Life, Parents & Immigration
An image of Tony Ferraro taken by myself, Yasameen Tareq in an interview conducted on on November 8th, 2019.
Anthony "Tony" Ferraro è un uomo italiano di 97 anni. Viene dal meridione d'Italia da una comunità calabrese chiamata San Giorgio Morgeto. Arrivò in Canada la prima volta con i suoi genitori nel 1925 all'età di due anni per visitare il fratello di suo padre come turista. Suo zio allora viveva a Wellington Ontario. Rimasero lì per circa due anni, fino a quando la madre di Tony ebbe nostalgia di casa, così suo padre le disse di tornare in Italia mentre lui sarebbe rimasto in Canada per cercare di guadagnare soldi. Tony ha dichiarato che lui e la sua famiglia hanno trovato il Canada molto freddo, rispetto al paese caldo da cui provenivano. Questo è uno dei motivi per cui lui e sua madre tornarono in Italia, non sopportavano il freddo. Afferma anche che a sua madre mancava la famiglia perché vivevano con i nonni di Tony, dalla parte della madre. Rimasero in Italia per 2 anni, dove nacque suo fratello, fino al 1935, quando il padre di Tony li contattò perché aveva un lavoro in Canada, e inviò soldi a sua madre che li usò per pagare il viaggio in Canada. Suo padre aveva fatto molti lavori nella sua vita, uno di questi era vendere blocchi di ghiaccio, che raccoglievano da una diga vicino alla Alan’s Rd, dove il ghiaccio si congelava. Più tardi nell'intervista Tony afferma con orgoglio che suo padre faceva 10 centesimi l'ora con questo lavoro, una quantità che era di enorme valore in quel momento. Tony ricorda come è arrivato a Toronto in quello che considerava un viaggio di lusso “we never came in first class you know, the name of the liner, was Italy’s best liner: the Rex, and we came in the third class, and to us, it was like we were in heaven because we never saw white bread, till we came to this country, always corn bread over there, never had white bread. And we told my dad, when we first came here, make sure he buys white bread, because we’ve never seen white bread before.”
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Anthony “Tony” Ferraro is a lovely 97-year-old Italian man. He is from Southern Italy; a community in Calabria called San Giorgio Morgeto. The first time he came to Canada was with his parents in 1925 as a two-year-old to visit his uncle who had been living in Wellington Ontario at the time. They stayed there for about two years until Tony’s mother became too homesick, so his dad had told her to go back to Italy while he stayed in Canada to try to make a solid income. Tony stated that he and his family had found Canada to be very cold in comparison to the temperate whether of Italy. This was one of the reasons why he and his mother had gone back to Italy; they could not stand the bite of the Canadian cold. Tony also states that his mother had missed her family because they used to live with Tony’s grandparents, from his mother’s side, before they came to Canada. Tony and his mother had stayed in Italy for 2 years, where his mother had given birth to his brother, until 1935 when Tony’s dad had contacted them because he had found a job and was making a proper income in Canada, his father had also sent money over to his mother who had used it to pay for the trip to Canada.
Tony’s father had worked many different jobs throughout his life, one of them was selling ice blocks, which he and the other workers used to collected from a dam which was located near Alan’s road where big chunks of ice would freeze. Later in the interview Tony proudly states that his father was making 10 cents an hour with this job, an amount that was of tremendous value at that time; Tony explained that he is very proud of his father and everything he had done for Tony and his family throughout the years. Tony reminisces on how he came to Toronto in what he considered a luxurious trip which his father had worked hard to afford “we never came in first class you know, the name of the liner, was Italy’s best liner: the Rex, and we came in the third class, and to us, it was like we were in heaven because we never saw white bread, till we came to this country, always corn bread over there, never had white bread. And we told my dad, when we first came here, make sure he buys white bread, because we never seen white bread before.”
