Lindsay Marie Morris

Frank Bruno grew up in Pittsburg, California, hearing his grandmother's memories of Isola delle Femmine, a fishing village outside Palermo, Sicily. But he knew very little about the place and didn't think much about it. That was until 1992, when his friend, Vince DiMaggio, shared that he'd returned from his godparents' wedding vow renewal in the same town. Vince had spoken with Isola delle Femmine's then-Mayor Vincenzo DiMaggio about possibly having a Sister City relationship with Pittsburg.

 

Frank and Vince weren't alone in their ties to Isola delle Femmine; most of Pittsburg's Italian American population shared that connection. As President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Frank was in a good position to take action. He asked Pittsburg's mayor, who agreed to the proposal, and then he reached out to officials in Sicily.

When Isola delle Femmine's mayor came to Pittsburg, he saw its iconic fisherman statue, sculpted by local artist Frank Vitale, whose grandparents came from Isola delle Femmine. He wanted one for his town, so Pittsburg community members raised funds to make it happen.

The sculptor still had the mold he used to build a replica that the Americans sent to Sicily. Today, you can find that statue at Isola delle Femmine's Piazza di Pittsburg, named for the town's original sister city.

That would have been the end of the story: a lasting connection made in honor of shared heritage. Frank moved to Novato, California, in 1997 and lost track of many of the people who were involved until 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Isola delle Femmine-Pittsburg delegation's first visit.

Frank and Vince returned to the fold, and a group from Isola delle Femmine joined the community for a reception. Two years later, Frank, Vince, and Vice President Mary Coniglio co-founded Friends of Isola delle Femmine with a mission statement to preserve, protect, and promote Sicilian-American heritage within Isola delle Femmine's California sister cities, which today number three after the 2017 and 2019 respective additions of Monterey and Martinez.

Frank, who serves as Friends of Isola delle Femmine's President, shared more about how and why Isolani emigrated to the U.S. and first landed in Pittsburg. We also discussed the organization's events, outreach, and evolution, as well as its challenges for the future.

Friends of Isola delle Femmine 1994 trip - Sal Caccaroni, John Buffo, Vince DiMaggio, Sculptor Frank Vitale, Frank Bruno, Mary Coniglio, Rocco Battaglia, and Vince Coniglio

 

 

How and why did Isola delle Femmine residents find their way to Pittsburg?

Back in the 1860s, when Garibaldi unified Italy, it did little to help the people in Sicily. They were still starving, and there was no work. One story was that they were so hungry they resorted to eating wheat plaster from the walls.

In 1862, two brothers from Isola delle Femmine with the last name Aiello came to New Orleans, where a big influx of Sicilians lived in the French Quarter.

They were trying to make a living fishing and cooking. After a Yellow Fever outbreak, they left Louisiana for Oregon, where they fished for salmon before seeing an advertisement from California. The state was looking for fishermen to come and help fish the delta to feed the people who came in for the Gold Rush. So the Aiellos got on a train and ended up in what is now called Pittsburg, California, on the Sacramento River. They started fishing and called for their family, saying, "Here in Pittsburg, the weather is like home. The fishing is abundant, and we're making money."

A lot of people started to come, and many of them worked and stayed here. Then, a lot of them went back home. Pittsburg was the fishing area, but there was seasonal fishing. So when the seasonal fishing went to the wayside, they went to Martinez and Monterey, and many of them stayed there while others went back to Pittsburg. So that was the influx, which is why we have three Sister Cities with Isola in our organization.

 

Describe your cultural exchange and promotion efforts.

Back in 1994, we started a student exchange program. We only did it twice. We sent high schoolers back there, and they went to school. Isola delle Feminine sent college students here, which became a vacation for them. And I said that's not what we really wanted to do as a student exchange program.

My idea, and we're trying to start this now, is to have something similar to what I'm involved in with the Rotary Club: a group study exchange. There would be dentists or any occupation that is here that wants to go. We would supplement, coordinate their stay over there, and have a little bit of money to help them there. But they would pay for their trip. They would go over to Isola and the Palermo area and vice versa.

We can do it with contractors, dentists, doctors, and many professional business people who would come back and forth. As for the cultural heritage stuff, we're working on doing what I call an ancestral fair, having an area where folk music and heritage stuff are going on, and then having booths. 

 

How have you connected with younger generations?

We're giving scholarships to our members' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are going to college. We give out six; two years ago, we gave out 10. They would have to qualify normally by having a grade point average acceptable for college and writing a statement about what it was like growing up Italian. Then we have a picnic and give out our scholarships.

One of our roadblocks is passing on our cultural heritage to the younger generations. It's very difficult. They're proud to be Italian American, but that's where it ends. Now, all of us old-timers look at this as memories. Growing up in Pittsburg was one of the greatest childhoods anybody could have. I mean, it was just full of family everywhere.

 

We have functions, but not many younger people have come. Instead of trying to decide how to capture the younger generation and have them tell us what they're looking for, we're going to have a discussion and invite a number of our younger members who are 40 or 50 years old to ask them.

If we're going to succeed as a cultural heritage organization, we need to replace these people. I can't do this forever.

Scenes from Friends of Isola delle Femmine picnics

 

Tell us about your events.

We've had some fundraisers to fund administration, scholarships, and anything else we want to do. We've done pretty well. 

We started with a program back in 2019 called That's Italian. We had some opera singers, and we sang show tunes at a place called the Colombo Club in Oakland. About 565 people could sit down for dinner, and then upstairs, there is a banquet hall, bar, and stage. We had 200 people, and they went downstairs and had a nice Italian dinner. And then they came up, and we had this big show and a live auction.

 

After the pandemic, when the British Queen passed away, one of our members said, "Why don't we have a High Tea but Italian style?" We had one in Monterey and one in Pittsburg. We're finishing up our third one, which will be the last, and we're going in another direction.

 

Our summer picnic was designed to be something we used to do as kids and families. Here in Northern California, we have Mount Diablo, where we had Camp Curry and Marsh Creek, and we could swim and play baseball as a family. We wanted to do something similar and said, "Why don't we just give our scholarships out then?"

 

We are getting about 250 people, and we can showcase what we do and get new members out of that. We have an Italian who lives in Martinez and owns a catering company. He comes and does the pasta and salads, and then we cook sausage. The mayor of Martinez and the city council people come out, and they do the serving. 

 

What do you ultimately want to share with your community?

There are Italians and Sicilians from Isola here in Pittsburg, California, but not many. They've branched out to the other areas. What I want to accomplish for the community is to bring back our pride and heritage and continue to have that. We all want to remember what our nonnas and nonnos did for us when we were growing up. We're trying to put together a cookbook per se with all these recipes in our newsletter. But we want to do more cultural stuff to remember our grandparents and great-grandparents; hopefully, the next generation will be appreciative.

 

Frank Bruno with family at the celebration and unveiling of the Fisherman Statue and sister city in 1994

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates! 

With up to 500,000 residents of Italian origin, Toronto has one of the largest Italian populations of any city outside of Italy. Most immigrants came in the years following the second World War, adding to the significant sum who had already settled within the city's three Little Italies. 

As this large influx began to age, community members sought a way to address their changing needs. In 1971, a group of Italian-Canadian Torontans formed the Italian Canadian Benevolent Corporation. Five years later, they opened Villa Colombo Toronto, a long-term care facility for seniors.

 

Today known as Villa Charities, the organization has expanded its mission to fund, develop, administer, and coordinate health, social, cultural, and educational projects. The group honors both Italian and Italian-Canadian culture, recognizing that the two have evolved in parallel over time. In addition to its Columbus Centre amenities, the organization hosts a wide range of events and activities, including classes for toddlers, book launches, art exhibitions, concerts, and dance programs. 

I spoke with Villa Charities Executive Director of Cultural Programming Giulio Recchioni, who shared more about the organization, its offerings, and its aims. 

 

What inspired the founding of Villa Charities, and how has its mission evolved over the years?

It was founded by a group of community leaders who put together their willingness to leave a mark in town and have a structure where Italians could gather and be at home away from home. The first structure that was born was Villa Colombo, which is currently a nursing home for seniors.

 

In the beginning, when the bulk of the migrants were here and aging like everybody else, there was this idea: What do you do once you reach an age when you're not independent anymore? Are you going to be dispersed through the English-speaking nursing homes throughout Ontario? 

They decided to create something that was not there before, a structure that could be the reference point for the entire Italian community here in Toronto. And 50 years later, this is still what we do. Today, the Columbus Centre is the largest Italian cultural center in Canada, and we're still quite well respected within the community. We are still the center of what happens to the Italian-Canadian community.

 

Villa Charities hosts a Summer Sagra event outside of its Columbus Centre.

What makes Villa Charities unique in what it offers?

Several organizations work with Italian culture in Toronto. Some of them are government-owned. But what really makes us different from everybody else is that we deal not only with Italian culture but also Italian-Canadian culture.

 

We not only recognize Italian culture but also try to bring modern, contemporary Italian culture to the public's attention while also catering to Italian Canadians and representing their culture and values. It's a culture that crystallized in the fifties and then evolved on its own, far away from the culture of Italy.

 

Progress in technology allows us to be close to Italian culture nowadays, but up to 30 years ago, what we see today to watch Italian television, take a phone, and speak to our people in Italy was kind of unusual, if not unthinkable or very expensive. So, the Italian-Canadian culture grew and became something different—looking at Italy but from far away.

 

Members roast speducci at a Summer Solstice event.

 

Tell us more about your events and activities.

We have a wide range of events, as we have to cater to the biggest number of people possible. We truly have an approach from cradle to rocking chair. We have events for toddlers; we have Italian classes for toddlers where the teacher sings so that the toddlers get used to the Italian language. We have book launches, and we manage an art gallery, so we have art exhibitions. We work with musicians to do concerts. We have a dance school.

 

We offer quite a wide variety of programs. The Columbus Centre has a gym and swimming pool with a variety of activities typical of a community center.

 

During summertime, we have large events outside. They're inspired by the idea of the sagra in Italy. So we have chosen in the past an aspect of Italian cuisine. For example, in July, we have what in Canada is called speducci [grilled meat skewers], originally in Abruzzo, they're called arrosticini, so we celebrate those in July. Then, in August, we celebrate Ferragosto with a very large outdoor party.

We make tomato sauce with our seniors in September and distribute it to the public. We also offer a plate of pasta to complement the tomato sauce. Then, in October and November, we have events that speak to the art of wine making. So we press grapes in October together with a local Italian-Canadian winery. And then, in April, we have a little taste of the wine we made ourselves.

 

We echo some of the most popular Italian holidays and make them our own. For example, we have a Sagra della Castagna in November, when in Italy it's a tradition to have vino novello e castagne [new wine and chestnuts], because that's when you bottle the first wine to see how it is and you get to taste it. We can't quite do the same because Canada's alcohol laws differ from Italy's. But we did keep the part of the castagne. So we cook castagne and distribute them for free to the community during the event.

 

Food really attracts people more than anything else, so we have these events as a community-building exercise. They're quite fun to attend, so it's a pleasure to keep presenting them and offering them to the community.

 

Members celebrate the preparation of their own wine.

 

What do you hope to share with members and the community?

Italian culture in Toronto is quite lively. A wealth of Italian activities and organizations are bubbling up. It's wonderful when people see what's happening and attend.

 

As a person who organizes events, it's nice when you spend so much time and energy creating something and you see a lot of people recognizing the event coming and having a good time. At the end of the day, Italian culture is all about changing life for the better, and that's what I would invite them to do. Just come out and participate in what's happening in the city. There is a lot of Italian stuff going on. 

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!