{"id":6522,"date":"2023-08-09T08:57:18","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T12:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/?p=6522"},"modified":"2023-08-09T08:57:20","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T12:57:20","slug":"living-in-a-1950s-italian-time-capsule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/09\/living-in-a-1950s-italian-time-capsule\/","title":{"rendered":"LIVING IN A 1950\u2019S ITALIAN TIME CAPSULE"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Vanessa Sacco<\/em><\/strong> for Transformation Canada<\/em><\/strong> – Growing up, whenever someone asked me what my background was, I always said \u201cItalian-French-Canadian\u201d. While I was born in Toronto, and have a bigger family on my French-Canadian side, I still always said Italian first. This was not something I was prompted into saying, but something I felt. Maybe it was my brown eyes and dark curly hair, the ability to tan easily, my booming voice, or big sweeping hand gestures whenever I spoke. But whatever the reason, it wasn\u2019t just Italian I felt, it was a specific Italian, a 1950\u2019s Italian.<\/p>

\"\"
Vanessa Sacco and her grandparents<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/div>

While growing up, the major influences on my thinking were my Italian grandparents (nonni<\/em>), Silvio Sacco and Lidia (Pichelli) Sacco. With their young family, they immigrated to Canada in June of 1958 and settled in Welland, Ontario. My father was only eighteen months old at the time. My nonni left their home and farm in Colledara, in the province of Teramo, Abruzzo, to forge a better life for themselves and their young family.<\/p>

This notion of being a 1950\u2019s Italian wasn\u2019t introduced to me until my cousins from Italy came to visit for the first time in 2004. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>

\"\"
Nonno Silvio standing proudly in his cantina, filled with traditional Italian meat preserves and tomato sauce, in 2013. \u00a0Source: Courtesy of the Sacco family.<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure>

These three cousins grew up in a suburb of Rome. When my cousins walked into my nonni\u2019s house for the first time, they were in awe of what a \u2018blast from the past\u2019 their home was. Good thing we had long since removed the protective plastic covering from the couches! What my Italian cousins saw was a family who left Italy in the late 1950\u2019s trying to preserve their identity in whatever way they could. Among their observations were:<\/a><\/p>

<\/p>

\u201cThey still make their own wine?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWow, look how big this garden is!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThis cantina has everything! Look at that prosciutto hanging and all this sauce!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThey make their own cheese? Che figo!<\/em> (Cool!)\u201d<\/p>

Little did they know how difficult (read \u2018not entirely legal\u2019) it was to get unpasteurized milk in Ontario in order to make this cool cheese.<\/p>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>

All these things seemed normal to me and any other Italian-Canadian person I knew, but speaking with my cousins, it became clear that these practices were more of a history lesson and something to cherish. Italian culture and lifestyles continued to evolve over time, however, to those who left in the 1950\u2019s to start a new life in a very different country, holding on to these traditions was something that felt comfortable, familiar and safe, while living so far from their native land.<\/p>

Read more here<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Vanessa Sacco for Transformation Canada – Growing up, whenever someone asked me what my background was, I always said \u201cItalian-French-Canadian\u201d. While I was born in Toronto, and have a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1312,1399,1330],"class_list":{"0":"post-6522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-italian-immigration","9":"tag-italian-traditions","10":"tag-italian-canadians-2"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Time-Capsule-Vanessa-Sacco-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6529,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions\/6529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}