Halifax: The Other Door to America

By Pietro Corsi

Pietro Corsi's Halifax combines objective history with acute personal observations to create a vibrant portrait of the city (and the country) that has witnessed the arrival of millions of immigrants from around the world. It is the story of one immigrant's feelings as he journeyed from old to new; and it is the story of all immigrants who embark, for one reason or another, on such a journey. {Guernica Editions}

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781550713589

Book preview

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Foreword

When I learned, a few years ago, of the founding of the Pier 21 Society in Halifax, created in order to revive that dock as a symbol of Canada’s gratitude toward its immigrants who have so faithfully contributed to the development of the big country, I was unable to resist the temptation to know more about it. For like hundreds of my townsfolk, like tens of thousands of my region folk, like hundreds of thousands of Italians and millions of Europeans, on a never forgotten day I too set foot in Canada after crossing that entranceway that I like to call, the other door to America – after Ellis Island in the United States.

I turned on the laptop that in this wandering old animal’s age accompanies me around the world, and I sent, with much enthusiasm, a congratulatory message to the directors of the Pier 21 Society. To my surprise, they soon answered with the same enthusiasm; and to keep me updated as to their progress, they started sending me a bulletin that has now become a part of the familiar mail that the postman faithfully deposits in my mailbox even when I am not at home.

Almost without wishing it, and certainly without thinking about it, a research work began that has helped me to rediscover Canada: the history of its contrasted birth, together with the history of its no less-contested immigration policy. Little by little this research, in turn, has unveiled numerous stories of migration and integration. At this point I started harbouring the certitude that I had to continue my research in order to help, albeit in my own way, raise the foundations for the construction of this most important monument to Canadian immigration.

A doubt remained: Would it be an essay or an historical text? Or some sort of memoir/short story?

After much deliberation, I was able to convince myself that essays are written by scholars for scholars. I therefore discarded this possibility. In truth, I wanted my work to enter the homes of all immigrants (and that means every-

one in Canada other than the indigenous peoples) and their offspring, and the homes of the offspring of their offspring so that the migration history of every family would be recorded for all time to come. To accomplish this, I told myself, it was proper for me to write something that everyone could easily read. An essay would only be destined to enrich the bookshelves of a chosen few. On the other hand, a text delimited within the boundaries of history would be restrictive, lacking, as it were, the indispensable element required to bring each individual closer to his or her own experience.

While I continued to accumulate research material and pen my first notes, the idea of presenting this research in its present form took root. I decided that this was going to be an historical account pieced together with events that would allow me to narrate the history of those who – sometimes for well defined reasons, oftentimes without a precise motivation – decided to abandon long and deep roots and undertake the epic journey across the Atlantic in search of what they hoped would be a new and better life.

The result is this narrated work, between essay and history, that I wish to dedicate, with love, to the Pier 21 of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the other door to America, and to all those who have had the courage, and the fortune, to go through it.

Pietro Corsi

Photo 1: Pier 21, 1930s

(Courtesy: National Archives of Canada)

Photo 2: Pier 21 today

(Courtesy: Pier 21 Society)

Photo 3: The Olympia

Photo 4: Red Cross Workers

(Courtesy: Halifax Port Authority).

Photo 5: Immigrant Interview

(Photo by Ken Elliot, courtesy of Pier 21 Society)

Photo 6: Customs Inspection

(Photo by Ken Elliot, courtesy of Pier 21 Society)

Photo 7: Abandon Ship Exercise

Photo 8: Acapulco

Photo 1: Pier 21, 1930s

Port of Halifax, Pier 21, as it stood in the 30s. The four funnels ship docked at Pier 21 is believed to be one of the two legendary Queens (Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth). In the foreground, the railway station from which immigrants departed by train to different locations.

Photo 2: Pier 21 today

Port of Halifax, Pier 21, as it stands today.

Photo 3: The Olympia

Registered in Liberia and operated by a Greek ship-owner, the Olympia carried thousands of Greek, Israeli and Italian immigrants to Halifax and New York. For most of them, the transatlantic crossing may have been the first time they came in contact with people of other nationalities.

Photo 4: Red Cross Workers

Red Cross workers of Pier 21, during the 1920s.

Photo 5: Immigrant Interview

An immigrant being interviewed by Immigration authorities.

Photo 6: Customs Inspection

Immigrants undergoing Customs inspection.

Photo 7: Abandon Ship Exercise

Group photo during an abandon ship exercise aboard the M/V Conte Biancamano. In the third row from the bottom, third from right to left is Mrs. Fiorella Di Lalla Monteleone, whose testimonial of arrival at Pier 21 appears in these pages.

Photo 8: Acapulco

Europa (in this photo, by her later name Acapulco).

Built in Newcastle in 1929, this transatlantic liner changed names several times. She was P&O’s Mongolia before becoming Rimutaka, then Europa under Incres Line. Under this name, she was engaged in the transportation of thousands of people left stateless, after World War II, from Le Havre to Halifax and New York. Later renamed Nassau, she started cruising from New York to the Bahamas. She was later sold to Natumex Line of Mexico City. Renamed Acapulco, she pioneered cruising from Los Angeles to Acapulco. She was to herald a new era of cruising from the US West Coast to ports of Mexico before her certain but inglorious death in a scrapyard, in 1963.]

The Voyage

At the dawn of its history, Halifax was a small village on the edge of the American continent, clinging to the slopes of a peninsula overlooking the Atlantic. The Micmac, who inhabited the territory with the Abenaki, called it Chebucto (Big Harbour). For many today, it is simply a name: Halifax, the capital city of one of Canada’s four Atlantic provinces.

For others it is synonymous with Nova Scotia, or Nouvelle Écosse, a very important commercial region of the east coast. Coal, gypsum, foodstuffs and fish above all, paper and byproducts, aerospace and transportation machinery, wood, iron, steel, non-metallic minerals and chemical products bear its trademark.

For yet others, for the millions of immigrants who during the last two centuries in particular have reached the vast Canadian territory in search of a new and better life, and for their descendants, many now proud Canadian citizens, Halifax represents much more. It is the other door to America.

At first sight, you see an industrial city like many others, indefinite and long-standing in the relativity of time that separates the new world from the old. Anonymous, with long and broad avenues bordered by little houses blackened by the dust of time and with remote and lonely chimneys, tall above all else, discharging smoke and ash in an otherwise limpid