Regina's Italian club celebrates 50th anniversary by honoring founding members and their immigration stories
CBC
It's a chilly, overcast September afternoon in Regina, but inside the G. Marconi Italian Club, there's plenty of colour and joyful banter.
Members are preparing for Festa Italiana, a jam-packed celebration for the club's 50th anniversary. The club originally opened in March of 1972, but members were unable to celebrate the milestone earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're celebrating it by recognizing our founders. It's amazing the sacrifices they made building the Italian club back then. Fifty-two years ago they each put in $100. If you can imagine, back then that was a lot of money," said Pat Fiacco, chairman of the Festa Italiana and a first-generation Canadian.
The founding members put in much more than just money. They also contributed countless hours of labour, volunteering and fundraising, all so they could have a place to visit and bond with fellow Italians in the early days of their time in Canada.
"The club [gave] us this feeling like home. A place we could go and see a lot of friends. A place we can celebrate things," said co-founding member Rosina Fiorante. "There was just this togetherness, this joy."
Fiorante came to Canada by boat all by herself at the age of 18 in 1956. She came from Civitanova del Sannio, in the Italian region of Molise.
"In our town there weren't many jobs for us. So my father had already emigrated to Canada. And then he called my brother after a year or two. After four years, I came to Canada," Fiorante said.
"My journey was pretty hard. I was a young girl traveling all on my own with no siblings."
Once in Alberta, Fiorante worked as a farmer, but she struggled to learn English.
"I didn't understand one word. So at night time they sent me in this little room and I sat there and I said, 'Why did I come here?'"
Fiorante said her fellow farmers eventually made her feel comfortable, and her brother and sister helped her learn English.
Fiorante later met her future husband, fellow Italian immigrant Domenico Fiorante. The pair moved to Regina to find work. There they set down roots and had children.
Lucia Ricci immigrated to Regina from Cagnavno Barano, Puglia, Italy in 1961. She too came by sea, on a ship called Vulcania.
Ricci still has a picture from the day she, her siblings and her mother boarded the ship in Naples.