Goodbyes at Castelfranco train station - solo in inglese

Black and white photograph of a group of men posing with a cardboard life preserver sign for the passenger ship "Olimpia" (Olympia) at the Castelfranco Veneto railway station in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The men also hold a sign for the travel agency facilitating their voyage from Italy to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Almost all of the men appear to be wearing dress pants and blazers. They also sport either white or plaid shirts. The group of men kneeling in the foreground hold up bottles of wine. The bottles most likely contain Chianti, which has historically been associated with a squat bottle enclosed in a straw basket called a fiasco.

One of the immigrants in the photograph is Francesco Sabbadin who was born in Italy on August 2, 1936. He was 20 years old when he departed Italy in 1956 on the Olympia. According to the archives at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia the Olympia stopped at the following ports that year: New York, Halifax-Lisbon, Naples, Piraeus and Messina. Upon his arrival in Canada, Sabbadin settled in Kirkland Lake, Ontario where he worked in the gold mines. He then moved to Toronto in 1962 where he worked at Thornhill Building supply for over 40 years.