The Memoirs of Giovanni Veltri

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

Giovanni Veltri was a Calabrian peasant from the village of Grimaldi who came to North America in 1895 in search of a better life. His experiences in the New World are in many ways typical of that wave of immigrants from Europe at the turn of the century. Giovanni and his brother Vincenzo anglicized their surnames to “Welch” and soon became labour contractors for the railway companies. The pattern of immigration to Canada and return to Italy is not unusual, but few such immigrants wrote of their experiences and so Veltri’s memoirs are a valuable source for the history of Canadian labour, of the Canadian railways, of Northern Ontario’s development, of immigration, and indeed of the years 1897 to 1931, when Veltri lived in Canada, which is the period covered by the memoirs.

Despite the memoirs’ potential importance, however, they are only framed by Robert Harney’s brief preface and a short introduction by John Potestio, who is translator and editor of the volume. The translator is clearly not familiar with the ground covered by Veltri: for example, Missoula, in the state of Montana, becomes “Missouri.” The chief defect of the work, however, is the back of an interpretive essay which should do more than simply set the context of the memoirs but also indicate to a reader just what Giovanni Veltri accomplished in his meagre attempt at writing. The memoir itself can seem rather dry, with lists of labour crews and descriptions of work on particular sections of track. Without greater guidance from the editor, it is unlikely a lay reader will gain much.

While The Memoirs of Giovanni Veltri is among the few writings left by first-generation Canadians at the turn of the century, and as such is a useful resource for students of Canadian history, most readers are likely to be left unmoved by this dry recitation provided by a writer of no literary pretensions.