|
|
|
By
1930 there were over 150 people of Italian origin in business
and in the professions:
53 of them in the food category, wholesale and retail stores,
with some specialization – fish and oysters, poultry
and soft-drink bottling. Three of them were run by women: |
P10679 - Advertisement card for Merlo, Merlo and Ray Contracting
Co. Note that 'Ray' is an anglicization of the Italian
name
'Re'.
Courtesy of Tom Ray
|
|
Mary Mazzali, Lucy
De Marco and
Patty Pattinato.
The next largest category with 38
names was that of builders and |
|
There
were seven restaurants: the first Italian restaurant was opened
in 1923-24 by Frank Frustagio or Frustaglio and
toward the end of the decade, Chez Mario Café and
Hotel. There were in fact three hotels owned by Italians:
worthy of special mention is the Hotel Milano,
first listed in 1920-21 and owned by Frank Grimaldi. It
was situated at 201 Sandwich St. W. exactly where the Cleary
Auditorium is today.
Five business centres,
also called Italian agencies, each operated respectively by John
Borio, L. Meconi, G. Grossi, W.
Pricopi and the Ferrari Co. offered
a wide variety of services, including banking, notary public,
steamship company, interpreter, real estate, foreign exchange,
insurance,
passports, loans and immigrant placement.
By the end of the 1920s, the Italians could live their entire
life span in Windsor without going outside the community
in order to satisfy their material, recreational or spiritual
needs: the
Caboto Club had been founded in 1925, and in 1929, there
was
the official opening of the Italian Chapel, the first step
toward
the building in 1939 of St. Angela Merici Church, the
hub of Windsor’s “Little Italy” on Erie Street…
|
