The Frustrated Thespian-Valedictorian
"To the men and women who were taken to prisoner of war camps or jail without charge, people who are no longer with us to hear this apology… to the children and grandchildren who have carried a past generation’s shame and hurt, and to their community, a community that has given so much to our country, we are sorry.""They were business owners, workers, and doctors. They were fathers, daughters, and friends. They were taken away to Petawawa or to Fredericton, to Kananaskis or to Kingston. Once they arrived at a camp, there was no length of sentence. Sometimes, the internment lasted a few months. Sometimes, it lasted years. But the impacts, those lasted a lifetime."Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 27 May, 2021"What happened to many Italian-Canadians is deeply offensive to the simple notion of respect for human dignity and the presumption of innocence.""The brutal injustice was inflicted arbitrarily, not only on individuals suspected of being security risks but also on individuals whose only crime was being of Italian origin."Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, 1990
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| Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a formal apology in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Thursday, May 27, 2021, for the internment of Canadians of Italian descent during the Second World War. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick |
The thespian in him won't take a back seat to anyone. Former Conservative PM Mulroney apologized 31 years ago, but Justin Trudeau loves apologizing for what other people or governments committed. Heaven forfend that he ever apologize for the myriad blunders he continues to commit to himself. When Italy declared war on Canada as part of the Nazi Axis, people of Italian-Canadian descent, like Japanese-Canadians, fell into bad odour among other Canadians and the government of the day, not particularly influenced by human rights, dignity of the person, innocent until proven guilty inconveniences, conducted itself dishonourably, and many citizens of the country followed suit, discriminating against Italian-Canadians.
On a personal note, during that era, as a young child I vividly recall an Italian family living next door to my own immigrant family. As far as I can recall, there were good relations between the family and the rest of the people living on the street. I was invited, google-eyed as a little Jewish girl, to look at the Christmas tree with all its colourful ornaments and bright lights set up in their parlour. In that parlour sat the fat old grandmother dressed all in black, on a rocking chair, knitting, knitting, knitting. Beside her was a large container of brown-green wool, a military colour.
Another large receptacle contained the fruit of her labours. She spent her days knitting wool caps, gloves and scarves to be sent to the Allied troops. It was all she fiercely focused on. Her grandson, a little boy my age, was a frisky little fellow and he sometimes helped his grandmother prepare new skeins of wool to focus on more scarves, caps and mittens, all in that same brown-green vomitous colour. Their lives were never disturbed in any manner, and without doubt neither were many other loyal Italian-Canadians.
In 2000, a book was published by the University of Toronto Press, titled Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad. The book's editors were themselves Italian-Canadian: Roberto Perin, Franca Iacovetta and Angelo Principe. They were in pursuit of truth and reality and they presented it in the collection, mostly written by Italian contributors.
Of the 500 people of Italian descent, citizens of Canada who were singled out from the 112,000 Italian-Canadians in 1940 by the government of Canada, there were no victims of runaway racial hysteria. That group of 500 represented a hardcore faction of some three thousand card-carrying Canadian fascists. They did not suffer the ignominious and state-criminal punishment that was meted out to Japanese-Canadians during World War Two.
There were proven fascist ties among them, with investigations revealing their sympathies, documented and re-investigated by the RCMP. For the most part, those who had been interned for the duration of the war, were members of pro-Fascist "fraternal organizations" with warped loyalties. Many of those in the groups devoted to promoting and helping to finance the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia reported directly to the government of Italy.
"Historians have studied this topic in some detail, so we have answers. Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, edited by Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin and Angelo Principe is a comprehensive takedown of the claim that Canada waged a “war against ethnicity” when interning Italian-Canadians."Instead, the book finds that Benito Mussolini’s diplomats in Canada aggressively promoted fascism among Italian-Canadians and met with some success – although only a small minority of Italian-Canadians were involved in fascist organizations. Such people caught the attention of the RCMP, which compiled what historian Luigi Bruti Liberati describes in the book as “a detailed picture of fascist activity in Canada, from the largest urban centres to the most distant mining camps.:"[M]any who later professed their loyalty to Canada had in fact been fervent Fascists and had maintained their positions even during their internment,” Mr. Liberati writes."Michael Petrou, editor-in-chief of Open Canada, adjunct professor of history, Carleton University
Labels: Canada, Italian-Canadians, Justin Trudeau, World War II
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, June 05, 2021
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