“Generation Z on Sports and Culture in Canada: Andrew Raponi, Brittany Cornacchia, and Bryson Maclean” ~ by Nathan Laird

A Record of the Coloured Wonders

Nathan Laird in a controlled study with other undergraduate students of ITAL2P98: Italians in Canada and Italy-Canada Relations at Brock University in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MLLC) interviewed friends from Generation Z for his study of Ethnicity and Gender Inequality in Sports in Canada. Andrew Raponi and Brittany Cornacchia have an Italian background while Bryson Maclean is an eighth-generation residence of the farming community of Nova Scotia. Both Bryson and Nathan play baseball at Brock University.

Laird also compares interviewees of Italian heritage with an interviewee from outside the community as Jenna Filice did. In his initial interviews in which he took notes, Nathan learned that Bryson’s great-grandfather played baseball with the Coloured Wonders and decided to then conduct a recorded interview to share this unique family experience. This interview documents this baseball team from the 1930s. Students in the course were unable to find more information about this team, and we believe this is an important documentation that this team existed during the Great Depression. We believe this oral history is significant to include in this issue even though this is an Italian-Canadian research platform and hope this will peak interest to research the history of this baseball team. I did find information on All-Black baseball teams in Halifax and Nova Scotia from 1949-1957, but not a record of anything early than 1949. The oral history that Laird shares here with us is timely as discussions that Chatham All-Black Baseball team has been overlooked again by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. This initial research is shared below.