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Gary and Cynthia Pagniello, interviewed by Sarah Anne Dargie
Abstract:
The Pagnellos
I sat down for an interview with Gary and Cynthia Pagniello to ask some questions about Gary’s Italian heritage. Gary suffers from dementia and while he struggles with his short-term memory, he maintains a vivid recollection of his family’s past. His wife, Cynthia, mostly spoke for him, sharing the stories and information with me that he had shared with her throughout their years together. His grandparents, Giuseppe and Lorenza Pagnello, immigrated from Italy in the early 1900s and were the first Italians to settle in Markham, Ontario. This is what they shared with me.
Interview:
“So, what brought your grandparents to Canada?”
G: “Better living.”
C: “To raise a family, yeah. I would think more prosperity. It was a bad time in Italy, like in the early 1900s. Yeah, so it would be for better advantages for their children, and to raise a family I would think.”
“Were they acquainted with anyone in Canada before they arrived?”
G: “Um, I think that there was Sigamele.”
C: “I think Sigamele. Sigamele was here. Sigamele was grandpa Pagnello’s sister, and I think she was already here. So, then they followed her out.”
“Where did they first arrive and when? Like, where in Canada?”
G: “Was it Toronto?”
C: (both laughing) “No, they couldn’t come into Toronto, Gary. They would have to come into Quebec, I think. Quebec or Halifax then, I think. So, it’s probably, they came into Quebec City.”
“They lived in Markham, didn’t they?”
C: “They lived in Markham for the, yeah, for the majority of their lives. But they eventually – they came, and they lived in downtown Toronto on Clinton Street.”
“Do you know the means of transit they took to get to Canada?”
C: “On a big boat. And, I think we have the name of the boat too, I looked it up and I’m sure…”
(she began going through papers at the desk)
C: (referring to Gary) “His grandfather’s name was Giuseppe, and his grandmother’s name was Lorenza. Now, Gary’s father, Antonio, was born in 1917, and he was the first one that was born here. So, I think they must have come around right after… when was the first World War? 1914 to 18? Yeah, so they must have come just before the War.”
G: (looking at his father’s baptism certificate) “See, the name (Pagnello) used to be spelt differently. There was a mistake on a birth certificate, that caused – that was my father that got the mistake. And then our line of Pagniellos…”
C: “He was the only one that had the ‘i’ in his name. The only one out of… how many siblings did he have? I don’t know.”
“So now, your family has an “i” added to their name?”
G: “Yeah. Now everybody thinks that it’s fancier than it actually is. (laughing) ‘The Pagniellos’ instead of Pagnello”.
“So, do you know who all came on the boat to Canada? Like, was there a whole group of them, or was it just the two of them…?”
C: “See I know about my family… but it’s strange, Italian families, they don’t talk much about that, they keep it all in. Never supposed to tell anybody anything, except your own family.”
G: (laughing) “They are rolling in their graves”.
C: (laughing) “They are so closed-mouthed, they don’t say nothing! But there were two children born before they came and that was – they had a son, Peter, and a daughter, Anne. And I think they must have come. But I don’t know whether they all travelled together. I think they didn’t. Because I have seen Lorenza’s thing, and she came before Giuseppe came. I don’t know why, but he was travelling back and forth to Argentina with, um, beef or something, wasn’t he?”
G: “Beef, yeah. (laughing) Didn’t have to go all that way, we got it here.”
C: “Anyways, I don’t know.”
“Do you know any details about their immigration experience? Any stories you could tell?”
C: “The only one I could remember is what Alice told us. That Gary’s grandfather, on the boat- so they must have been together! Unless she made it up, and she could have made it up. (laughing) But it was, that he wanted to have sex, right, and she (Lorenza) said, ‘Oh no no no. They don’t do that in Canada.’” (laughing)
“What obstacles or barriers did they encounter as new immigrants?”
C: “Oh… lots. Lots, because there was a lot of prejudice against Italians at that time, right? Even the kids that went to school, and they went to a small school in Markham. And, at one Christmas time, all the classmates were given pencils and they were given one, then the teacher went and took theirs back.”
G: “They were called ‘wops’. The Italians? Called them ‘wops’.”
C: “Yeah. A lot of prejudice. And it’s just like people are experiencing now. It goes through, and then they’re accepted, and, you know, they become ‘Canadianized’ or ‘Anglicized’ or whatever, they’re accepted, you know. People resent other people, thinking they’re gonna take their jobs, they’re gonna, you know. ‘Why are they coming here, they shouldn’t be here…’, same thing.”
“Do you know if they brought any items of importance with them to Canada?”
C: “Their children.” (laughing)
G: “No, leave them at home.” (laughing)
C: “They were very poor people. They weren’t people that came on a luxury line or anything. I really don’t know. They were very poor. Lorenza, she would get her flour in big sacks. She would bleach the sacks and then she would make lace to put on the edges to make pillowcases for the pillows. Yeah. She would make her own pasta and hang it out to dry. Yeah, so they were, you know, ‘the roots’ kind of people. They weren’t any kind of affluent people at all.”
G: “And they lived in the middle of nowhere in Markham, in that old hotel.”
C: “Yeah, Box Grove, yup. They were the first ones in Markham.”
G: (showing a photo) “This is where they used to live. That’s not them, that’s when it was a hotel. But that’s where they moved. They moved into a hotel, and they filled that hotel with all their children.”
“Okay, so do you know if they exchanged any letters with people who still lived in Italy after they moved to Canada?”
C: “I honestly do not think they wrote, that they could write. Because he would sit and read the Bible, wouldn’t he Gary?”
G: “Yeah.”
C: “But he would look at the pictures and explain the Bible by the pictures. So, I don’t think they had any formal schooling at all.”
G: “My dad did.”
C: “Yeah, he went to grade three and then he had to go work on the farm. And that was his (Gary’s) father. So that shows you, like, how things have improved over the years but, you know, a century ago, schooling wasn’t important, working was. Contributing to the house. So, no I don’t think that they had any formal schooling at all.”
“Do you think that there was anything they would have done differently if they could?”
C: “Well, for her, the poor woman, she didn’t speak English. She was in a community of Anglo-Saxons, right, who didn’t speak Italian. She was beaten by her husband all the time and she had nowhere to go. So, if anything you would say – but then she had ten children. Where do you go when you have ten children, right? So yeah, wasn’t good circumstances but she was a good person, a good grandmother. And he actually, I think he was just an ignorant man that thought that’s how you ruled a family, right? That was that time of ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’. So, you would beat them to make them listen and you would beat your wife too.”
G: “And I think he grew up in a house full of only men.”
C: “I think so, yeah. I think he grew up in a family where there was just his father and his uncles. So, he grew up very rough.”
C: “Anyways, he went to Toronto and worked and, I think he worked construction, right Gary?”
G: “Yeah, and he would walk there”.
C: “He would walk on the train tracks to go to work on a Sunday night, I guess, or Monday morning, then come home on the train tracks. He didn’t have the fare to go on the train, so he would walk from Toronto to Markham.”
C: “Gary and his sister used to spend the summer up there or weeks up there with their grandparents and he would take them to Markham, and they lived in Box Grove which is a good five miles from Markham, right? And he would have him walk with him to Markham to go to the butcher’s and buy him an ice cream cone. So, I don’t think he was that bad, you know? He just was ignorant and that’s how he ruled his house, and he was a cruel man.”
G: “He was always called the ‘old man’ by the kids, not dad.”
C: “Yeah, they called him the ‘old man’, they never ever called him dad. No, they called her ‘ma’ and he was just the ‘old man’. Nobody had a soft spot – well, I think maybe Frankie had a soft spot for him, eh?”
G: “Yeah.”
C: “But he was the youngest one so maybe he saw a different side of him because he was the last one. But the older ones had no time for him. In fact, one of them, Sam, he went out there after he had beaten his mother and took a gun and said he would kill him. So, he never went back there.”
G: “Mmhmm nice family.” (laughing)
C: “No, but that’s – I mean families will still do it today, but I mean, that was a long time ago and it was more common back then than people want to believe. You owned your children, right? They were just chattels. They didn’t have a right to be there unless you let them be there. ‘If I brought you in, I can take you out’, that’s what they say.” (laughing)
C: “So anyway, hope that was helpful.”
“Yes, thank you!”
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