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If you lived in a village perched at the top of a hill, typical of
those found in southern Italy in the 1950s, your return home from the
fields would take you along winding, undulating paths and up steps.
The route would set the pace: it would be impossible to hurry. But
that would give you plenty of
time to
meet people
and engage in conversation: greet relatives, chat with friends or watch
your children at play. Your journey home would mirror your life
throughout the year, when economic activities would be interrupted
by numerous secular and religious celebrations, or work-related
festivities, at harvest or threshing time, or when a pig was slaughtered.
Drawn to Canadian cities, with their grids of wide streets and
boulevards, Italian immigrants were fascinated, as we are today, by the
advantages of speed
and the possibility of getting around quickly and obtaining things
right away. But they did not forget the moments of respite that
punctuated their lives in Italy. Perhaps their cafés and patios,
the parks where they play bocce and the neighbourhoods through
which their processions travel are ways of recreating the sinewy lanes
of their villages. Perhaps this is all a clever means of getting us to
slow down
and be patient, of inviting us to take the time to talk to people,
listen to them and perhaps weave the roots of a
community.
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