L’Italia

Published: 729 St. James West, Montreal

L’Italia was founded during the WWI years, more precisely in 1916, and was a weekly newspaper for most of its long run that lasted until June 1940 when it ceased publication as did all the other pro-fascist Italian language newspapers in Canada.

Inspired by the patriotic fervour that followed the Great War, the periodical soon found the favour of Canadian authorities and common people who saw in it a friendly voice, given the joint effort of Italy and Canada, who fought on the same side against the Austro-Hungarian troops.

The patriotic tone underlying the editorial mission and policy of L’Italia continued throughout the Twenties and the Thirties when the editorship of the newspaper was assumed by Oreste T. Mollo (until 1922), Camillo Vetere (until 1937) and Giulio Romano until the periodical’s demise following the outbreak of WWII.

It was under the directorship of Camillo Vetere, fascist trustee for Canada and founder of the Fascio Luparini of Montreal in 1925, that L’Italia became the mouthpiece of the consular hierarchs of the city. As early as June 1924, a few weeks after the murder of the socialist member of the Italian parliament Giacomo Matteotti at the hands of the fascists that kickstarted the dictatorship in Italy, L’Italia took a decisive turn toward fascism under the joint editorship of Vetere and Nanni Leone Castelli. The pair sided with the pro-fascist leaders of the Order of Sons of Italy, a benevolent Italian Canadian club politically split between a pro-Mussolini faction and its antifascist opposition.

L’Italia’s fast-growing support for fascism in all its totality continued throughout the Thirties and especially between 1935-1937 when patriotism gradually gave way to a more aggressive rhetoric framing Mussolini’s regime as the ennobling force that would rejuvenate Italy and drive it forward in history.

This key three-year period was inaugurated with the unveiling of the monument to Giovanni Caboto (25 May 1935) after a decade-long wait; the statue of the Genoese-Venetian explorer became a source of friction between Italian Canadian fascists and French-Canadian nationalists who had already erected a similar monument to Jacques Cartier as the discoverer of Canada.

The Caboto quarrel gave the editorial board of L’Italia the occasion to exalt the courage and the spirit of the Italian ‘race’ and led to the mobilization of the Fronte Unico Morale (United Moral Front), the umbrella organization of philo-fascist associations of Montreal.

Like its Toronto counterpart – Il Bollettino Italo-Canadese – L’Italia maintained that Italy’s imperialistic stance in East Africa was essentially a God-inspired struggle against the ‘evil powers’ trying to diminish Italy’s stature on the international political scene.

Before disappearing along with its fellow pro-fascist Italian Canadian periodicals, L’Italia also endorsed Francisco Franco’s revolution in Spain and the regime’s racial laws of 1938 thus upsetting the sizeable and influential Jewish community of Montreal.

Now actively supporting the fascist anti-Semitic campaign, in 1939 L’Italia found it increasingly difficult to withstand the mounting opposition that a hostile public opinion produced. Furthermore, the authorities started scrutinizing closely the newspaper’s activities and dissuaded advertisers and contributors from being involved with one of the most successful and lasting editorial enterprises in the history of the Italian Canadian communities. Eventually this would lead to a severe shortage of funds that proved fatal for L’Italia.

Principe, Angelo. 1999. The Darkest Side of the Fascist Years. The Italian-Canadian Press 1920-1942. Toronto: Guernica, pp. 63-84.

• Montréal
  Quebec, Canada
  

  Latitude: 45.50008 Longitude: -73.59918