Italians in Toronto provides an insightful account of how village and regional groups transplanted their communities into the city that is now one of the largest expatriate centres for Italians in the world. The history of Italian migration to Canada is

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

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

Such Hardworking People provides a perceptive description of the working-class experiences of immigrants who came to Toronto from southern Italy between 1946 and 1965. Franca Iacovetta focuses on the relations between newly arrived workers and their families, showing that the Italians who came to Toronto during this period were predominantly young, healthy women and men eager to obtain jobs and prepared to make sacrifices in order to secure a more comfortable life for themselves and their children.

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

From the moment explorer Giovanni Caboto stepped onto Canadian soil, Italians have left their footprints on Canadian history. In the 1700s, Italians including Alphonse and Henri de Tonti came to New France to trade with the Natives and settle the vast land. In the 1800s, Italian workers built the foundation for railways and highways into Canada's northern forests. Today, Little Italy is a part of every major Canadian city. The Italian-Canadian vote is even credited with helping keep Canada together in Québec's sovereignty referendum.

Today's Italian-Canadians face different images than previous generations. An exploration of the reproduction of cultural heritage in a global economy of rapid international communication.

This richly researched, beautifully illustrated volume illuminates an important, overlooked part of American history. From extensive archival materials and interviews with well-known Italian Americans, Maria Laurino strips away stereotypes and nostalgia to tell the complicated, centuries-long story of the true Italian-American experience. Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and The Sopranos, Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. From anarchist radicals to “Rosie the Riveter” to Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio; from traditional artisans to rebel songsters like Frank Sinatra, Dion, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, this book is both exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life. Readers can discover the history chronologically, chapter by chapter, or serendipitously by exploring the trove of supplemental materials. These include interviews, newspaper clippings, period documents, and photographs that bring the history to life.

From Sojourners to Citizens: Alberta's Italian History brings to life the untold story of Italian immigrants in Alberta from the 1880s to the present. It places them in the narrative of province building from work on railways, mines and other industries to breaking the land for agriculture. Oral history excerpts allow the men, women and children to speak for themselves. What emerges is an unquenchable desire to make good, and overcome intolerable working conditions and discrimination, which culminated with enemy alien designation and internment during the Second World War. The book also provides an exploration of the impact of Government of Canada's multicultural policy on the process of assimilation for the post-war influx of immigrants. It offers a prototype of an immigrant community's movement from marginalization to the mainstream.