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Wednesday, February 12, 2025
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Canada
lifted immigration restrictions on Italy in 1947, with over
500,000 Italians immigrating between 1947 and 1983. Even after
more than half a century, that experience remains a painful scar
for the entire community - even those not alive then. Wanting
to erase it from their minds, many elderly Italians refuse to
speak to those events; and those few who do speak say emphatically
and with a trace of bitterness that they had nothing against
Canada.(Angelo Principe, A Tangled Knot: Prelude to 10 June
1940, pg 42. Enemies Within, 2000)
On November
4, 1990 at a luncheon in the Toronto suburb of Concord, before
about 500 NCIC (National Congress of Italians in Canada)
members and guests, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney issued an apology
for the wrongs done to the Canadians
of
Italian origin during World War II. Prime Minister Mulroney said
that “the
forty five years of silence on internment, represented a
shameful part of our history…Sending civilians to internment
camps without trial simply because of their ethnic origin was
not then,
and is not now, and never will be, accepted in a civilized
nation that purports to respect the rule of law.” Yet,
no formal apology has come from the Government of Canada, or
any compensation. |
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The
National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) asserted that
“as Canada moves into the twenty first century, the time
has come to make amends to the injured so that we may learn from
our
past
and move confidently forward as a nation.” Angelo Persichilli,
editor of Il Corriere Canadese wrote in one of his editorials
that “forgive we can try, to forget is more difficult.” (
Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca, Redress, Collective
memory, and the Politics of History,pg.396. Enemies Within,
2000) |
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The
history of Italian Canadians in the Second World War was far
more complicated, sordid, and turbulent than the community
version…Italian Canadians, rather than being fed a streamlined
version of the past meant to serve contemporary political ends,
deserve full disclosure of all the evidence and interpretations
so far available. They can then decide for themselves, through
informed reflection and debate, how best to understand the
dramatic events of these years. ( Franca Iacovetta
and Robert Ventresca, Redress, Collective memory, and the Politics
of History, pg.405. Enemies Within, 2000) |
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Whether
they were Canadians or Italian citizens, those arrested and
interned were classified as second-class prisoners of war. (The
internment of Italian Canadians, Luigi Bruti Liberati, pg.83.
Enemies Within, Toronto, 2000) |
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The
opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada. |
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