Sara, Sara

“Sara, Sara… wake up… wake up… It’s windy outside. The chestnuts are falling,” her father would call out early in the morning. “We need to go get them.”

Sara grew up in Serra San Bruno, Italy. She left school at an early age to work on the farm to help her dad with work and put food on the table. He would rely on her to get things done. She labouring in the field and did more than her fair share of work. Unlike her younger brother who was always getting into trouble and not properly tending to the sheep that got lost, only to have Sara go search for them.

During the 1950’s, Italy was in economic shambles and suffering the repercussions of the Second World War. There was high unemployment, food shortages, and 25% of Southern Italians lived in poverty. The misera was taking hold as thousands of Italians died.

On the other side of the Altantic, Canada’s economy was booming. Its manufacturing and construction industries faced labour shortages. Immigrants were desperately needed. As such, Italians started to leave Italy for a new life in Canada. In the 1950s, as many as 30,000 Italians immigrated to Canada annually. In the end, about 450,000 Italians came to Canada, and 90,000 of them settled in Toronto by 1961.

Sara was getting older and was feeling restless and thought about leaving the family farm. She was receiving letters from a young man, Corrado, who had immigrated to Toronto from Abruzzi, Italy, in 1954. He was looking for a bride and through a friend discovered that Sara was single. Sara remembers reading his letters and liking his photograph. His dark hair and handsome features stood out.

There were other suitors, but she rejected them and yearned for a better life outside of a small town. She spoke to her dad about leaving for Canada, but he was sceptical; he had lived in America working at any job he could find, earning just enough money to go back to Italy and buy a plot of land. He understood how tough life would be for an immigrant in a new world and begged her to stay.

Leaving her dad, mom, and brothers was a tough decision, but Sara wanted to start a new life, find work and send money back home to help her family. She said yes to Corrado’s marriage proposal and they married by proxy. Sara married in Serra San Bruno with her older brother by her side as the substitute for Corrado. During that period thousands of young Italian brides were marrying by proxy and heading out to countries like Australia and Canada.

Sara and Corrado would meet for the first time in Toronto in December of 1956.

Sara recalls being on a large ship, the Cristoforo Colombo, for two weeks at sea. At night she had a hard time resting as the rough waters kept her awake. When the sea was calm she could eat and sleep. She spent her days at sea in her cabin, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, thinking about her family back home. She remembers taking a two-day train ride from Halifax to Toronto. The train was packed with Italian immigrants. There was no food or water unless you brought your own. She arrived in the dead of winter with only a suitcase in hand.

“It was very cold, snow everywhere, even the trees were frozen. We stayed in a rented room. We would go out to shop for groceries and there was Lombardy’s grocery store, meat and butcher shops, and not much else,” she recalls.

Sara was a doer and even with the little money that they had, she convinced Corrado to purchase a house right away. They looked at houses on Palmerston Boulevard at the College Street, with its lined street lamps and iron gates entrance, but felt the area was too expensive. They purchased a home on Grace Street right in the heart of what would become known as Little Italy.

“Those early years were tough. I rented rooms and babysat children. Your father worked in construction. The work was inconsistent. He did not speak any English, had to travel, and did not earn a lot. He did not want me to work in a factory, so I looked for ways to help pay the mortgage,” she remembers.

Sara stuck to her work ethic, waking up at dawn and working till dusk, cooking meals for my dad, my uncle (who served in the Second World War and lived with us), my brother, and me. She babysat children of all ethnicities – Italian, Portuguese, Pakistani and Chinese – and found a way to communicate with each one of them.

One memory that stands out is babysitting Chih Fu from an early age. Chih Fu’s parents were immigrants from China and worked long hours. He became our little brother who sat at the table, ate spaghetti and meatballs, and understood various gestures and someItalian, and Sara would prompt him to mangia, mangia.

Her hard work helped to pay the mortgage and she stuck to her promise of sending money back home.

Sara was 80 years old when I showed up with two tickets to Italy. She had not seen her family in over 40 years. At first, she hesitated about going and thought the air travel and the long twisting uphill drive to Serra San Bruno from Lamezia would be too difficult. As the departure date approached, she did not want to lose the ticket and agreed to go.

Once she reunited with her family, and rediscovered her ancient hometown and region, she did not want to leave. She returned to Italy two more times.

Gardening was her passion. Sara maintained a garden for over fifty years until she was physically no longer able to do so. During the winter she would prepare the seeds for a variety of vegetables. In the spring, she would plant row after row of tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and zucchini. Her garden was lush and colourful and not a foot of space was wasted. She was out watering daily, saying “our growing season is too short and plants need lots of attention.”

One day I was standing around watching her garden when she said, “Don’t stand around! Pick those weeds before they grow and ruin everything.”

Even at 92 years of age, she would not let the squirrels get to her vegetables. She would get up at 6:30AM, stick in hand, making sure the squirrels did not raid her zucchini flowers. Collecting the zucchini flowers, mixing them in flour, and frying them to a crisp meant the world to her.

On a hot day, it was not unusual to find her in the garden tying tomatoes or pruning leaves. When her work was done she would sit in a chair and take in the cool evening breeze. For Sara, gardening was about producing vegetables during the summer months, storing extras for the winter, keeping active and her way of getting away from the pressures of life.

After one particular active summer, gardening, cooking, and enjoying time with family, she suddenly fell ill. We rushed to the hospital in the middle of another COVID-19 outbreak and spent 16 hours in emergency. She was eventually admitted to a room.

After 30 days in the hospital, my mom was ready to go home. She was now using a walker and her energy level was half what it once was. She was also suffering from delirium.

On good days she would prepare seeds for the garden and tell stories about her youth. She celebrated Christmas, welcomed in the New Year with a glass of champagne, and on her 93rd birthday blew out the candles on her favourite chocolate cake. Seven months after her traumatic hospital stay, she would pass of natural causes.

Sara left us the way she started her life, as an immigrant woman, never complaining, taking the good with the bad, always looking ahead and never back. She loved walking the streets of Little Italy, attending church at Saint Francis of Assisi, shopping at Honest Ed’s and perusing the local fruit markets. She went about her days with undying effort and love for family, friends, and life.