In Search of Paradise: The Odyssey of an Italian Family

Venera Fazio is a social worker and freelance writer in Rothesay, N.B.

Between 1950 and 1971, close to half a million Italians left their
war-torn birthplace in search of a better life in Canada. Susan Gabori
spent several years interviewing a number of these immigrants. She chose
the story of one family as the centrepiece of this dramatized record of
Italian immigrant oral history.

The story of the Pace family begins during the war. Franco, the oldest
son, remains in an Italian seminary while the rest of the family moves
to the African Italian colony of Libya. There Vincenzo, the father, is
taken prisoner by the British; Roberto and Angelina, age 8 and 6, are
sent to a fascist children’s colony in northern Italy; Teresa, the
mother, is forced home to her native town with the infant Michele. Eight
years later, the family is reunited. In the early 1950s, they emigrate
to Toronto—where, instead of paradise, they encounter disappointments
and prejudice.

The story of the Pace family makes for fascinating social history. The
author has an ear for storytelling. She is less successful in creating a
believable, or memorable, family. For readers interested in the
Italian-Canadian experience and Italian history, the anecdotes and the
historical details remain vivid, while the members of the Pace family
recede into the background.