei degli emigrati italiani in America agli inizi del secolo.”[1] This was the Madonna della Difesa, or NotreDame de la Défense, located in Mile-End.

Hired in 1918, four years after his arrival in Montreal, Nincheri was not only the architect but also the decorator of the new Italian church, a church that was both his glory — in 1933, Pope Pius IX appointed him Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester for his work on Madonna della Difesa and his contribution to religious art in Canada — and his undoing. When the decoration of the church began in 1927, Nincheri wanted to honour the Holy Virgin, the namesake of the church, and his original sketches show the frescoes he had intended to paint. With the signing of the Lateran Treaty in 1929, however, the church elders had other plans. To celebrate the historic Treaty, they had decided to commission a fresco depicting the important players of the treaty: Pope Pius XI, Pietro Gasparri, Benito Mussolini and Italo Balbo, to name a few.

But Nincheri adamantly refused, stating that such a fresco had no place in a church. It should, he said, be in an embassy or some other administrative building, but never a church. One evening, the elders went to Nincheri’s house and threatened to rip up the contract they had signed for the church decoration if he persisted in refusing to paint the fresco commemorating the Lateran Treaty. Nincheri balked and a screaming match ensued until Father Armadori convinced the artist to do as the elders asked.

Reluctantly, Nincheri drew a sketch of the fresco, showing a serious and stern Mussolini, which the elders approved, but when painting the actual fresco in the church’s cupola, Nincheri, who couldn’t resist getting the last word, painted him with a perplexed expression, as though the man himself was wondering what he was doing there. This, however, did nothing to convince the authorities that Nincheri wasn’t a fascist. The artist was on top of scaffolding, working on a fresco in SainteAmélie de BaieComeau, when the RCMP showed up and arrested him. When they branded him as a traitor.

His internment in Petawawa was relatively short. He stayed three months only and was liberated on October 21, 1940. Though one might expect the letters between Nincheri and his son Gabriel, or even the post-liberation letters, to be full of suffering and misery, they are not — because all correspondence was read, no doubt, or because Nincheri didn’t want to worry his family. Rather, the letters are serious when discussing business and relatively light when discussing personal matters.

In his first letter, Gabriel even tells his father to consider “his stay there as a holiday” (August 7, 1940; my translation). Certain details come up like Nincheri’s painful hernia (letter from Gabriel to Guido, October 21, 1940, or his loss of appetite (letter from Guido to Gabriel, September 23, 1940), but on the whole Nincheri seems to focus on his business which, truth be told, had gone down since the artist’s internment.

Furthermore, his accounts at the Banque Canadienne Nationale had restrictions imposed by the Custodian of Enemy Property. A perfectionist and a man completely devoted to his art, Nincheri lived for his studio and his work, and no internment would stand in his way. Gabriel even managed to have sketches handed over to Nincheri for him to colour while in Petawawa (letter from Lieut. Adjutant, A.E. Andrews to Gabriel, October 19, 1940).

Unlike other lessfortunate prisoners, such as his bunkmate, Montreal mayor Camillien Houde, who was interned for four years without any privileges, Nincheri was able to conduct his business up to a certain extent and even draw. (A sketch he drew of Camillien Houde at the camp became the latter’s campaign poster when Houde ran for mayor again in 1944.) Gabriel reported back to Nincheri on the different projects the studio was carrying out and Nincheri gave him instructions in the weekly letters he was allowed to send.

Other letters between Gabriel and a client, Reverend Laliberté of Église Saint-Mathieu in Central Falls, R.I., whom Nincheri was supposed to work for in August, show the amount of support the artist received from those who knew him best. Although Nincheri’s other son, George, remembers how the family was called names by neighbours and Father Vangelisti, parish priest at Madonna della Difesa at the time, recounts how the Mussolini fresco was completely covered “con grandi e lunghe strisce di carta.”[2]

Nincheri himself had a lot of support. Gabriel’s letter to Reverend Laliberté, dated August 9, 1940, a few days after Nincheri’s arrest, mentions how Father Gauthier of SaintViateur d’Outremont and Secretary of State Pierre-François Casgrain were taking care of getting Nincheri out of Petawawa.

On September 17, 1940, Nincheri’s wife Giulia, his son Gabriel, their lawyer Jean L. Tarte and several witnesses — such as his former patron Marius Dufresne, the latter’s brother Candide Dufresne, and fellow artist Nicholas Petrucci — presented themselves at the Court of Enquiry presided by Honourable Judge H.A. Fortier to plead in Nincheri’s favour. Among the documents shown in court were the original sketches of the offending fresco that did not contain Mussolini. Over a month later, Nincheri was released.

Even then, it would seem that Nincheri didn’t give in to the horror of what had happened to him. Indeed, three days after his liberation, Nincheri wrote to Lt. Col. H.E. Pense, Camp Commandant of Petawawa, to thank him for his care and kindness and to promise him a painting. In a similar letter to Reverend Harrington (the priest in charge of the prisoners’ souls), Nincheri mentions, almost in passing, a few days of feeling depressed before his work was able to make him forget the camp “and the moral sufferances of the interned” (October 28, 1940). These events, however, had a greater impact on Nincheri’s life than the letters may indicate. The family was strictly forbidden from ever talking about it. Petawawa was to be forgotten.

Please note: We wish to acknowledge the Nincheri family for kindly allowing us to reprint the following letters.

Guido Nincheri’s Letters To and From Petawawa

Letters To and From Gabriel Nincheri, Guido’s Son

From Guido Nincheri’s Diary

Entry 1 — Nov 1 1947

Entry 2 — Nov 2 1947

Entry 3 — Nov 7 1947 (part 1)

Entry 3 — Nov 7 1947 (part 2)

Endnotes

1. Rioccomini, Franco. Un artista pratese in Canada, Guido Nincheri (1885-1973). I segni di Prato, No. 5. Prato: Studio Bibliografico Pratese, 1998 (?), p. x.

2. Vangelisti, P. Guglielmo. Gli Italiani in Canada. Montreal: Chiesa Italiana de N.S. della Difesa, 1955, p. 200.

Bibliography

Correspondence. Studio Nincheri archives.

“Italian Canadians as Enemy Aliens: Memories of WWII. Interview with Roger Boccini Nincheri. July 21, 2011/ Roxboro, Québec.” Interview conducted by Joyce Pillarella [DVD]

“Italian Canadians as Enemy Aliens: Memories of WWII. Interview with George Nincheri. July 7, 2011/St. Laurent, Québec.” Interview conducted by Joyce Pillarella [DVD]

Fruchi, Dino. Hommage à Nincheri, à l’occasion du XXième anniversaire de sa mort. 1 mars 1993. Centre culturel italien du Québec: Montréal, 1993, 20 pp.

Guido Nincheri: un artiste florentin en Amérique. Atelier d’histoire d’Hochelaga-Maisonneuve: Montréal, 2001. 56 pp.

Rioccomini, Franco. Un artista pratese in Canada, Guido Nincheri (1885-1973). I segni di Prato, No. 5. Prato: Studio Bibliografico Pratese, 1998 (?).

Vangelisti, P. Guglielmo. Gli Italiani in Canada. Montreal: Chiesa Italiana de N.S. della Difesa, 1955, 263 pp.

PAULA MASCIOLI & GIULIA DE GASPERI

Hello to Our Friends if There Are Any Left

July 22, 1940

Leo wondered how much longer he had to wait. He was nervous, of course, but not worried. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He felt mesmerized, puzzled, confused. He couldn’t believe his life had changed so much in such a short period of time. Little consolation knowing he wasn’t the only one. He thought about the other prisoners in the camp, walking about, trying to find answers they did not have.

He put his big hands on his knees. Every knuckle, every finger shaped by long years of hard work. Looking down at his hands he slowly shook his head, in disbelief. When he lifted it again, his eyes met the end of the corridor. He got up and walked to the window. Standing there, hands in his pockets, he looked outside, at the sea of buildings of all sizes and shapes spreading in front of him. He thought about all the edifices he himself had constructed during his lifetime. Do people know? Will they know? Will he be forgotten? If this were his end, would people remember him? What was his legacy to this country? He had chosen this country. He had made it his home ... memories began to fill Leo’s mind ...

I was born in a small town, Cocullo, east of Rome, in Italy. I soon learned that Cocullo was too small for me and, when I was 10, I found work on a freighter sailing from Rome to Glasgow. That was an eye opener for me. The world out there was so big, so promising, so inviting. I knew I could do better, I felt it. So I left Italy again when I was 18 years old. I had only 30 dollars in my pocket, but my soul and my spirit were full of positive thoughts and attitude. I landed in Boston, but soon made my way up to Canada. I had heard workers were needed there. I first worked in Sydney and then in Glace Bay. Coal mining was a hard, hard job. I would contract men to work in the pits. Their lives were not easy, but I feel I gave them a chance. Then Marconi came. He must have heard about how hard working we were, me and my men, because he hired us in 1898 to work on his project in Newfoundland building his wireless tower. That was a very proud moment in my life.

I went back to Italy because my heart was telling me to do so. I married my childhood sweetheart and I returned to Canada in 1906. I moved around for a bit, trying different things, some more successful than others. I worked at Hollinger Mine in Porcupine. The journey there was long, I will never forget that. Oh, the cold ... the railroad at that time went only as far as Matheson. I walked the rest of the way ... unforgettable. But I was still a young, hopeful man. Nothing scared me then. In Porcupine I sponsored and hired 400 men from Italy to come and work there. I felt I was giving them the chance of a lifetime. Once in Canada, the land of opportunities, they could get anywhere, do anything. They could even try to reach the moon!

I was very aware of the needs of the people I worked and lived with, so I soon opened a General Store and Bakery, I created my own construction company called Mascioli Construction and built various venues to entertain people. I have a good sense of business and in a short period of time I had opened several movie theatres around the area and built hotels. I am so proud of the Empire Hotels, little jewels of the North, especially the one in North Bay. And Timmins? I was a pioneer of that small town. I feel I was a pioneer of the North ... it was hard work, but if I had to go back, I would do the same over and over again, making the same decisions, going to the same places ...

•••

Leo heard a door open. He turned around and saw a man in uniform looking at him.

“Leo Mascioli,” he said, “you are next.”

Leo said a brief mental prayer, a way to give himself strength and confidence. He repeated to himself he hadn’t done anything wrong and walked towards the man in uniform and the opened door.

Judge: Do you belong to the Fascio?
Leo: No. I do a great bit to help Italians.
Leo’s mind wandered ...

Let me tell you, Judge, what I did to help the Italians ... I am sure you are not interested in the good deeds I have done, but only in the bad, bad stuff I am not even part of.

Let me tell you of the many donations I make to the Canadian Legion and of the 25 yearly subscriptions I signed for to sponsor their publication and to have the magazine sent to men of Timmins serving in England. Do you care to know that the movie theatres I built and now run are always rented free of charge to many local organizations for their meetings and activities? Maybe you would like to know about the rooms I have furnished with my own money at the Timmins and South Porcupine Hospitals. Would you care to know, dear Judge, about the donations I regularly make to the hospitals? And the materials I give them for free? Or the trucks I loan them free of charge? Do you know about the many hospital bills I pay for people who cannot afford them? I help the young people of Timmins, judge, what have you ever done for them? And last year, when the Local Daily newspaper burned down, who helped them, offering a place for operations? I help the local churches, the Salvation Army ... I feel I need to give back generously to the community which has given me a chance of a better life ... but, what would you care?

•••

He wanted to stand up and yell all of that at the judge and at the man in uniform, but he didn’t. Leo was a modest and humble man. And they would not have cared anyway ...

Judge: Signor Mascioli, are you listening? I have asked you a question ...
Leo: No, I told them we needed none [Fasci] in Timmins ...

Oh, I remember well my brother Tony and I being approached by the Italian consul about organizing a Fascio in Timmins. I wasn’t interested. I never joined. Never wanted a card, although I was given one, but I never signed it. Never took the oath. And if they had cared to look around, they would have noticed that my attitude was reflected in the town. The local branch of the Fascio organized in 1934 had a very short life, with only two meetings held. People were not interested and did not want to pay the dues. I know why they approached us, my brother Tony and I. We were very involved with the community, everyone knew us, we had a lot of friends, we helped who was in need. They thought they could use us and our connections to bring people into their Fascio, but they were wrong.

My brother Tony had better English than I did and was always helping people with their paper work, acting as intermediary between the Italian Consulate and the Italian Canadians that needed help with their visas or other legal matters. Tony liked to help, if he could. He looked after a few things for the Fascio at the very beginning, but he dropped everything soon after. We are going to get into trouble for that. I was made cavaliere and officer by the King of Italy. I know they are going to use that against me. I am sure the judge doesn’t care to know that it was because of the many contributions I made to so many Italians in Northern Ontario ...

•••

Judge: You knew Italy was at war with Ethiopia and that Canada and England were opposed to it. Who would you choose between the King of England and the King of Italy?
Leo: This country.

I went to Italy, Judge. I saw. Only two years ago. I went there with my brother Tony and Norman and Guy. I didn’t like what I saw: poverty, unemployment, no freedom of speech or action. I am not happy with Mussolini’s taken actions. I am glad I am in Canada. Definitely, this country, Judge.

Judge: You’re charged that you belong to disloyal organizations.
Leo: No, I am loyal to Canada. This is my home. I’ve everything here.
Judge: Who do you hope wins the war? You’d be a big man if Italy wins.
Leo: I can’t be any bigger.
Judge: Who do you prefer?
Leo: King George.

When the interrogation was over, Leo was escorted back to the camp. The prisoners were treated fairly, but the boredom was in sufferable, Leo thought. The man had always been busy and idle ness was not a word belonging to his dictionary. Thanks to the care packages Leo and his brother Tony received regularly, they could prepare a few good Italian dishes that became very popular not only among the prisoners, but also among the guards who often wanted to eat with the Italians rather than eat the camp food. However, food was small consolation. Leo was very worried about his family and his businesses.

•••

I have built all I have with hard work so that my children and grandchildren after me can have a better life and now everything can be taken away from me. Just like that. This is so unfair. I am a good man. I am sure all my friends and neighbours are going to the RCMP every day to testify of my honesty, fairness and kindness ...

Leo was 64. He should have been thinking about retirement and enjoying the last few years of his life. Instead he was worried; there was no certainty about his future now. He knew his son was trying very hard to take care of everything. He could only imagine the pressure and the strain his boy was undergoing. And he was only 27 years old! He was running the businesses and trying to get both him and Tony out of the camp. The Canadian government was trying to take all their businesses away from them. How could they? How could they possibly do that to him and to his family? He started all those businesses by himself, one after the other, con tanto olio di gomito. They represented a lifetime, his lifetime, of vision and hard work.

Even if they did leave the internment camp, what would happen to them? He decided to stop thinking about this for a while and walked to the barrack where the kitchen was. Although small consolation, cooking made him relax.

A few days later one of the guards approached him. The two had become friends thanks to the many tasty dishes Leo had prepared for him. The guard handed him a scrap of paper. It was an article written by the former mayor of Timmins, published in the local newspaper and sent to the Minister of Justice. Leo couldn’t believe his eyes. The mayor was accusing him of being a communist and the owner of Timmins’ newspaper. But he was not the owner of the newspaper and he was not a communist either. Leo’s heart was broken. He couldn’t believe the words and sentences in front of him. This article was an act of spite for having helped a friend in need and for not having supported the ex mayor’s attempt at reelection. This wasn’t fair. Leo had no means to defend himself. He shouldn’t even have read the article, but the guard thought he should know. Leo felt defeated. This was a hard blow. His frustration and anger grew, with the sense of utter powerlessness.

Months went by and so did the routine at the internment camp in Petawawa. Leo’s thoughts often went to Timmins and to his family:

February 16th, 1941

Dear Son,

... Eight months are hard and long and to wait a month or a year, you know what this means to find ourselves in this situation. And knowing not to have done anything bad to this country like colonial activities less severe than those already freed from other places. I’m not sorry but God bless them, so what the heck are they accusing us of? All the good deeds done by us — have they been completely forgotten? ... Here we are all fine except the terrible monotony that gets to your nerves and sometimes it is insufferable.

With a bit of time, we just forget about it. Hello to our friends if there are any left ...

The letters he sent home were strictly censored and so were the ones he received. He would endlessly wonder about what was really happening. Then on February 18, 1941, after 8 months of internment and thanks to the efforts and hard work of his son, both Leo and his brother Tony were finally released. But Leo’s heart remained broken, as was his spirit. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to Timmins. He felt betrayed by the many people he had helped in the past. He thought they were his friends but, in time of need, so many turned their back on him, denying their friendship. Few spoke up for him or said a good word. People crossed the streets to avoid meeting Leo and his family members.

I can’t stay here any longer. It hurts too much. I am going to Toronto. My heart is heavy now that I am making this decision, but staying here, seeing those faces of betrayal and having to face them every day, would hurt even more. Toronto is a big city.

Leo’s heart was heavy the day he left. And it stayed heavy for many more days after that.

• Hello to Our Friends if There Are Any Left was first published in Accenti Magazine's Winter 2012 issue.

GARY CLAIRMAN & MICHAEL MIROLLA

W.O.P. = P.O.W.
THE INTERNMENT OF ITALIAN-CANADIANS DURING WWII
(Excerpt From A Film Script Written in 1991 – 92)

1. INT. — BEDROOM — NIGHT (DREAM SEQUENCE — IN BLACK & WHITE).

The screen is completely dark. Suddenly, two doors fly open — one at either side of the screen — and extremely bright light streams in. The light is broken only by the looming, exaggerated shadows of FOUR LARGE MEN: two at each door. NUNZIO TREMONTE bolts upright in bed shielding his eyes from the glare.

MAN (with voice that echoes)
Nunzio Tremonte! Are you Nunzio Tremonte? Nunzio Tremonte! (repeats)

The MAN continues to ask this question as he slowly walks towards the bed. At first, he is wearing a Gestapo uniform. But, by the time he gets to the side of the bed, it has become an RCMP uniform. NUNZIO opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out. He looks with panic at the MAN standing at the side of the bed — then at the other THREE MEN, also in RCMP uniforms. They step forward as well and begin to repeat: “Nunzio Tremonte! Are you Nunzio Tremonte? Nunzio Tremonte!” Each shouts out the words so that, while one is finishing, another starts (like an absurd musical round). The wall lights up behind NUNZIO’s bed. On it are several faded portraits showing a couple’s wedding day in what looks like a medieval village church. The portraits start to slip and tilt sideways.

NUNZIO (screaming)
Mamma!

There is the sound of shattering glass as the portraits hit the ground.

CUT TO:

2. INT. — ARENA — DAY (DREAM SEQUENCE CONT’D)

A confused NUNZIO stands, clothes in hand, wearing only his underwear. He is in a long line of men all in their underwear and all holding their clothes in front of themselves as if for protection. On either side of the men is a line of armed soldiers, keeping an angry crowd at bay. The space is gloomy and grey, filled with dust and wisps of fog. As the men move slowly forward, jeers and insults can be heard coming from the crowd: Go Home, Jackals; Wop Traitors; Fascist Pigs; Go Back to Italy, You Scumbag Peasants. As NUNZIO approaches the front of the line, he sees a LITTLE BOY dressed in a sailor’s suit sitting at a huge desk. The MAN ahead of NUNZIO in the line stops at the desk.

LITTLE BOY (mixture of arrogance and petulance)
And what’s your name?

MAN (timidly)
Capobianco, Vittorio.

The LITTLE BOY stares up for a moment.

LITTLE BOY (gleefully)
Capo-Bianco, your mother stank-o;
you’re a fascist-commie-pinko:
Petawawa’s the only place-o
for such a dirty, ignorant woppo!

The MAN puts his hands together as if to plead for mercy. But he suddenly vanishes.

LITTLE BOY (Cont’d) (peevishly)
Who is next? Come on, come on. We haven’t got all war, you know.

A trembling NUNZIO steps forward.

LITTLE BOY (Cont’d)
Name?

NUNZIO
Tremonte, Nunzio.

LITTLE BOY (excited)
Mr. Tremonte!

LITTLE BOY climbs off his chair and comes around the desk. He takes NUNZIO by the hand.

LITTLE BOY (Cont’d)
There’s been a terrible mistake, Mr. Tremonte. A terrible mistake.

LITTLE BOY starts to lead NUNZIO away — towards a door flooded with daylight.

LITTLE BOY (Cont’d)
You don’t belong with these ... slimy subversives ... these fifth columnists ... these enemy aliens. You’re not really Italian.

NUNZIO is about to say something but changes his mind. The LITTLE BOY releases NUNZIO’s hand.

LITTLE BOY (Cont’d)
We’re so sorry, so very sorry. You’re free to go. Bye, bye. (blows him kiss) Arrivederci.

NUNZIO looks back. The LITTLE BOY waves as he recedes into the mist. NUNZIO turns and steps through the door.

3. EXT. — PARK — DAY (DREAM SEQUENCE CONT’D — SWITCH TO COLOR)

NUNZIO emerges under warm, sunny skies into a beautifully-landscaped park. He’s dressed in a brand-new white linen suit with a red carnation in its lapel. As he strolls leisurely through the grounds, he sees a beautiful WOM AN in a long gown standing in a white, ivy-covered gazebo. She holds out her arms to him. Smiling, NUNZIO begins to run towards her. But he’s suddenly brought to an abrupt halt. The gazebo is a grey guard tower, the paint flaking off; the woman is a faceless soldier, rifle trained on NUNZIO.

(END OF DREAM SEQUENCE)

4. INT. — BARRACKS — PRE-DAWN

A startled NUNZIO awakes. He stares up at the bunk above him then slowly swings his feet to the floor and sits up. Searchlights flash across the windows, briefly lighting the interior. Pull back to reveal dozens of other men sleeping in similar bunk beds. Sounds of snoring, creaking bedsprings, mumblings, swearing, arguing, the calling out of women’s names. We see dozens of photographs tacked on the walls beside each prisoner’s bunk — like little shrines. Some actually have religious pictures; others pin-ups of movie stars or ad posters. But most are like family albums, complete with letters and locks of hair. Behind NUNZIO are the two portraits from his dream. He passes his hand over them, as if to re-assure himself they haven’t been smashed. In the centre of the barracks are a wooden table and benches. Some have Italian cards strewn across them; others have books, newspapers (with sections blacked out), chess and checker boards.

FADE TO BLACK

5. BLANK SCREEN.

NARRATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, the Right Honourable William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada. Monday, June 10, 1940.

MACKENZIE KING (VOICE-OVER)
Fellow Canadians, the news reached Ottawa a few minutes after one o’clock today that Signor Mussolini, in a speech delivered at Rome, had announced that Italy was entering the war on the side of Germany ... The Minister of Justice has authorized the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to take steps to intern all residents of Italian origin whose activities have given ground for the belief or reasonable suspicion that they might in time of war endanger the safety of the state or engage in activities prejudicial to the prosecution of the war.

The following passage appears on the screen:

Under the jurisdiction of the Defence of Canada Regulations, these orders led to the arrest of 6,000 Canadians of Italian origin. In Montreal alone, in what was dubbed “the largest, most thorough and smoothest roundup of enemy aliens and suspects in the history” of the city, over 2,200 were nabbed in one day. In the weeks that followed, another 17,000 were photographed, fingerprinted and ordered to report monthly to the RCMP for the duration of the war. Of the 6000 arrested, 5300 were released. The rest were held incommunicado and then shipped to one of four internment camps. The largest was Camp Petawawa, located in the bushland of Ontario some 160 km north of Ottawa.

The text fades.

NARRATOR
Joe D’Amico, labourer, Sudbury.

JOE D’AMICO appears in front of the camera, dressed in prison garb and holding a cap tightly in his hands. Everything around him is completely black. He looks around as if he’s lost.

D’AMICO
They told me it wouldn’t be very long. That I would soon be seeing my family again. But now I’m so far from anywhere. Where oh where am I going? Where are they taking me? What have I done? I’m a Canadian. My wife and children are Canadian. My brother — he’s in the Canadian army. He’s gone to fight for Canada. Somebody tell me, please, what it is that I’ve done?

FADE TO BLACK

6. EXT. — CAMP GROUNDS — PRE-DAWN

There are remnants of dirty snow on the ground and mud puddles everywhere. A subtitle appears briefly on the screen: “SPRING, 1941.” We see two rows of identical barracks with a dirt, track-rutted road running between them. A homemade sign at the corner of the street reads: “Rue Sainte-Catherine”. The buildings are grey and drab, about a dozen in all — nothing more than glorified sheds with tin chimneys from which woodstove smoke can be seen emerging. To one side of the barracks, two other buildings: the mess hall with its central kitchen and two adjoining eating barracks; and the hospital with a large red cross above its entrance. There is also a recreation hut with a sagging volleyball net strung outside it, a workshop barrack, a school barrack, a chapel barrack and a prison house (with a forlorn face pressed against the cell door bars). A double barbed-wire fence, about eight feet in height, surrounds the camp. There are guard towers spread evenly along the perimeter with electric searchlights panning the compound. Beyond the fences there is only dense bush and the glimmer of a small lake with the sun just beginning to rise over it. Ice can be seen along the shoreline and many trees still have mounds of snow at their base.

7. EXT. — NEAR BARBED-WIRE FENCE — DAWN

NUNZIO, standing just on one side of a marked line about 20 feet from the perimeter fence, lights a cigarette and inhales. The collar of his jacket is turned up and his shoulders hunched against the cold. He watches the sun rise over the lake. As he turns to look up at the guard tower, we see a bright orange target painted on the back of his prison garb. He and the GUARD exchange nods. NUNZIO turns once more towards the sun as it shimmers and reflects off the lake.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Ten years in this country — and I still can’t get over how late spring comes. Back in Campobasso, the almond blossoms are already on the trees. And the old ladies are stretching their arthritic limbs in the warm air. But it sure does try hard, this weak sun. A couple more months and we’ll all be cursing it.

A loud bell begins to clang with a slow, monotonous beat. Making sure to avoid the puddles and mounds of snow, NUNZIO walks past the prison house towards the barracks where the other INTERNEES are slowly gathering for roll call. He nods to a PRISONER being held in the prison house and continues on.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER Cont’d)
They brought the German back last night. Half-starved, halffrozen to death, halfdelirious from fear and hypothermia. Poor bastard was going in circles. Fifteen miles from camp and twenty miles from the road. I told him he was crazy. I told him he wouldn’t make it. Escape? Yeah, sure. Escape to where? But he insisted. Kept saying it wasn’t fair to be locked up like this in the springtime. I don’t know. Maybe he was right. Maybe even a few measly hours of freedom are enough to revive a man’s spirits — to remind him that he’s alive.

Another INTERNEE (TOTO STROMBI) approaches and gets into step with NUNZIO.

NUNZIO (shaking his head)
Forget it, Strombi. Not today. The M.O. says he doesn’t want to see your ugly face anywhere near the hospital — unless a tree falls on you.

STROMBI (holding his shoulder)
But Nunzio. The pain. I need something for this pain.

NUNZIO (staring beyond the fences)
Don’t we all. (pause, then looks at Strombi) Okay, Toto. I’ll see what I can do.

STROMBI
Your heart’s in the right place, Nunzio. There’s a jar of olives waiting for you.

STROMBI moves away. By now, the OTHER INTERNEES have lined up in a desultory fashion in front of the barracks. NUNZIO joins them. The SERGEANT-MAJOR and an armed GUARD march to the front of the INTERNEES. The GUARD calls the men to attention and the SERGEANT-MAJOR begins to call out their names from his list. The INTERNEES respond one by one.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
And so another day begins in our fair city. We eat; we work; we play; we sleep. Not so different than any place else. The same sun in the same sky; the same mud on the same ground. We have our doctors, our lawyers, our lunatics, our thieves, our hardworking simple souls. Like any true city. Some days are good; some days are best forgotten.

We see the faces of the INTERNEES as they stand in rows, shuffling, shivering, staring out beyond the fences.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER Cont’d)
Outside, you punch the clock — I guess that’s like roll call, eh? Then you put in your time behind a desk or a shovel. But the boss doesn’t usually carry a machinegun. And, at the end of the day, you’re free to go wherever you please. Hell, you can even go home!

SERGEA NT-M AJOR
Tremonte, Nunzio.

NUNZIO
Present.

The SERGEANT-M AJOR continues to call out names.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Yeah, I’m still here. Where else would I be? (lights a cigarette) Some say it’s not so bad. Plenty of food. Lots to do really. And no one can complain about how they treat us. The barbed wire and armed guards? Ah, just shut your eyes and they’re gone. A religious retreat! A poor man’s spa! A summer camp in the Italian Alps! Didn’t that Red Cross fellow say these were “first class” accommodations!? “Beautifully located in the forest with ideal climatic conditions!” were his exact words, I think. It’s a goddamn holiday — all expenses paid.

The SERGEANT-MAJOR finishes roll call. He motions to NUNZIO to come over to him. He speaks to NUNZIO who nods — and then turns to face his fellow INTERNEES.

NUNZIO
Same work details as yesterday — only this time the Sergeant-Major says anyone caught leaving their shovels behind won’t get paid.

Moans and groans come up from the crowd.

JOE D’AMICO (to the others)
Idiots! Just because they treat us like babies doesn’t mean you have to act that way. Didn’t your father ever tell you that hard work never killed anyone?

GIUSEPPE PAVIA
Of course he did, Joe — just before the steam shovel flattened him like an Easter waffle.

Everyone laughs.

STROMBI
Listen, D’Amico. You wanna bust your balls for 20 cents a day — go right ahead.

D’AMICO
Look who’s talking about balls. If you hadn’t been brought here, you’d still be sucking on your mama’s hindtit.

Everyone laughs. The SERGEANT-MAJOR leans over and whispers something else to NUNZIO.

NUNZIO
The Sergeant-Major would also like to remind everyone that being caught with alcohol will be rewarded with a stay in the prisonhouse.

MICHELE SANTONI
Does that include brandied cherries?

NUNZIO (laughs)
Especially brandied cherries.

SANTONI
Ah, just because you don’t drink, Tremonte.

NUNZIO
Listen, I don’t care what you do. But, if our packages start getting slowed down for a bunch of vodka-soaked prunes —

PAVIA (makes a fart noise)
The shit’s really gonna fly.

Everyone laughs. NUNZIO looks at the SERGEANT-MAJOR who nods and then turns and marches away, followed by the GUARD. The INTERNEES break up into small groups and start to walk towards the mess hall. One group consists of SANTONI, PAVIA and two other INTERNEES: GINO RICCI, and LUIGI LIBERATI.

SANTONI (holding his stomach)
I’m starving. Tell me, Pep, why am I always so hungry in the morning?

PAVIA (making jerking motions with his hand)
Because you work so hard at night.

The OTHERS laugh.

LIBERATI
You’d better do it while you still can. By the time they let us out, we’ll all be impotent.

RICCI
Luigi. What the hell are you talking about?

LIBERATI (looks about furtively)
Don’t you know? They’re putting it in the food.

PAVIA
Putting what in the food?

LIBERATI (leans over and whispers)
Bromide.

SANTONI
Bromide? You imbecile. (reaches into his pants) I’ll show you bromide!

Other INTERNEES laugh as they enter the mess hall.

8. INT. — MESS HALL — MORNING

The mess hall is a hive of activity. Some INTERNEES line up in the central kitchen area to get their breakfasts — coffee, juice, oatmeal, bread, bacon and eggs. Others are already seated on benches at the long, wooden tables in one of two refectories. Around the tables, many of the INTERNEES take preserves and other delectables from small cloth sacks. Some share, others guard their stores like treasure. NUNZIO is called over to join a group that includes: STROMBI, D’AMICO, RICCI, DR. ADRIANO BUONASSESSE, UMBERTO PENNACCHIO, as well as SANTONI, PAVIA and LIBERATI. Amid the clanking and scraping of forks on plates, the INTERNEES carry on an endless chatter.

RICCI (with a sigh)
I had another dream about my wife last night.

SANTONI
Me too! Me too!

Everyone laughs except RICCI and D’AMICO.

RICCI
Very funny. My heart is breaking and all you can do is make stupid jokes.

D’AMICO (to Nunzio)
What’s the joke? So Santoni had a dream about his wife, too.

Everyone laughs again — PAVIA almost chokes on his coffee.

NUNZIO
Don’t worry about it, D’Amico. It wasn’t that funny.

D’AMICO
I know it’s not funny. There’s nothing funny about any of this. My poor wife —

SANTONI
Oh oh. Here we go again. The Stations of The Cross according to Saint Joe.

D’AMICO
More jokes. But while I’m in here who’s putting food on my table? Who’s putting clothes on my kids?

ALL TOGETHER
Who’s paying the rent? Who’s looking after their future?

D’AMICO (slams the table)
Yeah, that’s right! And all I can do is stew about it.

PAVIA (standing up)
Don’t you worry, Joe. I’m getting out of here soon. And, if you want, I’ll look after that missus of yours — give her everything she needs.

D’AMICO (leaps up)
Why, you —

PAVIA runs out of mess hall. D’AMICO makes sure that he leaves and then sits back down. The others laugh.

DR. BUONASSESSE (without emotion)
Laugh, laugh. Eat, eat. Fools! You can’t escape the reality. Look outside. The snow’s melting; the birds are starting to sing. But we’re still prisoners and each moment here is one less moment of freedom. Nothing — no woman, no family, no amount of money — can ever give that back. Time is all we’ve got, my friends — and they’re stealing it from us.

PENNACCHIO
Speak for yourself, Buonassesse. Some of us have a purpose. A job to do. We’re not wasting our time — even in here. And when the Italian navy sails up the Saint Lawrence, flying the proud colours of a Rome re-born —

PENNACCHIO’s voice is drowned out by the others as they try to shout him down. NUNZIO ignores them all and calmly finishes his breakfast. As he comments on each character in turn, we see them becoming more and more animated — but don’t hear what they’re saying.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Umberto Pennacchio. Maybe the only one of us who really deserves to be here. Bring back the glory that was Rome! Long live Il Duce for making the trains run on time! That’s his rallying cry. If he had his way, every Italian in Canada would become a saboteur for the fatherland. Some saboteur he turned out to be. On the day they were rounding us up, he decided it would be a good time to hand out fascist leaflets. Right across the street from the RCMP! And he’s still boasting about it.

BUONASSESSE
Politics, politics. Another denial; another escape. You’re afraid to take off the mask and stand naked in the mirror. You’d rather lose yourself in the rows of marching boots — everyone in step —

BUONASSESSE’s voice fades.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
The good doctor, Adriano Buonassesse. M.D. and resident philosophizer. If you say “Blue”, he says “Impossible!” If you say “Impossible”, he says “Red”. I’d like to call him a skeptic — but he’d probably argue that, too. Yet, deep down, there’s something warm there. I’m sure of it. He’s just afraid to let us see.

RICCI
The two of you sound like dried-up old leaves — you crackle, you snap and turn to dust. There’s no sap left in you. No blood. You’ve forgotten the one elemental truth of life. Love and passion are all that count. All that’s worth living for. Listen to what Ungaretti has to say about it.

PENNACCHIO (stands up)
If you’re going to quote that traitor, I’m leaving.

PENNACCHIO storms out.

BUONASSESSE (clapping)
Now I know what to do to get rid of that humbug.

RICCI (looks around)
Does anybody want to hear the poem or not?

No one’s paying attention except NUNZIO.

NUNZIO
Sure, Ricci. Go ahead.

RICCI (recites)
All night long
thrown against
a buddy
slain
with his gnashing
teeth
bared to the full moon
with his bloated
hands
penetrating
my silence
I was writing
letters full of love

Never have I hugged
life
so hard

BUONASSESSE makes a braying noise as RICCI’s voice fades.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Gino Ricci, our newlywed poet and romantic extraordinaire. Every day they’re apart, his young wife grows more perfect in his memory. Not a night goes by that he doesn’t call out her name; not a day goes by that he doesn’t find some excuse to talk about their love. I hope for his sake it’ll be as perfect when they’re re-united.

D’AMICO
If I didn’t see the way you stuff your faces every day, I’d swear you guys ate nothing but words. A man was made to work hard and to make sure his family has enough food on the table. That’s where a man’s pride outta come from: satisfying labour; a healthy appetite; his wife and children with smiles on their faces. As for the rest ... leave it to the priests — they don’t have to work and they don’t have to raise families and pay the bills. All they have to worry about —

D’AMICO’s voice fades.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Good old Joe. Simple, levelheaded and solid — just like his name and the rocky outcropping he comes from. An idea might confuse him. But, put a shovel in his hand and D’Amico is worth a gaggle of Buonassesses and Pennacchios combined. Oh sure, we make fun of him and his worries; we tease him about the fact he’s just now learning to read; we get impatient when we have to explain the simplest joke to him. But really we’re all jealous. He hides nothing — and that’s what makes him so strong.

Most of the men have finished and are lingering over the last few sips of coffee. The kitchen staff is clearing away the dishes. Slowly the men get up and leave. NUNZIO gets up too, but instead of leaving he walks into the kitchen.

9. INT. — KITCHEN — MORNING

The kitchen is a large room with several wood-burning stoves lined up against one wall. In the middle of the room is a long counter and behind it is the ice-box, storage area and pantry. The CHEF is sitting on a stool at the edge of the counter eating his breakfast. Several of the other kitchen STAFFERS are scrubbing plates.

NUNZIO
So, you’re leaving us, are you?

CHEF (stops eating)
How do you know? They just told me last night!

NUNZIO (taps his nose) You know us dangerous fifth columnists — (looks around comically) Our agents are everywhere. (he laughs) I overheard the Colonel telling the M.O.

CHEF
They’re gonna let me cook something special tomorrow night — as a goodbye.

NUNZIO
We sure are going to miss you. It’s not every prison camp that has a five star, cordonbleu chef. Maybe you want to think about staying on — at least until they let me out.

They laugh.

CHEF (with a sigh)
To be honest, Nunzio, I’ve thought about it. I mean, what do I have to go back to? They took my restaurant and who the hell’s gonna hire me now? I’ll be lucky to land a job frying eggs in some greasy spoon.

NUNZIO
Shit. If you’re worried about finding work, what’s going to happen to the rest of us?

CHEF
We’ve been screwed. But good. I’m a fascist sure. And the Pope’s a Jew. (to Staffer)
Hey, Carlo, whatdya think? Would I look good in a black shirt?

The CHEF pats his large stomach. CARLO grins, revealing a toothless mouth.

CHEF (Cont’d)
What was I supposed to do, refuse to cater parties at the Italian consulate? All I ever wanted to do was create beautiful food. As long as the politicians had money in their pockets I didn’t listen to what spilled out of their yaps.

The CHEF pushes his plate away. NUNZIO gives him a cigarette and pats him on the back.

NUNZIO
Hey. You’ll be cooking your masterpieces again. We’ll all get back on our feet. Just remember why we came to this country in the first place.

CARLO (giggles)
Not because of the goddam weather, that’s for sure.

NUNZIO (grins, then to chef) Now it’s just going to be a little tougher, that’s all. But you ... you’re a genius. You’ll have a restaurant again some day. And, mark my word, the idiots who locked you up will be lining up to lick your pots clean.

CHEF
I hope you’re right, Nunzio.

NUNZIO
Goddam right I’m right. They can’t keep you down. When they come for you, you walk out of here with your head up.

CHEF
Thanks, Nunzio. I appreciate it. (slaps hand on the counter) And tomorrow night I’m gonna cook the greatest —

Just then, the CHEF sees STROMBI lurking around the pantry.

CHEF (cont’d) (winking at Nunzio)
Hey, Mr. Strombi, come over here.

STROMBI looks around as if the chef isn’t talking to him. Then, he points to himself as if surprised.

CHEF (cont’d)
Yeah you, Strombi. Is there another Strombi around here? God have mercy! (motions him over) Please. I’d like a few words with you.

STROMBI (heads for the door)
Listen, I gotta go, I’ve got to ...

NUNZIO
Gotta what? The dispensary doesn’t open until I get there.

CHEF
Come on over here, Strombi. I don’t bite.

STROMBI reluctantly approaches.

CHEF (cont’d)
Was breakfast to your liking, Mr. Strombi? The oatmeal have enough cinnamon for you? Currants?

STROMBI (watching him closely) Sure. Yeah. Of course.

The CHEF puts his hands on STROMBI’s shoulders.

CHEF
Good, good. Actually, you look like you’ve managed to gain a bit of weight, Toto. (with mock sympathy) And so sick all the time. Nunzio must take good care of you.

STROMBI
He does, he does. He gets me my pills no matter what.

CHEF
Pills for your poor stomach, eh?

As he says this, the CHEF smacks STROMBI in the mid-section and rubs his hand around. STROMBI jumps back — but it’s too late. His shirt becomes wet as egg starts to drip down his pants. NUNZIO and the CHEF start to laugh.

STROMBI (shaking the egg off himself) Hey. Why’d you do that for?

CHEF
Because I don’t like weasels in my hen house, Strombi. Now get out of here! (grabs carving knife) Or I’ll really give you a reason to go to the hospital.

STROMBI (backing out)
I’ve got friends here you know. I’m connected. (wags his finger at Chef) You’d better watch your —

STROMBI backs into a pot-rack, almost knocking it over. He turns and, leaving a trail of egg, hurries out. The CHEF laughs until tears come to his eyes and he has to lean on the counter.

CHEF
I’ve been waiting to do that for six months! The little twerp. He’d steal my turds if I left them in the pantry.

NUNZIO
Ah, he’s harmless enough. It’s how he copes. Has to think he’s pulling a fast one over on everybody. (pause) Well, I guess I’d better be going. (smiles) The little twerp will be waiting — along with the rest of the walking wounded and the forever dying.

CHEF
Tomorrow night, Nunzio. Don’t forget about tomorrow night. Something special. And bring your appetite for once.

NUNZIO (walking out)
I’ll have to check my social calendar. I may already have reserva tions elsewhere.

They both laugh. The CHEF waves him away.

10. EXT. - CAMP GROUNDS - MORNING.

NUNZIO is walking down “Rue Sainte-Catherine” towards the hospital. He stops to watch the trucks being loaded with INTERNEES. The men carry picks and shovels and other assorted tools. D’AMICO and several of the others wave as they roll by towards the front gates. As NUNZIO turns to continue walking, someone whistles quietly and whispers his name.

NUNZIO (looking around)
Okay, Mazza. Where you hiding this time?

A scrawny head peeks out cautiously from the side of the barrack closest to NUNZIO. DONATO MAZZA — unshaven, hair matted and soiled uniform practically falling off — beckons him over with his hand.

MAZZA (whispering)
Nunzio, please. I have to talk to you.

NUNZIO (walking over)
Yes, I know, I know. It’s a matter of life and death.

MAZZA
So the chef is next. I knew it. Poor bastard.

NUNZIO
Poor bastard? Mazza. He’s being released.

MAZZA (laughs while shaking his head)
Released? You believe that? I hear the shots at night, Nunzio. I hear them.

NUNZIO
You’ve been having nightmares again, haven’t you?

MAZZA (looks around wildly)
And I’m next. They’re coming for me next. They’re getting the firing squad ready. Oiling the rifles, passing out the bullets. Only one is a live round, you know. Only one. But that’s all it takes, eh? Pow! Right between the eyes!

NUNZIO
Mazza, calm down. No one’s being shot.

NUNZIO tries to take MAZZA by the arm — but MAZZA pulls away.

NUNZIO (Cont’d)
Okay, then. If people are being killed, where’s the bodies? I don’t see any bodies.

MAZZA
Do you think they’d be stupid enough to bring the bodies back here? Hah! (whispers) They bury them in the woods!

NUNZIO
Who does?

MAZZA
The work gangs — who else?

NUNZIO
They’re Italians like us, Mazza. Prisoners. They’re building roads and drainage ditches.

MAZZA (scoffing)
You believe that, too? Most of them are spies. You can’t trust any one. (turns to leave) The whores would sell you for a roll of soiled toilet paper!

NUNZIO
Wait, Mazza. Hold it a sec.

MAZZA stops. NUNZIO takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and gives it to him.

NUNZIO (Cont’d)
Listen, Mazza. Why don’t you come by and see the doctor? He’ll give you something to help you sleep.

MAZZA (laughs bitterly)
Sleep? That’s when they come for you. That’s when they drag you out and put you up against the wall — when you don’t have the strength to fight back. Pow! One bullet right between the eyes! Understand?

NUNZIO
Sure, Mazza. I understand. So you have to keep your strength up, right? That means food. You’re not eating enough. Promise me you’ll at least come to the chef’s farewell dinner.

MAZZA
You mean his Last Supper, don’t you? (edges behind the barracks) Take care, friend. There’s a bullet with your name on it, too. Don’t think you can escape unscathed. The firing squads can strike at any time.

MAZZA scurries off, leaving NUNZIO watching after him and shaking his head. He takes another pack of cigarettes out and lights one. We see MAZZA slinking from barracks to barracks.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Mazza the frightened little mouse. Outside, you could at least hide. Familiar corners; a spot in the basement where you were left in your own world; a family that felt sorry for you. Here, you’re naked. Exposed and helpless. (starts to walk again) War is no place for the already wounded.

11. EXT. — HOSPITAL — MORNING.

Outside the hospital, NUNZIO is greeted by a group of INTERNEES, including STROMBI, all pleading to be let in. NUNZIO waves them aside, takes a last drag of his cigarette before tossing it away — and unlocks the door.

12. INT. — HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM AND DISPENSARY AREA.

The waiting room and dispensary are one large room. There is a desk, some chairs and a large padlocked cupboard. To one side of the desk are two doors — one leading to the hospital proper; the other to a small examination room. NUNZIO walks in, followed by those who’d been waiting outside. The INTERNEES start to talk loudly.

NUNZIO (sitting at the desk and picking up a clipboard)
Okay, okay. Settle down. Everyone knows the drill.

The INTERNEES sit in the chairs in front of NUNZIO.

INTERNEE #1 (indicating Nunzio)
Look at the professor over there, will you. So calm and clean and rested. He doesn’t have to worry about being eaten alive by black flies now that the snow is melting. Or having —

STROMBI (very loudly)
Shut up, imbecile. Show some respect. Mr. Tremonte is a great man! He —

NUNZIO
For Christ’s sakes, Strombi. You shut up, for once.

STROMBI (sulking)
That’s a fine “Thank you” I get — and after all the nice things I’ve said about you.

INTERNEE #1
Poor Toto. Arrested for being a blackshirt — when you’re just a little brown noser.

STROMBI and INTERNEE #1 start to insult each other. The other INTERNEES try to catch NUNZIO’s attention either with mournful looks or by groaning and caressing their “wounds”.

NUNZIO (VOICE-OVER)
Sure, like any hospital, this one was set up for the sick. The truly sick. But it also serves as an escape. An escape from the endless boredom, from the lack of peace and quiet in the barracks, from a sick feeling in your guts that won’t go away. So they come for the pills — it makes them feel ... I don’t know ... protected, somehow. They come to be reassured, to be told they don’t have a brain tumour. Or a fatal inflammation of the heart. They come to spend a night or two between clean sheets and on a real pillow. Or to have the luxury of a private shower and bath — with hot water! But most, like Strombi here, are just looking for an excuse — any excuse — to avoid swinging a pick for a day or two. Who can blame them?

DR. BUONASSESSE comes out of the ward area shaking his head. One of the INTERNEES stands up and tries to approach him.

BUONASSESSE (waves him back)
Don’t come to me. You’ve got to see the M.O. — and he’s got a nice big bottle of castor oil with your name on it.

The disappointed INTERNEE sits back down.

BUONASSESSE (Cont’d) (to Nunzio)
I see you’ve got the usual gang of shirkers and complainers. What a bunch. (to the Group)
God forbid any of you should ever really get sick! Then you’d know what a rotten, miserable place this is. Go back to work! And pray to your lucky stars for the strength to survive this hell hole. (to Nunzio) Don’t let them bamboozle you, Tremonte. It could cost you your job.

BUONASSESSE gives them a dismissive wave and walks out.

INTERNEE #1
Doctor Big Shot. Nothing but a little shit! Hauled in like the rest of us fish.

INTERNEE #2
Give those northerners a little education and —

INTERNEE #3
– And they think they’re Germans!

The INTERNEES laugh.

NUNZIO
Okay, okay. Who’s first?

They all come rushing towards NUNZIO.

13. INT. — M.O.’S OFFICE AND EXAMINATION ROOM.

NUNZIO is standing near the door while the M.O., MAJOR MACLEISH, washes his hands.

MACLEISH
Are we done, Tremonte? I’m running low on castor oil and sugar pills.

NUNZIO
Just one more to go.

MACLEISH
Don’t tell me —

NUNZIO
I’m afraid so.

MACLEISH
Just once, I’d like to get through the morning without having to look up Mr. Di Bello’s rectum. (sighs) Tell him to sit. I’ll be with him as soon as I get up the nerve.

NUNZIO holds back a laugh as he turns and leaves, closing the door behind him.

14. INT. — WAITING AREA.

NUNZIO returns to his desk, without looking at FRANCESCO DI BELLO who is sitting gingerly on a rolled-up jacket. After a moment, DI BELLO gets up and waddles painfully towards the desk.

NUNZIO
Stay put, Di Bello. Stay put. He’ll see you as soon as he can.

DI BELLO (leaning on the desk)
But what did he say? Is he gonna operate? Are they gonna send me home? They have to send me home if they operate, don’t they? That’s how Lettieri got out, isn’t it?

NUNZIO
Di Bello, I have no idea. It’s up to the doctor to decide those things.

DI BELLO
Christ, Nunzio. I’ll tell you. I took gas in the Great War. Practically left for dead in Val D’Aosta. When I got back home, I cracked boulders till my hands bled just to grow a few string beans. I came to Canada and spent ten years breathing in coal dust and spitting up blood. But I’ve never suffered like this. These hemorrhoids, Nunzio, you’ve gotta see them. They’re like ... they’re like —

NUNZIO
Okay, Di Bello. I get the picture.

DI BELLO
No, no. You don’t understand. (starts undoing pants) Please, let me show you.

NUNZIO (standing up and backing away)
Hey. Hey! I’m no doctor. Showing me isn’t going to help.

DI BELLO
But you gotta see them. They’re like demons eating away at me ... itchy, fire-breathing demons!

DI BELLO has dropped his pants and is about to turn his buttocks towards NUNZIO. NUNZIO turns and rushes through the door leading into the ward, leaving DI BELLO calling out his name behind him.

15. INT. — HOSPITAL WARD.

NUNZIO enters. A dozen beds are lined up along the walls — but only three are occupied. The room is very neat and clean, except for some breakfast trays piled on a trolley. One INTERNEE is sleeping; the other TWO INTERNEES — MASSIMO DI STEFANO and VINCENZO CARDARELLI — are playing cards.

DI STEFANO
Nunzio, what’s the news? Italy won the war yet?

CARDARELLI
Yeah. I hear we’re gonna be liberated — by Il Duce himself!

NUNZIO
Il Duce is busy shitting his trousers. And you two look like you’re ready to go back to work.

Immediately, CARDARELLI and DI STEFANO begin to cough and wheeze.

DI STEFANO
Believe me, Nunzio. There’s nothing I wouldn’t like better. (coughs) If I only had the strength ...

NUNZIO
Yeah, yeah, di Stefano. Save it for the drama club. (looks around) Where’s Hoedemann?

CARDARELLI
It’s about time, if you ask me. All he did was cough and puke. Couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep with him in here.

NUNZIO
This is a hospital, Cardarelli.

DI STEFANO
But this guy was really sick. He coughed up blood last night. Then he fell out of his bed and lay on the floor until the nurse came for him. They rushed him off to the military hospital. He looked bad, Nunzio.

CARDARELLI (touches side of nose in sign of complicity)
He doesn’t fool me. Our West Indian friend knows what he’s doing. A little babbling in your sleep; a little lipbiting — and bingo! You’re on your way home.

NUNZIO
The guy’s got malaria — and syphilis. Is that the sort of thing you want to bring back to your wife?

CARDARELLI
I’d take the devil home to her if he could get me out of here.

16. EXT. — CAMPGROUND - MORNING.

It’s drizzling with dark clouds low in the sky. All the INTERNEES are lined up on either side of Rue Sainte-Catherine. A hearse appears and drives slowly down the street towards the main prison gates. Some of the INTERNEES bow their heads; some remove their caps; others make the sign of the cross. NUNZIO is standing between BUONASSESSE and PENNACCHIO.

BUONASSESSE
Take a good look. There’s one man who’s free. Hoedemann has truly been released.

PENNACCHIO
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Like the rest of his kind he was only good for one thing — and he got syphilis for his troubles.

NUNZIO
His kind? You mean sailors?

PENNACCHIO
Don’t play dumb with me, Tremonte. You know exactly what I mean — worthless niggers. At least when they were slaves they served a purpose.

BUONASSESSE
We’re all slaves. We’re all in chains.

NUNZIO (to Pennacchio)
So those are the good old days you’re always talking about. Every thing nice and simple — and everyone in his place. Nubian slaves; Jewish moneychangers; the Christians being fed to the lions.

PENNACCHIO
And Romans ruling the world! Face it, Tremonte. Your socalled democracy has failed. The chosen few will rule. The rest will submit or be crushed like lice.

BUONASSESSE
We’re all lice — vermin scavenging on God’s decaying body.

NUNZIO
Fine, Pennacchio. You judge men your way; I’ll judge them mine. Hoedemann was a good-natured soul with a twinkle in his eyes to the very end. I’d rather spend an eternity cleaning his sores than five minutes in your socalled new world.

PENNACCHIO
And five minutes is about all you’re going to get, Tremonte. Just enough time to dig your own shallow grave.

BUONASSESSE (steps between them) Gentlemen. Some dignity.

NUNZIO and PENNACCHIO turn away from each other. The hearse has just reached the front gate. A GUARD opens the gate but, before waving it through, he gets down on his hands and knees to look underneath the hearse. Suddenly, he grabs his gun and points at the hearse.

D’AMICO
Nunzio, what’s he doing?

NUNZIO shrugs.

PAVIA (shouting)
Don’t shoot! He’s already dead.

Everyone around him breaks into laughter.

LIBERATI
Christ! It’s that crazy German.

The INTERNEES clap and cheer as TWO GUARDS lead the GERMAN INTERNEE (face from prison house: Scene 6) back along the same route the hearse has just taken.

SANTONI
You should’ve climbed in with him, Fritz. They’d never have found you there!

PAVIA
Yeah, what’s so terrible about a cold dose of syphilis — if it gets you out?

BUONASSESSE
Listen to our great Italian war heroes. They’ve got it so good here they don’t even dream of escaping.

The GERMAN INTERNEE is led to the prison house just as the breakfast bell clangs. The INTERNEES begin to walk towards the mess hall. NUNZIO watches the hearse pull away from the camp and disappear down the road.

FADE TO BLACK 17.

BLANK SCREEN.

NARRATOR
The Honorable R.B. Hanson, Leader of the Opposition.

R.B. HANSON (VOICE-OVER)
I know there are a certain type of intelligentsia, we call them pinks on the street, who object to the Defense of Canada Regulations giving the government the right to internment without trial. I am not going to make an attack on the professors of our universities but I have often thought that if they had a little more work to do they would not give so much consideration to these abstract and academic questions.

NARRATORThe Honourable Gordon Conant, Attorney General of the Province of Ontario.

CONANT (VOICE-OVER)
To my mind, the application of the timehonoured principle of British justice, that a man is innocent until proven guilty, makes it impossible to curtail the activities of these slimy, subversive elements that are at work in not only this province but throughout the country.

The following passage appears on the screen:

Hardship was not restricted to the internees. The situation for their families was no better. The federal government froze their bank accounts. Stripped of their husbands’ income and without access to their savings, families had to survive on $12 per month, given to them by way of government assistance. Many were therefore forced to sell homes, businesses and other valuable assets to feed and clothe their families.

NARRATOR
Dr. Adriano Buonassesse, General Practitioner from Sault Ste. Marie.

BUONASSESSE appears on camera surrounded by darkness.

BUONASSESSE
I was about to close my office for the day when there was a knock on the door. Two RCMP officers came in and asked if my name was Buonassesse. When I answered that it certainly was, one of them asked me to open my files. I realized quickly why they were there and that there was no use in resisting. They went through my patient files and then the one in charge said to me: “Dr. Buonassesse, please come with us.” We were about to leave when the other officer suddenly stopped before a picture of Garibaldi I had on the wall. “Who’s that?” he asked. “Garibaldi,” I said. “A great Italian patriot and fighter for democracy.” Without saying another word, he took the print down and ripped it to shreds. Then he handcuffed me and shoved me outside.

FADE TO BLACK

JOSEPH RANALLO

Remembrance Day

On November 10, Mr. Nesbitt called another assembly. Miss Gallo gave each student a poppy both for the school assembly and for the Esling Park ceremony the next day. At the assembly, Mr. Nesbitt spoke of his own war experiences. He said with pride that, during WWII, he had been with the Canadian Regiment that had liberated Italy. At noon, when Freddy saw Mr. Nesbitt outside his office, he approached him.

“Do you remember a town called Vinchiaturo?”

“We spent a few days near there before moving north.”

“That’s my home town.”

“It’s a small world,” Mr. Nesbitt mused. “Ten years ago we were enemies. Now we are here together. At our next assembly, I want you to tell the students what you remember of the war. I want them to hear your story.”

“In Italy,” Freddy continued cautiously, “my principal told me that we won the war.”

“Well, you did and you didn’t,” Mr. Nesbitt answered sensitively. “We defeated the Germans. The people of Italy were tired of war. They liked it when Mussolini made the trains run on time. But they were not ready for another war. They still had not got over the First World War. They got a real raw deal then. They welcomed us when we marched into Rome in September of ‘43. In a strange sort of way, you did win. We both won, I guess.”

It was cold, foggy and snowy at ten thirty on the morning of Remembrance Day when Freddy, his mother, and Mrs. Varesi started to walk to the cenotaph at Esling Park. To the right and north of the cenotaph, a small high school band of brass, winds, and drums stood uncomfortably, the musicians trying to keep their hands warm by holding their instruments under their arms. Surrounding the cenotaph, at each of the four corners, stood a young navy cadet, head bowed and gloved hands resting on the rifle stock. Directly behind the cenotaph, a Canadian flag on an aluminum pole fluttered in the cold breeze. The metal cable rattled against the pole. Within moments, lead by the colour party, the Legion parade arrived, stopped, and turned a sharp left to face the cenotaph. The colour party broke away and stood between the cadets and the band.

A man in a legion cap shouted. As the onlookers snapped to attention, the band came partially to life and played a tinny rendition of “O Canada.” Then a second man in a Legion cap read from three lists: the Rossland men who did not return from wars prior to WWI, WWI, and WWII.

From the lists, Freddy recognized two names — “Bielli” and “Martello” — from WWII. These names were Italian and their families were friends of his stepfather. Freddy wondered how these men could have fought against their own relatives still living in Italy. He recalled his Italian principal’s contention that there is no greater treason than to betray the country of your birth. For a few brief moments, Freddy wondered what had happened to Signor Colussi who had refused to accept that Italy had lost the war.

The man with the legion cap called for two minutes of silence. The trumpeter brought the cold mouthpiece to his lips and played a strained version of “The Last Post.” The flag and the banners were lowered. As Freddy watched, several vivid, unpleasant memories came back. He recalled the mortar shell that struck his house, a German soldier picking up body parts, and a mischievous life-loving, hyperactive little boy called Cosmo, his cousin who perished in the war. Another sharp shout wrenched Freddy out of his disturbing reverie. Then, individuals and pairs cued up and walked up to the cenotaph with wreaths.

“That’s Mr. Nesbitt, my principal,” Freddy whispered in Italian. “He was in Vinchiaturo.”

Following “God Save the Queen,” the flag was raised. Then the parade headed towards the legion. After the parade dispersed, Freddy’s stepfather joined his wife and Mrs. Varesi at the corner of First Avenue and Washington Street. Mr. Varesi and Mr. and Mrs. Canesci from Trail came shortly after. Freddy told his stepfather about Mr. Nesbitt.

“Ask him to join us.”

Freddy walked up to Mr. Nesbitt who was talking to an older man and a heavy set woman in a legion uniform. “My stepfather would like you to come for coffee,” he said pointing. “We live in the second house, behind the carpenter shop.”

“I’d be honoured,” Mr. Nesbitt replied. A half hour later, he knocked on the door. In the cold, his face looked even redder than it usually did.

John Battista whispered that he was glad that Mr. Nesbitt had shown the good sense not to bring Mrs. Williams.

“What regiment were you with?” asked Freddy’s stepfather.

“Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry,” Mr. Nesbitt answered with pride. “I’m sure it was in the middle of October we were in Vinchiaturo. We had just come up from Foggia. We didn’t fight there though. Our job was to isolate the town to keep out German reinforcements. That’s how we took Vinchiaturo. It was easy. Campobasso, that some of our units captured the day before, that was another story, though.”

“Is that where you got wounded?” asked Freddy.

“No. Oh, no.” answered Mr. Nesbitt, “that piece of shrapnel caught me near Rimini a month later. We sure saw some shelling there. The Germans didn’t make it easy.”

“Were you hurt badly?” asked Freddy’s stepfather.

“My private war ended in the fields around Rimini. I was sent home after that. I’ve never gone back. Now I fight my battles here. Only instead of bullets, I use words. It is really heart warming to see people like all of you wanting to be good, loyal Canadians.”

Freddy disappeared into his parents’ bedroom. When he came out, he held a black and white framed photograph in his hands. “Here is a photograph of my uncle’s nephew from New York. He was a sailor on a battleship called the Missouri.”

“That’s the Pacific theatre,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “That’s the ship that the Americans, our allies of sorts, used to force the Japanese to sign their surrender. They really humiliated those Japanese officers. It’s quite an honour to have a relative on that ship.” Mr. Nesbitt handed the photograph back. “What about you, John, where did you fight?”

“I was in WWI,” Freddy’s stepfather said, “I just got as far as Esquimalt.”

“Were you kept back for health?”

“Religion.”

“I guess we all have our reasons. I know that the Doukhobors don’t want to fight. I think that they should though. We all have to do our part. After all, if Canada was good enough to give them land, the very least they should do is help us to defend it. I can’t condone their domestic tactics either. If they want to burn their houses, I say, let them. And if they want to sing naked, that’s their business, as long as they are out of sight of respectable people and children. But nobody can blow up government property.”

Freddy’s stepfather got himself, Mr. Nesbitt, Mr. Canesci, and Mr. Varesi another hot rum. Before they drank it, they clinked their glasses.

“Where were you, during the war years?” Mr. Nesbit asked, looking at Mr. Varesi.

“North Africa fighting under Rommel. Then they sent me to England as a war prisoner.”

“He was a great General,” Mr. Nesbit admitted. “Too bad Hitler didn’t heed him.”

“Maybe not,” John Battista disagreed. “If he had, Germany may have won.”

“And where were you sent?” Mr. Nesbitt turned to Mr. Canesci.

“Camp Petawawa in Ontario,” Mr. Canesci sighed. “I was interned. They were good to me.”

“How can you say that?” John Battista retorted. “They took away your most prized possession, your freedom. You had no criminal record. You were almost born here. You spent most of your life in Canada. You were the Consulate’s representative. There isn’t another person in Trail who is more loyal to Canada than you are. They used the War Measures Act to arrest you without cause and without reason. You should be furious.”

“Canada was at war with Italy,” Mr. Canesci acknowledged.

“Why did they arrest you?” Mr. Nesbitt puzzled. “You seem like a good Canadian.”

“Some son of a bitch, probably another wop who stood to gain by it, turned him in,” John Battista said scornfully. “Some bastard like that always does.”

“These things happened in the past,” Mr. Canesci said. “Let them be.”

“Bullshit.”

“I hope that the next generation won’t have to do what we’ve had to do,” Mr. Nesbitt said after a long, thoughtful pause.

Freddy’s stepfather agreed with him. Mr. Varesi and Mr. Canesci nodded.

“But as any soldier will tell you,” Mr. Nesbitt went on, “war isn’t all bad. We had our own soccer team and we played other divisions and some of the locals. We won just about every game we played.”

“Was your team that good?” Freddy asked.

“No, we had an Indian from Duncan.” Mr. Nesbitt chuckled. “He was so accurate and powerful that when he shot, the goalkeepers ran for cover.”

Then, turning to Mr. Varesi, Mr. Nesbitt asked: “Are you and Mrs. Battista related? Some time, in the right light, Freddy looks a bit like Elena.”

Mr. Canesci translated Mr. Nesbitt’s question.

“No,” Mr. Varesi answered through Mr. Canesci. “We have been good friends with Annunziata’s family for a long time. After many years all village people begin to look alike. Way back in the past we may have been related.”

“I noticed that when I was in Scotland before the war,” Mr. Nesbitt agreed. “I look a lot like a lot of other red headed people from my folks’ small town. I guess that if we go back far enough, we are all related. That’s why we should strive for peace.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Nesbitt started to leave. “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Battista,” he said. “I have enjoyed both the visit and the rum. Nice to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Varesi, and a pleasure to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Canesci. I hope that we meet again soon. See you in school, Freddy.”

A few minutes later, Elena, who had been downtown with some of her girlfriends, knocked on the door and came in. Freddy was glad to see her.

E. MACRAN

Translation by Licia Canton
An Excerpt from Diario di una emigrante

I remember that night well. I had just put the children to bed and was tidying up the kitchen when they knocked. I opened the door.

Two officers asked if Beppe was home.

“Yes,” Beppe said coming to the door.

They said he had to go with them. I told them he could go in the morning. But they insisted he had to go immediately. So they took him away and I was home alone, that night, for the first time since we’d married. I couldn’t sleep. I was cold and afraid. For days I tried to find out where he was and what they wanted from him. When I was finally able to speak to someone, I was told that Beppe had carried the pennant in fascist rallies. They would hold him during the investigation. And so he went to a concentration camp. Like Ciccio, and like many others who had been fascists. We didn’t know when they’d be back.

I was alone. I knew that I would not get through this with two children, and the cows, the chickens, the pigs and the land. But the farm was profitable in those days, and so for a few days I tried to hang on. The neighbours helped me. Some watched the children, others milked the cows and collected the eggs. But for me it was like using a glass to empty a lake. It was easy to rent the farm. I didn’t want to sell it even though I would have made a good profit. First of all I wanted Beppe to find what he had left, and second I was born a farmer and I knew that the land is never a traitor. And I had two children.

I left for the city with a lump in my throat, a hoard of cash and all of my willpower. I couldn’t work because of the children. So I rented two small rooms and looked for work I could do at home. I did many things. I was a seamstress and a hatmaker. I embroidered numbers on uniforms. I actually put aside some savings.

Ciccio came home after one year and convinced me to put the children in daycare with the Nuns. He found me work in a restaurant. I got good tips. After a few months, I worked at the cash.

Then, when they asked me to manage the restaurant, I found a woman to watch the children at home after daycare and I worked until night. I made really good money but I wasn’t happy being away from the children. I only saw them when they slept. So when a friend of Ciccio’s offered me a job managing a motel, I accepted. The children and I moved to the motel, which was on the road to Quebec, just on the outskirts of Montreal. ...

Beppe wrote once a week. He was well. He just wanted to come back. ...

As the war got worse fewer people came to the motel. ... Then the owner said he wanted to sell. I asked for four years’ rent on the farm, in advance, I remortgaged and I bought the motel.

I was 38, Rosa was seven and Dino six. I had a feeling that Beppe would be back shortly. I owned land and a motel. But I wasn’t at peace. Maybe that’s why I’ve always worked long hours. I was up at dawn and stayed up at night. If I stopped, a deep pain gripped my heart. The pain was caused by many things and nothing. I was a stranger to myself, the children, the place. And I was dissatisfied with myself. And when I heard that Beppe was coming back — I don’t know why, after having waited for him so long — I was filled with anxiety.

“Are you coming to get him in Montreal?” Ciccio asked.

“I’ll wait for him at home,” I said.

“I’ll bring him to you,” Ciccio said.

And Beppe arrived with all of Ciccio’s family.

I had dressed the children in their best clothes. I had dressed up, too. I had prepared tortellini for everyone and chicken and spumante.

Beppe looked healthy. He was fat and strong. At the camp he had worked as a woodcutter and he had eaten well. His hands were rough and his face was burnt from the sun and wind. He was pretty much the same. But I was very different, he said hugging me.

“You look like a real lady.”

I smiled, but I was sorry to have dressed up so much. Everyone was happy that day and I was afraid that they’d leave. Ciccio had had too much spumante and all of a sudden he said:

“See the wife I gave you? She’s become a millionaire!”

I felt Beppe’s humiliation.

“I have lots of debts,” I said.

“I’d like to have your debts,” someone else said.

“With Beppe’s help, I’ll pay them off,” I said.

When they all left, I asked the children to stay with us. I didn’t want to be alone with Beppe.

“Show me your property,” Beppe said.

“Ours,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then he looked at his hands and added: “I must seem like a real farmer to you.”

“You haven’t changed, Beppe. And neither have I.”

“The children are beautiful,” he said. “I recognized them in the photos, but not you.”

“You’ll recognize me,” I said.

I told the children to go to bed and then showed Beppe the motel. There weren’t any customers that night because it was cold and snowy. Beppe didn’t say anything.

“Good,” he said when we got back to the house and took off our boots.

We sat in front of the fireplace, alone and as distant as strangers. We were silent for a long time. Then he said: “I wanted you so much when I was at the camp. Now I don’t think I have the courage to touch you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re different.”

“I’m the same.”

I sat next to him and forced myself: “Touch me. I’m the same.”

And he touched me, as if he was really trying to recognize me.

Then he picked me up and carried me up the stairs. Nothing has changed, really, I said to myself. ...

Then Beppe said: “It’s true. It’s as if three years haven’t gone by, just a few days.”

ERNESTO LIVORNI

Translation by Isabella Maria Livorni and Elena Lucia Livorni
Where One Hears a Noise Like This

When nonno Carmine Fortunato’s family stopped hearing from him, they thought what people often thought when a husband and father suddenly stopped writing: “He started a new life!” As if there was more than one life to live ... So, his wife and daughters thought that he had met another woman. That maybe he squandered his money on her. That maybe he had even started a new family. The type of woman he had met or the kind of life he now led made no difference to them. They only cared because he no longer thought about them. He no longer sent that little bit of money which accompanied his ungrammatical letters. They didn’t believe that economic difficulties, or any other kind of difficulties, had overcome him. After all, he had gone to Canadà or, even better, to America, the land of a thousand opportunities! Those temperate, God-fearing people could never even imagine that nonno Carmine Fortunato would have had problems with the law.

But as of June 10, 1940, nonno Carmine Fortunato became dangerous, a potential subversive, and was soon arrested. The knowledge that he had been arrested with many other Italians living and working in Canada brought him no relief. Among the arrested were about a hundred fascists. The Canadian authorities believed it was not by accident that nonno Carmine Fortunato had left Italy during the years in which Mussolini was strengthening his political control. Unfortunately, those authorities did not know that the poor man could not have supported that political faction, even if he had wanted to.

Nonno Carmine Fortunato was taken to Camp Petawawa, in the Ottawa River Valley, to the military base that took its name from the other river in the valley. Petawawa, in the language of the native Algonquins, means: “Where one hears a noise like this.” Never had a name been more sadly ironic in those years for the 645 citizens interned in Camp n. 33 at Centre Lake. In those days, the shouts of military commands denatured the noise of those waters that run over the rocks of the river.

He could not understand how and why he had ended up in that internment camp. If it had happened in the first months after his landing in Canada, if he had had problems with the law in 1926, he would have understood and accepted it. Before his departure, he had been very cautious and had taken care of every possible detail. He had decided to leave his wife and five children, convinced that he would return to them. He missed his fifth child’s birth because he had been called to board the ship. Later, when he had already arrived in Canada, he heard that his son had been born and he imagined that he was born on the exact same day he had landed in that new and unknown land. Then the Great Depression hit, and soon he could no longer send savings home, thus losing all contact with his family. The truth was he was ashamed. He did not want to write them without sending money.

That summer morning he had left the house early, as usual, to go to work. It was sunny, and the fresh air promised an extraordinary day. Two men approached him, showed him a card and asked for his particulars. Nonno Carmine Fortunato confirmed the details, but could not show them any identification. The two agents invited him to go back up to his apartment, where they confiscated his passport and meddled with the radio, fearing that it might connect to Italian programs.

“Do you own any firearms?” they asked. Nonno Carmine Fortunato stuttered a negative reply, perhaps frightened by the very idea of the possession of firearms. The only weapon he knew how to use was the trowel.

They told nonno Carmine Fortunato to go with them. Fearing the worse, Nonno Carmine Fortunato asked if he could gather some clothes, but they said it was unnecessary. They drove to an office, then to another office, and to yet another one. After a few days and nights spent in anonymous sleeping quarters, a longer journey — in the company of many other oblivious people — brought him to Petawawa.

He spent his days in a haze, trying to understand where he was and why he was there. He was unable to elaborate a political reason. It could not be that they had interned him because of the recent war, since he had always been a hard worker, when there had been work. So he began to think that someone had falsely accused him. Small jealousies among the wretched poor can reach such levels, in order to take away a day of work from another man — sad thoughts that defeat mainly those who elaborate them.

Nonno Carmine Fortunato knew that if he ever left the place, it wouldn’t be to join his family, like many of his fellow prisoners yearned to do. His family did not even know where he was. In any case, his wife and children were even more distant than the ocean he had crossed.

When the other internees received letters from relatives, nonno Carmine Fortunato experienced a phantasmagoria of emotions. There were those who received letters from wives, girlfriends, or from mothers and fathers. They took refuge in the barracks or the latrines to read in peace. There were those who remained stunned, in silence, reading. Some seemed lost in the ink’s smudged, white vortex. For an onlooker, it was impossible to understand if they had received bad news or if they had been crippled by a sudden, familiar attack of nostalgia. There were those who stood up on the bench on which they had been sitting and announced their good news to their companions or smilingly waved the photographs they had found in the envelope. But they only ever displayed those of their children, reserving those of their wives for rare moments of solitude.

Nonno Carmine Fortunato tried to remain unshaken during the turmoil that was the exchange of correspondence. He wouldn’t have minded receiving a letter, or better, a package. But he knew that there was no one who felt his absence so deeply.

During the first days at the internment camp, wrapped up in one of those jackets with a large red circle on the back — a simplified target for the sentries on the watchtowers in case a prisoner escaped — nonno Carmine Fortunato wrote a letter to his wife and children. The letter was censored twice. The first time by his actual ignorance of the reality that he was living and by his scarce linguistic ability in expressing what was happening to him. The second time it was a military censorship dictated by motives of public order intended to keep under control at least those Italians who were considered dangerous.

He had not received a reply to his letter. How much time would it have taken to reach its destination? How much time would pass until the reply reached him? After a while he started to lose hope. He couldn’t remember the date he had sent his own letter. He oscillated between apologetic reasonings and resigned shakings of the head. After having wondered if it had actually been mailed, a very oppressive thought indeed, he decided to stop thinking about it.

He had even hoped that his former landlady would seek him out, at least to collect the last few days of rent. He had received no reply after having sent her a brief note to claim his few possessions. Every so often he held his head in his hands, and wondered about the fate of his belongings.

Other women in his Canadian life had come and gone with too much ease. It wasn’t necessary to write to any of them. A mixture of personal pride and pity — for him or for them? he wondered — impeded him from writing.

The total absence of women was a terrible reality for the small camp community to face. In the evening, after chatting and playing cards, the internees threw themselves onto the bunkbeds with a sigh of weariness and then everyone was like nonno Carmine Fortunato: alone, faced with the uncertainty of their sojourn at the camp.

During the day he kept his distance from the Italians, from everyone and everything. Sometimes he cursed them, fascists or antifascists. In his eyes there was no difference, and in those moments he could not restrain the curses until he had cursed the day he was born. Only then would he calm down, exhausted, as if he had gone backwards through the senselessness of his existence in a string of bad words.

In the little free time he had, he walked to the river or rather he tried to reach the place where he could hear the water flowing and roaring among the rocks. Only then could he find some peace, by the Petawawa River, where one hears a noise like that of existence, uncontrollable like the power of the water that erodes the rock. Where one hears a noise like that of the deafening clamor of the story that flowed through the veins of every poor, defenseless individual and that dragged every strength and intent to its own inexorable point of stillness.

Despite the rigid schedules and the monotonous life at Camp Petawawa, nonno Carmine Fortunato had learned to take advantage of that routine to collect his thoughts. After breakfast, he didn’t mind busying himself with work. The time passed more quickly, and sometimes work was a way to stay with his own thoughts. Other times it was the best way to set himself free of them. He preferred the constructive work to the destructive tasks that he had to endure at the beginning of his time at Petawawa. He did not willingly go to cut down the trees, leaving permanent gashes in the surrounding forest, but would have preferred reinforcing the barbed wire. He was content when they assigned him small jobs as a mason. He deluded himself with the idea of still being able to build, to leave a tangible sign of his artisanal ability, even in an internment camp in a land that, after a stay that was as old as the nowadolescent son he had never met, was still unknown to him.

The sudden, violent autumn of those places reconciled the falling of leaves with illusions. Along with the leaves that he had to rake, nonno Carmelo Fortunato also collected memories and thoughts, the shreds of his existence. Every time the points of the rake skewered a leaf, a sharp pain in his heart ripped his throat in a constricted cry, reminding him that the jacket he was wearing was his only claim. He assembled the leaves into small clumps, their vibrant colours livening the volatile mounds — a slight breeze or a match could have been enough — and there were always leaves that escaped the gathering ... There were always memories that fled from his control and assailed him where one hears a noise similar to rushing water against a stone ... Nonno Carmine Fortunato realized that each clump of leaves put before his eyes a clump of memories, every gust of wind risked scattering them away, and too often he was tempted to burn everything. His existence had passed and was now still flowing, as he listened to the noise that those memories made echoing in his chest and in his mind, in the reverberation of the colours of those leaves now dead.

• Where One Hears a Noise Like This was first published in Accenti Magazine's Spring 2012 issue.

RENE PAPPONE

Excerpts from the forthcoming novel The Italian

Chapter 16

Antonio did not like what was happening.

On September l, 1939, German troops invaded Poland, and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Almost immediately, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) descended on hundreds of GermanCanadians and arrested them without warrants.

The declaration of war left Antonio with a deep feeling of dread. The world did not need another war, and it troubled him that his son Pasqualino, now seventeen, was almost old enough for military service. He did not want his son to experience the horror and inhumanity of the battlefield.

By spring 1940, a treacherous cloud hung over Europe as Norway, Holland, Belgium and France fell one by one into German hands. The German advance was so swift that nearly 340,000 British, French and Belgian troops had to be rescued from the beaches and the harbour of Dunkirk, France at the end of May and early June. Rumours circulated that the German advance had been aided by Fifth Column agents operating behind allied lines, and now patriotic organizations in Canada were claiming that thousands of Fifth Columnists were hiding in Canada, too.

Antonio wondered how the Italian community was going to weather a growing antiItalian sentiment that began with Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and escalated when Italy marched into Albania in April 1939. He was especially concerned about the Italian Club where some members showed sympathy for the fascists in Italy, even though Benito Mussolini had bullied his way to power in 1922 when his fascist military marched from Naples to Rome. Those with a soft heart for the Italian dictator argued that Italy was in better shape today than it was at the end of the First World War.

Antonio had objected to the way the Italian dictator took power, and detested that Italy was now a oneparty police state that banned trade unions and freedom of speech. Like most Italians, however, he was sympathetic toward the Italian people themselves.

What troubled him more than anything else was the RomeBerlin Axis formed in 1939 by Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. The ink was barely dry on that accord when the two leaders agreed to a military alliance. No wonder people were looking at Italian-Canadians with a wary eye.

Then came the devastating news. On June 10, 1940, Mussolini declared war on France and England, which meant that Canada was also Italy’s enemy. That same evening, Antonio got another jolt when he turned on the radio. Prime Minister Mackenzie King was telling Canadians that all fascist organizations in Canada were deemed illegal, and that he had ordered the internment of Italians identified as enemy aliens. Other Italian-Canadians naturalized after 1929 (later changed to 1922) were required to register with the RCMP and report to them monthly.

What else could go wrong?

•••

A week later, Antonio was having breakfast when he heard the sound of someone knocking on the front door, which made him wonder what was going on so early in the day. Then, when he opened the door, the expression on his face rapidly changed to shock.

He was facing four RCMP officers.

Antonio thought immediately of the prime minister’s address and the uncertainty that he felt for the Italian community, but he never thought he’d see the RCMP on his doorstep. “What is this all about?” he asked.

One of the officers said: “You’re under arrest,” and in the next moment Antonio’s hands were cuffed.

“What did I do?”

The officer did not respond.

“What did I do?” Antonio repeated.

Angelina heard the commotion and, when she came to the door, she hardly believed what she was seeing: Antonio was in handcuffs.

“Antonio, what is going on?”

He tried to be calm, to think rationally. “The police are arresting me.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They won’t tell me.”

By this time the disturbance had stirred Pasqualino and Emilia and, when they went to the front door and saw their father in handcuffs, their reaction was wild agitation. For a moment Antonio feared Pasqualino, big for his age, would take on the intruders.

“Calm down, my children,” said Antonio. “This is all a mistake.”

He opened his mouth again to object to his arrest but, before he could speak, two officers took him by the arms, led him out of the house and placed him into a waiting car.

Angelina spoke with pressing intensity, tears running down her face. “What are you doing with my husband?”

Then as the car disappeared down the street, Angelina and the children froze in disbelief, their faces full of despair.

When they went back into the house, two RCMP officers were already searching the place. Angelina became so visibly distraught that for a dizzying moment she thought she would explode.

She held back for the sake of the children.

Chapter 17

Antonio had never heard of the Petawawa Internment Camp.

The compound was in dense forest off the highway that ran between North Bay and Ottawa and, when he arrived there after spending a few days at the Haileybury jail, he saw that he was not alone. Dozens of men dressed in blue prison attire, with a bull’s eye circle on the back, were walking about inside the barbed wire fencing. If Antonio had any thoughts about escaping, the bull’s eye and armed guards quickly erased them from his mind.

He was led to one of the dozen barracks and assigned one of the iron bunks. Most of the prisoners, he saw, were German, but one Italian detainee told him that since Canada and Italy went to war the prison population of Italians was growing by the day. Most of the men did not know why they were there. Neither did Antonio even after hearing the reasons for his arrest in a letter from the Department of Justice in Ottawa:

Representations have been made that you are a member of the Fascist Party, a subversive organization which is opposed to the interests of Canada. In view of this it would appear that you are disloyal to Canada.

Antonio’s first letter was to Angelina, telling her where he was and assuring her that the prison authorities were treating him well. “We have our own hospital, a recreation hut, and places where we can play cards or read books. And, the food is good; we, the prisoners, are the cooks.” He closed by asking Angelina to call Jim Bellows, the cheese company’s lawyer. “He will know what to do about the unfair accusations against me.”

Angelina’s reply:

July 15, 1940
Caro Antonio:

I received your letter this morning and I thank God that you are safe.

Mr. Bellows said he was surprised by the accusations, and he is working on something to make them release you from jail.

The Italian community is very nervous because the RCMP have arrested three other men in Goldfields, and everyone — especially the women — are terrified that their husbands will be next. Why do the police have to take innocent men away in handcuffs? What did they do? What did you do? Nobody tells us.

There is a lot of tension here. Some Italian boys have been harassed on the streets, and I know of a few cases where neighbours no longer speak to each other. Gaetano told me that some Italians were attacked last week outside a beer parlour but there was nothing in the newspaper. So far, our children have not faced any discrimination at school. Most Italians here agree that the best way for us to get through this difficult time is to go quietly about our business.

Do you know that the province ordered the town to stop relief payments to Italians who are not Canadian citizens? Do you remember Signora Giustini? Her husband was killed in the mine earlier this year and she had to go on relief, but that will now end. The Italian Club is planning to collect money for her and the children. I hope that does not land us in jail!

There are also news reports that people are boycotting Italian businesses, but Gaetano does not know of any cases in Goldfields. And, he wants me to tell you not to worry about the business. He is taking care of things and the workers are still making the best cheese in Ontario. I think he’s planning to send some to the camp.

I love you, Antonio. We are waiting anxiously for your return.

Mille baci ed abbracci,
Angelina

•••

With the help of his lawyer, Antonio filed a Notice of Objection against the detention Order of the Minister of Justice under Regulation 21 of the Defence of Canada Regulations.

In preparation for the proceedings Bellows obtained a document from the Department of Justice in Ottawa citing the specifics of Antonio’s detention. It read:

The authorities have reason to believe that you were a member of the Italian Fascio Abroad, which Organization was declared illegal in Canada by Order-in-Council P.C. 2537, dated June 12, 1940, and you have, therefore, been detained to prevent you from acting in any manner prejudicial to the welfare of the State.

The Particulars of the Reason for Detention:

1. That you were a member of the Italian Fascio Abroad and particularly the Goldfields section of the Don Cesare Caravadossi Fascio of North Bay;

2. That you organized meetings of the Fascio at the Italian Club of Goldfields; and

3. That you took part in the activities of the Fascio which was declared illegal in Canada by Order-in-Council dated June 12, 1940.

In his submission, Bellows provided a summary of Antonio’s life in Canada, and attached as exhibits statutory declarations and letters from prominent citizens as well as news clippings attesting to his good citizenship and generosity:

- Mr. Leone organized the Italian community’s participation in the Town of Goldfields’ celebration of the coronation of King George the Sixth;

- One week before his arrest, he organized a dinner to honour Goldfields boys who were on their way to Toronto to enlist in the Canadian army, and gave each of them a lighter inscribed with their names;

- Mr. Leone arranged a spaghetti supper at the Italian Club to raise funds for the Canadian Red Cross;

- L&D Cheese, of which Mr. Leone is a co-owner, furnished a room at the Goldfields Hospital and paid for a playground at the Children’s Aid Society;

- Every year, L&D donates money and cheese to service clubs that provide hampers of food for poor families at Christmas;

- Mr. Leone made generous donations to the building funds of the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army.

- There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Leone took part in activities of the Fascio or any other Italian organization that might be of a subversive character. He was too busy attending to the business of L&D Cheese and taking care of his family and the Italian Club.

Contributors’ Biographies

Julie Campagna

Julie Campagna lives in Toronto and has been a sculptor since graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1991. In 2001 she established Campagna Bronze Studio Gallery which offers a unique window into the sculpting process and the opportunity to learn wax carving. Campagna’s sculptures are in private and corporate collections world wide. “My quest for clarity in this tangled existence is why my ideas take form,” says Campagna. “I persist in creating sculpture with the intention to provoke and through the process find a kind of liberation for and from myself.” Her work can be viewed at www.campagnabronze.com.

Licia Canton

Licia Canton is the author of Almond Wine and Fertility (2008) — stories for women and their men. She is also a literary critic and translator, and the editor-in-chief of Accenti — the Canadian magazine for lovers of all things Italian. As editor she has published several collections, including The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange, Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada, and Reflections on Culture. A member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, she is currently President of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers. She holds a Ph.D. from Université de Montréal. She lives in Montreal with her husband and three children.

Domenico Capilongo

Domenico Capilongo lives in Toronto. He teaches high school creative writing and practices karate. He has had work published in several literary magazines including The Windsor Review and Descant. He was short-listed for the gritLIT Poetry Contest and his first book of poetry, I thought elvis was italian, was short-listed for the 2010 F.G. Bressani Literary Prize. His latest book of jazzinspired poetry, hold the note, was published with Quattro Books and long-listed for the ReLit Award. He is working on a third poetry collection as well as a series of short stories.

Gary Clairman

Gary Clairman lives in Guelph with his wonderful family and whispers lines of poetry, prose and song lyrics into his iPhone while frozen in traffic on the 401. He doesn’t speak Italian but loves to sit around the Mirolla family table nodding and smiling as if he understands while helping himself to the endless plates of pasta and prosciutto and bottomless bottles of the latest homemade.

Pietro Corsi

Pietro Corsi was born in Molise in 1937 and moved to Rome to work as a translator and co-creator of radio programs for RAI. In Canada he worked for Il Cittadino Canadese. He has written several works of fiction, including La Giobba (Enne, 1982), translated in English as Winter in Montreal (Guernica, 2000, winner of the 2002 F.G. Bressani Literary Prize). From 1965 to 1992, Corsi was the Executive Vice President of Princess Cruises. He has also written essays, cookbooks and training manuals for the cruise industry.

Sheldon Currie

Sheldon Currie was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has written four novels, The Company Store, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum (adapted for the film Margaret’s Museum), Two More Solitudes and Down The Coaltown Road about the internment of Italians in Cape Breton; three plays, Lauchie, Liza and Rory, Two More Solitudes and By the Sea - Anna’s Story; two collections of short stories and a variety of essays on Canadian and American writers.

Domenic Cusmano

Domenic Cusmano is a Montreal publisher, writer and communications consultant. He is the co-founder and publisher of Accenti Magazine, an English-language national quarterly whose mission is to give expression to Canada’s Italian heritage. He is also the founder of Longbridge Books, a publishing house launched in 2007 whose mandate is to promote fiction and nonfiction that convey Canada’s multicultural character.
www.accenti.ca www.longbridgebooks.com

Giulia De Gasperi

Dr. Giulia De Gasperi is originally from Treviso. She now lives in Scotland, making frequent visits to Canada, the USA and Italy. She currently holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnology at the Celtic and Scottish Studies department, Edinburgh University. Her research interests are the diasporic Italian communities, with a particular focus on the Italian community of Dominion, Cape Breton Island, Canada and collecting and documenting farming life in the Treviso province in the North of Italy. She received her Ph.D. from Ca’ Foscari University (Venice) in 2007 and was a recipient of a Government of Canada Award in 2004-2005.
www.apanera.com

Delia De Santis

Delia De Santis’ short stories have appeared in literary magazines in Canada, United States, England, and Italy, and in several anthologies. She is coeditor of the anthologies Sweet Lemons (Legas, 2004), Writing Beyond History (Cusmano, 2006), Strange Peregrinations (The Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian Canadian Studies, 2007), and Sweet Lemons 2 (Legas, 2010). She is the author of the collection Fast Forward and Other Stories (Longbridge Books, 2008).

Terri Favro

Terri Favro was born and raised in St. Catharines, Ontario, the daughter of Italian-born parents who were “enemy aliens” during the war years. Terri is now a Torontobased writer whose fiction and articles have appeared in Prism, Geist, MORE, Riddle Fence, and Accenti, among other publications. She is a twotime finalist for the Accenti Magazine Writing Contest and has been short-listed three times for the CBC Literary Awards. Terri collaborates on online graphic stories at www.coxwellstation.ca and blogs at www.terrifavro.ca. Her novella, The Proxy Bride, will be published in fall 2012.

Venera Fazio

Venera Fazio was born in Sicily and now lives in Bright’s Grove, Ontario. Before dedicating herself to writing and editing, she worked as a social worker (MSW). Altogether she has co-edited six anthologies relating to her culture of origin, including the recent Descant 154 issue: Sicily, Land of Forgotten Dreams. Her poetry and prose have been published in literary magazines in North America and Italy. She is past president of the AICW.

Anna Foschi Ciampolini

Born in Florence, Italy, Anna Foschi Ciampolini lives in Vancouver. An award-winning short story writer, she co-edited the anthologies Emigrante (1985), Writers in Transition (1994) and Strange Peregrinations: Italian Canadian Literary Landscapes (2007). She is a journalist and a translator. She has published in Canada, Italy, Costa Rica and U.S.A. She is a co-founder of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers and the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize.

Loretta Gatto-White

Loretta Gatto-White is a food editor at Accenti Magazine where she writes the column Eating Italian. Her essays and short stories have appeared in newspapers, anthologies, on the internet at CommuterLit.com and in her blog at www.saveurfaire.net. Her latest project was to create and coedit the anthology Italian Canadians at Table, to be released by Guernica Editions, 2012/2013.

Frank Giorno

Frank was born in Montalto Uffugo, Calabria, Italy and grew up in Toronto. He now lives in Timmins, Ontario, where he works on energy conservation for three First Nations. He recently started the Timmins Voices Reading Series. He has worked as a journalist, environmental activist and government communicator. Frank graduated with an Honours B.A. from York University and a journalism degree from Ryerson University. Frank is a past editor of the AICW Newsletter. He has written two books of poetry, Elvis in America (2006), and Arrivederci! Plastic-Covered Couch (2008) published by Lyricalmyrical Press. He has two children, Sophie and Giancarlo.

Mélanie Grondin

Mélanie Grondin is a writer, editor and translator working on the biography of Guido Nincheri. She is editor of the Montreal Review of Books and her short fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared in Room, The Nashwaak Review, Soliloquies, Headlight Anthology, carte blanche and The Adirondack Review. She has also translated Louise Abbott’s book Eeyou Istchee: Land of the Cree.

Ernesto Livorni

Ernesto Livorni teaches Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. His publications include Avanguardia e tradizione: Ezra Pound e Giuseppe Ungaretti (1998), T. S. Eliot, Montale e la modernità dantesca (forthcoming) and the translation of Ted Hughes’ Cave-Birds: Un dramma alchemico della caverna (2001). A volume of new and collected poems, Onora il Padre e la Madre, is forthcoming.

Darlene Madott

Darlene Madott is a Toronto-born lawyer and writer. Her call to the Ontario Bar in 1985 coincided with the publication of Bottled Roses (Oberon). Her short stories have appeared in anthologies as well as literary periodicals across Canada. Her most recent book is Making Olives and Other Family Matters (2008). She has also published the collection of short stories Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing?, the filmscript Mazilli’s Shoes, and the novel Song and Silence.

John Madott (1918-2011)

John Madott saw life with the passionate eye of the artist, its colour, texture, rhythm and form captured on his canvasses. He loved his family well and unconditionally, and he filled our world with laughter, opportunity and the encouragement to embrace our gifts, to take risks, to be. His perspective and vision will continue to touch all who love him and who shared life’s stage with him: his wife and devoted partner of 67 years, Francesca (nee Spadafora); his daughters, Valerie (Joseph), Darlene, and Francine (Charles); his grandchildren, Vanessa, Ross, and Marcus; his extended family and friends.

Paula Mascioli

Paula Mascioli is an interior designer living in Ottawa, Ontario. She is married with three stepchildren. Paula was born and raised in the northern mining town of Timmins, Ontario. Early in life, she developed wanderlust and decided that northern Ontario wasn’t where she saw her future. She studied in Switzerland for a year and then in Toronto, all the while travelling at every opportunity. Deciding where to settle after graduating wasn’t easy, but she was drawn to Ottawa for its beauty, outdoor recreation and culture. Paula is the granddaughter of Leo Mascioli, one of northern Ontario’s legendary pioneers and builders.

Michael Mirolla

Novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright, Michael Mirolla’s publications include two novels: Berlin (F.G. Bressani Literary Prize winner and finalist for the Indie Book and National Best Books Awards) and The Facility, which features among other things a string of cloned Mussolinis; a novella: The Ballad of Martin B.; two short story collections: The Formal Logic of Emotion and Hothouse Loves & Other Tales; and two collections of poetry: the EnglishItalian bilingual Interstellar Distances/Distanze Interstellari and Light And Time. Along with partner Connie McParland, Michael runs Guernica Editions, a Canadian literary publishing house. www.guernicaeditions.com

Rene Pappone

Rene Pappone is a retired political journalist and federal public servant. Born in Timmins, Ontario, he began his career in journalism in 1955. He was named Canadian Press staff correspondent at the Alberta Legislature in 1965, and in 1969 he was appointed Parliamentary correspondent for Broadcast News. After entering the federal public service in 1975, he served as an information director and in operational planning. The Italian is Pappone's fourth book. He resides in Gatineau, Quebec.

Joseph Ranallo

Born in Vinchiaturo, Molise, Joseph Ranallo emigrated to Rossland, British Columbia in 1952. He holds a B.A. (Honors English, University of Victoria) and an M.A. (English, Washington State University). He is a B.C. qualified, practicing Acupuncturist. He has taught and been an administrator at the elementary, secondary, college and university levels. He has presented on Educational, Oriental Medicine, and Italian Canadian issues in six Canadian provinces, the U.S., and China. His writing has been published in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Italy, and China. He currently resides in Rossland where he manages a part time acupuncture practice.

Jim Zucchero

Jim Zucchero grew up in Toronto and now lives in London, Ontario. He teaches Canadian Studies and works as an academic counsellor at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario. He earned a Ph.D. in English at UWO and has published creative nonfiction and essays on Italian-Canadian writers and Canada’s National War Memorial. In 2010 he co-edited Reflections on Culture (with Licia Canton and Venera Fazio).

Founded in 1986, the Association of Italian Canadian Writers is a nonprofit organization that brings together a community of writers, critics, academics, and other artists and promotes Italian Canadian literature and culture within an ethnoculturally diverse society. To learn more, please visit www.aicw.ca

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Founded in 2002, Accenti Magazine brings together readers and writers around the idea of shared cultural experience and heritage, to encourage creative expression and celebrate common cultural values. An independent voice, Accenti provides a platform for aspiring writers and photographers.
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