Italians
by Ben D'Andrea
A visitor to Vancouver’s east side in 1910 reported that a Piccola Italia, or Little Italy, had been established in the area around present-day Main Street. Italians in Vancouver then numbered up to a 1,000 or more. Today more than 30,000 Canadians of Italian descent live in the Vancouver area, and parts of little Italy have sprung up on Commercial Drive and along East Hastings from Nanaimo Street to Burnaby.
Vancouver’s first Little Italy emerged from the first wave of Italian immigration to Canada between 1900 and 1914. However, a small number of pioneering Italians were lured here from San Francisco in the 1850s by the Fraser River Gold Rush; some acquired small fortunes. Not until construction began on the Canadian Pacific Railway did Italians arrive here in significant numbers from Eastern Canada. During this period of railway building, Italians began leaving their mark on Vancouver.
Among the many Italians who worked on the CPR was Angelo Calori. His Europe Hotel still stands at the corner of Powell and Alexandra in Gastown. The wooden building Calori bought and rebuilt was one of a very few to survive the Great Fire of 1886. The hotel lobby’s marble staircase and brass banister survive as evidence of Calori’s success as a hotelier.
Another Italian who left his mark on the city early on was sculptor Charles Marega. Marega came to Vancouver in 1909 and established himself as its first professional sculptor. The concrete lions at the Stanley Park entrance to the Lion’s Gate Bridge are his most familiar sculptures. But his work is also in Stanley Park and at Vancouver City Hall, along Beach Avenue and even on the Burrard Street Bridge.
An expanding community of Italians led to the formation of Vancouver’s first Italian mutual aid society in 1905. The present Italian Mutual Aid Society, located in the Roma Hall of New Westminster, no longer functions primarily to help immigrants adjust to their new surroundings, but now supports a variety of charitable causes. The diverse cultural and recreational interests of today’s Italian-Canadian community are also represented by more than 30 other associations.
To serve the growing Italian community, an Italian-speaking priest was assigned to the Church of the Sacred Heart in 1907. Today Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Helen’s in Burnaby serve mainly Italian parishioners. Italian masses are said at several other churches around Greater Vancouver, including Holy Spirit in New Westminster’s Queensborough district.
Vancouver’s first Italian newspaper, L’Italia nel Canada, appeared in 1911. The contemporary Italian weekly newspaper, L’Eco d’Italia, was founded in 1955 and now includes an English section. The Italian community is also represented by radio and television programming. Radio Amici is broadcast daily on CJVB radio in Vancouver, and on weekends Ciao Italia can be heard on CHMB. On television, Telitalia broadcasts daily on the multicultural channel.
Greater Vancouver’s current and well-established Italian presence emerged following a second and larger wave of Italian immigration to Canada between 1950 and 1970. (Few Italians have immigrated to Vancouver since 1970.) Post-war Italian newcomers favored settling in large urban areas like Vancouver, where they found work in the local construction industry and established retail businesses ranging from grocery and clothing stores to restaurants.
Vancouver’s Italian-Canadians have also gained recognition nation-wide. Among them are the actor Bruno Gerussi, who died in 1995, for years the star of his own television series, Beachcombers, and the restaurateur and author Umberto Menghi. But perhaps the most influential member of the Italian-Canadian community was Angelo E. Branca, the lawyer who became a judge of the B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Erected in Branca’s memory in Piazza Italia, on Grandview Highway, is a statue of Christopher Columbus donated by the City of Genoa.
Even a brief history of Italians in Greater Vancouver would be incomplete without mentioning the Italian Cultural Centre, located in East Vancouver on Slocan at Grandview Highway. The Centre, built mostly by volunteers, was completed in the summer of 1977. It includes a restaurant, banquet hall, art gallery, daycare centre, television production centre and even an indoor bocce court. Every summer the centre hosts a week-long Italian festival.
Instrumental in the campaign to build this centre was the Italian-born Anna Terrana of Burnaby, now the MP for Vancouver East. On a return visit from Ottawa to attend the Italian National Day celebrations at the centre, Terrana brought greetings to the community from another of Vancouver’s prominent Italian-Canadians: Frank Iacobucci, appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1991.
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