By Tom MacGregor for Legion – In the Piazza Dante across from Ottawa’s St. Anthony of Padua Church, where services are held in English and Italian, is a memorial wall with two columns of names: one for the names of local Italian Canadians who died serving Canada during the Second World War; the other of local men who were detained in internment camps.  

In the early days of the war, the federal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King passed the War Measures Act and implemented the Defence of Canada Regulations. The regulations gave the government the authority to detain anyone deemed to be “acting in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the State.” 

In 1940, Italy declared war on Great Britain and France, and thereby their allies, including Canada. This immediately made some people question the trustworthiness of Italians who had recently come to Canada. Indeed, several Italian fascist groups and newspapers (namely Il Bollettino and the Dopolavoro) existed in Canada. And estimates suggest about 3,000 Italian Canadians were members of fascist groups at the time. However, in many cases these were memberships of convenience rather than ideology. 

Still, some 31,000 Italian Canadians were labelled enemy aliens. They lost jobs, their property was confiscated and their businesses vandalized. In addition, more than 600 were arrested and sent to internment camps in Petawawa, Ont., Kananaskis, Alta., and Minto, N.B. In the end, however, no Italian Canadian was ever convicted of crimes against the state.

It was a great injustice, like the treatment of Canadians of German and Ukrainian descent during the First World War and of Japanese descent during the Second World War. 

“For King, it was always easier to do nothing, to sacrifice a minority to satisfy the demands of the majority,” wrote historian Tim Cook in his book Warlords, referring to the refusal to accept Jewish refugees from the war.

Some 31,000 Italian Canadians were labelled enemy aliens. More than 600 were sent to internment camps.

On May 27, 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose in the House of Commons to apologize to the Italian Canadian community for the internments.

“During the Second World War, 31,000 Italian Canadians were labelled enemy aliens, and then fingerprinted, scrutinized and forced to report to local registrars once a month,” said Trudeau. “Just over 600 men were arrested and sent to internment camps, and four women were detained and sent to jail.

The post Reflections on the internment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War first appeared on Panoram Italia.

Trudeau to deliver apology to Italian-Canadians for internment during Second World War

CTVNews – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to deliver a formal apology in the House of Commons today for the internment of Canadians of Italian descent during the Second World War. In a news release earlier this month, Trudeau said the Italian Canadian community has carried the weight of the unjust policy of internment during the war. After Italy declared war against Canada in 1940, Canada interned more than 600 people of Italian heritage and declared about 31,000 of them as “enemy aliens.”

Opinion: Trudeau’s apology to Italian-Canadians must be viewed in context

NationalPost – Honesty demands we view WWII internments not through the myopic lens of racial discrimination, but through an understanding of the myriad complexities inherent to the time.

“The Italian-Canadian Community dedicates this memorial to the more than 93,000 Canadians who took part in the Italian Campaign of World War II. We admire them, we are grateful for them, we honour them.”

These eloquent and moving words are inscribed on a beautiful memorial, unveiled in 2016 in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, that pays tribute to the tens of thousands of Canadians who fought Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) and Mussolini’s Fascist armies in Italy between July 1943 and May 1945.

Trudeau apology to Italian Canadians: It’s never too late to do the right thing

Toronto Star – More than 70 years after the Canadian government forced 31,000 Italian Canadians to register as enemy aliens and interned 600 of them without charges during the Second World War, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will formally apologize on behalf of Canada on Thursday in the House of Commons.

Reaction in the Italian community, of course, is mixed, a reflection of the community itself. We are not a cultural or social monolith, we are like so many other citizens who trace their heritage to a faraway land, part of a diverse Canadian mosaic who have interesting relationships with the ties that bind.

During the 1940s — like the 1900s when my great grandfather Leonardo first settled in Toronto — Italians were a growing part of the emerging story of this British colonial experience that was Canada. Or was that the French colonial experience? Either way, it was an experience that was adding multiple cultures under those umbrellas, but right on top of the traditional land of Indigenous people, who were then also muted from its narrative.

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