Italian immigrants call for apology from Quebec government for past wrongdoings

After coming from Italy in 1959, Anna Campagna arrived in Montreal and lived in the Mile End.

Not far from there was Académie Saint-Georges, where Campagna, who was nine years old at the time, and her two brothers, eight and 10, had been enrolled by their father. A French school where the three siblings had to endure bullying because of their Italian origin, before the family was asked to transfer its children into an English school.

“I remember one exercise very vividly,” said Campagna. “I was counting in French. I had to stand up and count in French. I was really nervous, and I remember leaving out the number six in French and she said, ‘Assis-toi stupide italienne,’ so sit down, stupid Italian.”

“So this concept that Italians were going to take something away, that we were not intelligent, and we would hear all sorts of things in the schoolyards from the other children,” added Campagna.

“You know, le sales italiens, and we felt really excluded.”

As for her brothers, Campagna explained that life was even worse than for the girls, for herself.

She explained that this was because they had to fight almost every day.

“There was a heavy bullying that they had to combat with,” she explained. “And my older brother had to defend my younger brother, and he would often come home, you know, with a bleeding nose or his clothes torn.”

“What people don’t realize today was that during that era, the children of immigrants who are not Catholic were directed by our education system to go to English schools,” said Ralph Mastromonaco, Criminal Defence Lawyer And Social Advocate.

“And the irony is that the Italian immigration wave was comprised of people who were ostensibly majority Catholic, and we spoke a romance language, Italian, that was etymologically closer to French than English,” he added. “And we were basically told, and I was one of them, that, no, you’re an immigrant, so you go to the English school.”

Campagna is only one of many Italians who immigrated to Quebec with their parents after the Second World War and were denied the opportunity to attend French Catholic schools, said Mastromonaco who launched a petition asking the Quebec government to acknowledge what happened and express its regret.

“I think it’s important that as Quebecers that we own all of our history,” he explained. “Not just the selective excerpts that we own our accomplishments, but that we also acknowledge our shortcomings and say we got it wrong there.”

History professor Luca Sollai himself has come across many similar stories of prejudice and rejection.

He says there is not enough evidence of systemic discrimination against immigrants, but believes those stories are extremely important in shedding light on a specific time in Quebec history to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

“It’s important, and I completely understand that there is a need to testify that,” said Sollai. “And that could be a great, great lesson from the past for the future, because, you know, the topic of the language is still very, very important in the Quebec society.”