Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia


       Home > Lifeways > Cultural Life > Sports & Recreation

       Sports & Recreation

Visit AlbertaSource!

Customs and
Traditions

Religion

Sports and
Recreation

The Arts

Learning

Canadian Life

Community
Identity

Societies

Festivals


1  |  Page 2  

There are also those sports that break down on generational lines-bocce, which is a game favoured by older men, and soccer.  While it is likely that these games were played informally as early as the first decades of the 20th century, they really came into their own post-1950.  In Edmonton, indoor bocce courts are available at the Italian Cultural Centre and the Italian Senior's Centre.  Prior to it's expansion, the Italian Senior's Centre also had an outdoor court.  The Società Bocciofila, based at the Italian Cultural Centre, has participated in competitions with teams from BC.  Boccie is very much a "male" only activity and those who are not playing on the bocce courts play cards and drink espresso.  More recently, women's leagues have been established at both centres.  In Calgary, according to Antonella Fanella, the Calgary Italian Club in 1974 was instrumental in setting up a bocce club and the Sportsman Dinner Association a means of fundraising to support sports activities.  

Soccer is a young person's game, though, its audience extends across generations.  In the 1950s, in Edmonton and Calgary there was the critical mass of young men to initiate teams.  In 1956, Alberto Romano, Lino Massolin, Angelo Cioni, Terry Ius and Mario Finot established the Juventus Soccer Team under the sponsorship of the Calgary Italian Society.   In Edmonton, the desire to build a club house was so strong that community leaders such as Angelo Biasutto and Pat Giannone went to the City of Edmonton and got land donated.  When they discovered that it would cost $35,000 to build a club house, they chose instead to use the land to build the Santa Maria Goretti Parish.  The Ital-Canadian Soccer Club was created in 1957 with the aim to promote good sportsmanship in all sports, in particular the sport of soccer.  The Club raised funds through dinner dances, concerts, etc., to enable the soccer team to play indoors and outdoors.  They also provided sponsorship of the Ital-Canadian Men's Soccer Team, Premiere Division.  The Calgary and Edmonton Juventus [Latin for "youth"] Clubs were formed and the Edmonton/Calgary rivalry continues to this day.  The people who played in the early teams went on to volunteer to keep soccer alive in Calgary and Edmonton.  These include Mario Molinari, Mimmo Longo, Tony Durante. The games also had a social function in that families went and young people could meet and eventually fall in love and marry.  

With the international interest in soccer stimulated by World Cup games, the media would regularly descend on Edmonton's Little Italy for commentary on the action.  The community-at-large would be exposed to the "male-only" atmosphere of intense soccer rivalry, espresso, card games and all of those aspects of Italian cultural life based on sports.

Related Links

[<<previous]

[back] [top]

Copyright © 2002 Heritage Community Foundation

Albertasource.ca | Contact Us | Partnerships
            For more on Italian Alberta, visit Peel’s Prairie Provinces.
Copyright © Heritage Community Foundation All Rights Reserved