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Emigration from Friuli Venezia Giulia to Canada
The new France. Canada, an old French colony: emigration between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Javier Grossutti
In 1873 Gustave Bossange, an official of the Canadian government and an agent of the Allan Shipping Lines, published in Paris a propaganda pamphlet in Italian entitled: La nuova Francia. Il Canada, antica colonia francese. Appello alle classi operaie (The new France. Canada, an old French colony. An appeal to the working classes). Bossange described Canada as an enormous region of mostly French language and society, where Italians would find all they could hope to find in France without having to face the competition of French workers. The affinity of language and culture was greatly highlighted, in the hope that this ethnic closeness would reassure potential Italian emigrants. The better guarantees that Canada could offer as opposed to Latin America, and the comparatively shorter duration of the sea crossing (between 10 and 12 days instead of the 25 or even 30 days needed to reach Brazil and Argentina) could also represent determining factors in the choice of migratory destination.
In the pamphlet by Bossange, Paris and Le Havre were the two meeting points of Italian emigrants. Departure was in Paris, from the Gare St. Lazare, at 10.50 in the evening on a Wednesday, to arrive in Le Havre the following morning at 6. Philippe Winterter, an innkeeper, in rue de Percanville n. 20, received the emigrants at the station and took them to his inn, then to the offices of the Canadian government, at number 51 Quai d’Orleans. Here the official of the Canadian government was in charge of certifying the contracts and transferring the luggage on board. On Friday the passengers were taken on board and left Le Havre for Liverpool, where they arrived on Sunday. About ten days later they finally reached Canadian soil.
However, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, there were very few Friulians moving to Canada. In the three years from 1876 to 1878, the Italian authorities reported that only fourteen left for “new France” (and that is without distinguishing emigrants heading to Canada from those heading to America), and in the almost quarter of a century from 1879 to 1902 there were just thirty one. A year before, on the occasion of the visit to Udine of the Friulian, Giuseppe Solimbergo, the consul general of Italy in Canada, the daily newspaper “La Patria del Friuli” reported some of the comments made by the consul on the characteristics and consistency of the Italian community in this country of North America: “Our emigrants are generally poor; in Montreal the established Italian colony is made up of around 2.000 inhabitants; in Toronto about 600; a couple of hundred in Ottawa and fewer in Quebec. Then there are some settlements, of various dimensions, spread around the province of Ontario, in Winnipeg, in Manitoba; and larger ones, with a higher population density, in English Columbia, particularly on the island of Vancouver, where 8.000 individuals have been reported apparently mistakenly; in any case however it is certain that there are some thousands. It is impossible to determine with precision the overall number”.
During the first months of 1901, a considerable number of articles published by Friulian newspapers such as the “Giornale di Udine” and “La Patria del Friuli” discouraged those possibly interested in moving to this country of North America by informing them of the “extremely serious consequences” caused by emigration to Canada . The “Giornale di Udine” reported the first outcomes of a research started in February 1901 by the “Corriere della Sera” on a considerably large and mysterious flow of emigration towards the Swiss border.
The emigrants, nearly all men, gathered in the town of Chiasso and from there they continued their way to the north. In Chiasso, with agents belonging to a mysterious society, they signed a contract for jobs to be carried out in Canada, where it was said that this huge stream of emigrants [approximately 2.500] was headed.
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