Memory and Identity: Re-creating Cultural Identity After Immigration

Written in English and Italian. Twenty-two clubs and associations created by Italian-Canadian/Laziali immigrants, who have, over the last sixty years in Ontario, Canada, formed a social environment and maintained their cultural identity. Through interviews, minutes, commemorative booklets and photos, the author reconstructed and documented the journey and reality of these organizations, offering the reader a piece of Italian life transported to Canada. The attachment to place of origin, still vibrant today, manifests itself through the recreation of popular traditions from the place of origin. This work, unique in its content, describes a very real cultural legacy preserved thanks to the sentiment of those who desire to remember their past. The struggle of integration, the strong desire to stay united and the necessity to maintain relationships have recreated these micro-worlds, which once entered leave us intrigued.