Ciao, Little Italy!

I grew up a member of a large Italian family in Toronto. My father Frank's parents immigrated through Pier 21 in Halifax to Ontario in the 1950s. My Nonno Dominic first worked in the upholstering industry, and my Nonna Maria worked as a seamstress. Although my mother is of British descent, I was brought up very Italian-Canadian. Both my parents speak Italian -- not to mention all of my extended family -- and I grew up hyper-aware and proud of my heritage.

We make our own wine, sausages, prosciutto and tomato sauce every year, and although making sauce in my grandparents' garage was fun and exciting, it wasn't a walk in the park. We were expected to work. Everyone had a specific job -- whether it was turning the crank on the puree machine or putting mason jars in the boiler -- and if you didn't do it right, that year's sauce would turn out bad. In Italy, my family made sauce out of necessity. By maintaining the tradition, my family in Toronto also preserved our Italian culture, a feat that has shaped me to this day.

With this in mind, I was intrigued as to how Commercial Drive -- a neighbourhood that was at one time Little Italy, Vancouver -- had evolved into a culturally eclectic street. Did the Canadian sons and daughters of Italian immigrants grow apart from the places and people that raised them, and assimilate into a nation that identifies with a mosaic of cultures? Or was it still home to the type of die-hard Italians I had grown up with?

A labour of love

Ray Culos, a passionate historian and chronicler of Italian heritage in Vancouver, was happy to talk to me. "Italians brought to Canada a quality that was required," says Culos. "The Brits, the French, the Germans; their whole being was based on what they had. In Italy, it was the sun, the gardens, the family and a desire to do good."

Culos distinctly remembers the selflessness and hospitality of the Italians he knew from his youth. "Italians invited you in, had wine on their table, wonderful cooking, and offered love and affection to all friends without any encumbrances like 'you owe me this' or 'you have to pay me for that.' It was generosity."

Growing up, he noticed that Vancouver's Italian immigrants were able to complete manual labour work much faster than the average Canadian. "There isn't any other nationality that is better in terms of the effort they made from a labourer's point of view," Culos says. "Lots equalled them -- many immigrants came here to work and they achieved this -- but immigrants from other countries came with an education and an expertise they could develop quickly."

Culos explains that this reputation also provoked discrimination against Italian-Canadians in Vancouver. In the early 20th century, his grandfather, Nonno Sam, started a family Italian food importing business in Vancouver's Little Italy. Nonno Sam, who was five feet tall, came upon an English police officer on his way to work one morning. The officer patted Sam on the head, saying something like "it's great to see Italians working so hard, as is your place in life." This greatly disheartened Nonno Sam. In those days the English were the dominant ethnic group -- they were the legitimate Canadians of the day. They had command of the language, and so they ran all the major businesses. "My dad said that when applying for jobs, after he told them he was Italian and from Union Street, it was often the case that he didn't get that job," says Culos.

Custom tailor finds a new fit

Renzo Montagliani immigrated with his family to Canada in 1956 from Celano, Italy. At that time, "you were an immigrant, a W.O.P" he says, using a derogatory term referring to Italian immigrants "without papers." Renzo explains that instead of doing as Italians he knew had done, immigrating to South America or Australia where one had to be a farmer, he chose the manifest destiny North American lifestyle, using what he had to offer, namely his skills as a tailor, to rise to success in Canada.

Renzo & Co Custom Tailors was a landmark Italian business in Vancouver for over 50 years, and an atrirum through which Italian culture coursed. Renzo sits across from me at a round white coffee table in the very same room where he tailored the suits of Vancouver's successful business men. But today I am sipping an espresso instead of being fitted for a custom pinstripe suit. Now in his 70s, Renzo sits beside his son Andre who runs the coffee shop that bears his name. The old man playfully hits his son with his scarf, endearingly condemning him for never becoming fluent in Italian.

"My father's business was a coffee shop already," Andre explains. He recalls his father had a high-quality espresso machine in the back of his shop for personal use. "It was great, instead of working I could drink coffee and talk with my friends," Renzo laughs, winking at me. It is these friends and clientele who, being partial to Renzo's respected work as a tailor, are now patrons of Renzo's coffee shop.

However, Renzo's Coffee has less of a traditional Italian persona than Renzo's Tailors. Although Renzo is Celanesi, Andre's mother is not of Italian descent. Growing up in Vancouver's East Side, Andre attended school with other Italians, but also had a variety of ethnically different friends including some Ukrainians whom he "could really identify with." He explains that English is his first language, though he can speak Japanese. He had more difficulty with Italian, but spoke it decently with his grandparents until they passed away when he was 11.

Andre seems exhilarated by diversity of culture, having lived in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Milan, where he found inspiration for his Vancouver café. The new Renzo's is fittingly revamped with a mix of modern and historical fixtures. The old weathered turquoise tailor's sign hangs framed on the wall behind the bar made from recycled building materials. The minimalist wood panelling on the front of the bar is much like that you would see at a modern Milanese coffee bar and is made from used pine beetle wood, Andre says.

With the timing of his father's retirement came an opportunity for Andre to honour Renzo's wish that the family business stay open. Andre combined his experience in the service industry and his "Italian sensibilities" with what he had seen in New York and Milan coffee shops to create a business compatible with the now multicultural Commercial Drive.

Renzo says the Drive has changed for the better. Leaning in close to me while Andre talks to an enthusiastic regular, Renzo tells me that between his struggle with the English language and Little Italy's poorer socioeconomic status in those days, he feels that gentrification and multiculturalism have improved the neighbourhood. He prefers the present day well lit safe streets of a Drive that is home to an array of different immigrant businesses, a place where all ethnic cultures are celebrated.

Italian sausage, and poutine

Andre is not the only second generation Italian-Canadian to redefine his father's Italian business on Commercial Drive. Carmine Falcone, owner of Falconetti's East Side Grill, transformed his father's famous Italian butchery into a more Canadian establishment. But he hasn't changed everything about his father's business. Falconetti's main attraction is still his father's famous sausages, so loved by Vancouver's Little Italy.

Pasquale Falcone came to Vancouver in his 20s, opening his butchery in the mid 1960s in the storefront that is home to Falconetti's today. Falcone tells me his father is famous in Vancouver's Italian community, and his sausages well-loved by its first generation immigrants. "I'll meet second generation Italian Canadians that have memories of their parents bringing them to my father's butcher shop." Many of those customers who came to Pasquale for his distinctly Italian product now come to Falconetti's for the same reason.

But Falcone tells me he doesn't feel potently Italian. He explains that there are many men more Italian than him, Italian-Canadians like my father who went to schools in Toronto with upwards of 75 per cent Italian students, and who grew up in almost exclusively Italian neighbourhoods. "I do consider myself Italian," he says, "but I feel very much Canadian."

This aspect of Falcone's identity is reflected in his business. The restaurant is not exclusively Italian, but specializes in a variety of dishes. "The business was inspired by my dad's Italian sausages. But we also offer a Thai chicken, Yucatan chicken and Polish sausage." Like Commercial Drive, Falconetti's is eclectic in what they do. "We even have poutine."

Falcone's success can be attributed to his devotion to his Italian roots and a willingness to evolve. "We just built on what my dad started, which was an authentic product." Maybe the ability to take where you came from and turn it into something you can share with a diverse group of cultures is what it means to be Canadian.

Ray agreed with this notion of Canadian identity as a multicultural patch-work quilt. "Trudeau told us not to be Canadian but to be our heritage. So you're Italian, or you're French, or you're English." This seems to be the way Canadian identity panned out for the 21st century.

That family feeling

Personally, I feel strongly that I didn't grow up fully Canadian. There is something distinct about my identity that making sausages from pig intestines and distilling grape stems into grappa with my Zio Mario, and canning my nonno's home grown tomatoes every year can attest to. My father Frank says, "it is a good thing to recognize where you come from and know a little bit about the culture and the language because you can relate it back to your own identity."

With growing diversity, globalization and crossing of cultures in Canada, it can be really difficult to maintain your Italian identity on a practical level. "The easiest is when everyone is living the culture," says my father. "It's not practical to keep living the way your family lived two or three generations ago. On a nostalgic level, and on somewhat of a practical level, you can still do things like make tomato sauce and have the celebrations from the old days." But to live that life as the degrees of separation between you and the source of the culture increase "gets harder and harder as the generations go on."

Still, in the heart of Commercial Drive there is a family business that stands as a resilient flag of Italian values, and a staple of transformation while preserving Italian culture at its axis.

Vincenzo Murdocco is one of three Italian brothers who are the charismatic proprietors of Cafe Calabria on Commercial Drive, East Vancouver. "When you walk in here it's like a time warp; it's Italy," he says. "We saved you $1500, if you want to speak or practice your Italian we'll work with you, and the best thing is if you come back tomorrow the same person's here -- and that makes you feel good." When Vince's father, Francesco Murdocco, opened the café in 1976, every store on Commercial Drive had something to do with Italians. Today, the café is one of the last authentic Italian cafés in Vancouver, and one of the only original Italian family businesses left on the Drive.

Hospitality and an unwavering attention to consistency have been cornerstones of Cafe Calabria. "If you meet my father, you'll understand why the business is successful," Vince explains. "My father would treat people the way that their parents would treat them. Like if you had bad manners or you came in with a mohawk, he'd tell you what he thought just the way your parents would, and people loved that."

As I sit in the café, I know that he's right. It is the feeling of being part of the family that makes you feel so welcome in Cafe Calabria. Just like at home, there are rules at this café.