This website is used as a complimentary aide to the book "The Puzzled Canadian". It contains more of the authors views and history. Although it is more informal than the book, we hope that this is a welcome companion to our words on paper.
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Well in my family both of my parents were born in Southern Italy. My mother moved to Canada when she was four years old with my Nonna. My father moved to Canada when he was 15 years old with his mother, brother Joe, and his two sisters Mary and Sara. My Mother and I moved to Thunder Bay. My dad moved to Schreiber, Ontario. On Dec. 24th of that year, when they fist arrived to Canada, they had no knowledge of snow and were basically wearing shorts, and a T-shirt in the middle of a northern Ontario Winter. My last name is Commisso, but my fist name is Cindy. I do look Italian and understand and speak Italian . . . therefore, a majority of the people I know classify me as Italian not as a Canadian. I actually classify myself as an Italian- Canadian mainly because I was born in Canada, but I do speak Italian at home and very little English . . . mainly because While I’m in University I do live with my Mothers parents that a majority of the time solely speaks Italian.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
In Katalin Szepesi's article, "I Want to Call Myself Canadian", the author explores how people have labeled her Hungarian simply because of her name. I think that it is telling of who we are as Canadians when we want to assign foreign names to a foreign country. No matter how long a person or a family has been in this country, if they have a different name they are labeled foreign. I think that this can be certainly seen in Thunder Bay where you have people of Finnish descent changing their names from Maki to Hill so that they can fit into the Anglo-Saxon model. Should we really have to go to such extremes in order to fit in? Why do we have the compulsion to assign labels to things?
In my own family, it would be hard to trace the roots of my lineage. My grandparents were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the early 1900s. They emigrated to Canada in the search of a better life in the 1930s, but what they found was a nation full of prejudice. They always had to use family connections or the Croatian Fraternal Society in order to stay afloat and it was only until my grandfather found work in the shipyards that the family prospered. However, when my dad and his siblings were born, they were obviously Canadian but were assigned the label "Yugoslavian", because that was the area that my grandparents came from and that was the nation that was created after World War One. I, however, am Canadian but I often label myself as Croatian. I'm not, I'm German, English and Croatian but either because of my father's family or the Croatian culture which I've been immersed in, I fallen in to the trap.
Just like Szepesi, I remember people trying to pronounce and spell my name. I remember myself thinking that it's not hard, it's phonetic. ROOK-A-VEENA, is that too hard? My last name has already been adapted to a more Anglo-Saxon language, the way it is pronounced in Croatia is much different than how it is pronounced here. How much accommodation do people need? I wonder how much exposure these "butcherers of names" have with other cultures?
Why do we describe Canada as being a mosaic when we almost purposefully separate and distinguish between different groups? What does it matter?
In my own family, it would be hard to trace the roots of my lineage. My grandparents were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the early 1900s. They emigrated to Canada in the search of a better life in the 1930s, but what they found was a nation full of prejudice. They always had to use family connections or the Croatian Fraternal Society in order to stay afloat and it was only until my grandfather found work in the shipyards that the family prospered. However, when my dad and his siblings were born, they were obviously Canadian but were assigned the label "Yugoslavian", because that was the area that my grandparents came from and that was the nation that was created after World War One. I, however, am Canadian but I often label myself as Croatian. I'm not, I'm German, English and Croatian but either because of my father's family or the Croatian culture which I've been immersed in, I fallen in to the trap.
Just like Szepesi, I remember people trying to pronounce and spell my name. I remember myself thinking that it's not hard, it's phonetic. ROOK-A-VEENA, is that too hard? My last name has already been adapted to a more Anglo-Saxon language, the way it is pronounced in Croatia is much different than how it is pronounced here. How much accommodation do people need? I wonder how much exposure these "butcherers of names" have with other cultures?
Why do we describe Canada as being a mosaic when we almost purposefully separate and distinguish between different groups? What does it matter?
