( Source: Bagnell, Kenneth, A Portrait of the Italian Canadians, Toronto, 1989)

A poet in Calabria, Italy, wrote a poem on the immigrant:
“ The uprootedness of those who leave;
the abandonment of those who are left;
lonely old age at home,
and the struggle to find new roots in Foreign soil.”

Canadian writer Morley Callaghan wrote: “All of life is a longing for home.” In the 1980s, a new migration phenomenon began: the return of the Italian immigrant. The ones that returned had really never felt they belonged to Canadian Society. They felt they could return to Italy. The others, who had remained in Italy and saw them return, noticed that many came in search of an Italy they remembered, but which had disappeared. The returnees found that only the sun and the weather were as they remembered. By the end of the 1980s, according to the Italian Embassy in Ottawa, over 10,000 Italians had gone home.

Italians in Canada have become truly and deeply Italian Canadians. They are no longer outsiders, but integrated, moving more and more within the character of Canada itself. Canada has become a mosaic of cultures. Italians have found a joyful place within that mosaic. They are Italians, but truly Canadians.