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by Adriana Albi Davies, Ph.D.
While the capital had to be found to establish the mines,
once this was done, labour was required to develop and bring
the product to market. It can be assumed that the profile of
the workforce in southern Alberta mines was similar to that in
other mining areas such as the Crow's Nest Pass. A royal
commission study of the coal industry in 1919 noted the
following makeup of the labour force:
- 90 percent of the workers in the Pass were immigrants
- 14.5 percent were Italian
- 7 percent were French and Belgian
- 8.5 percent were "other European"
At present, there is no community history for Lethbridge
that provides family histories from which to develop an
ethnocultural profile. This regional profile draws on
the community history for Coalhurst and information
provided by John Mazzuca of
Lethbridge. Mr. Mazzuca has been involved in the
Romulus & Remus
Italian Canadian Club of Lethbridge for many years. The Club
was registered as a society in October, 1960. It was, thus, a
product of the post-war WWII wave of immigration.
Mr. Mazzuca mentions that the first Italians to come to
Lethbridge were coalminers who came from Pennsylvania and Nova
Scotia in the 1880s. This is the first oral evidence for
Nova Scotia as a place of origin for mine workers of Italian
descent in Alberta but it was inevitable that, upon arriving
in Halifax, immigrants would seek work in the mines of the
region and would, subsequently, move on to the US or other
parts of Canada. Individuals interviewed for a
number of Edmonton-based oral history projects2 confirm this
pattern (see Edmonton's Italian Community regional profile). It would appear from oral evidence that workers who came from
Italy were enormously mobile and followed the work from the US
to Canada, from east to west. For example, at the end of
August 1885, Antonio Nigro and Giovanni Veltri traveled from
Italy, through Paris to a port in Belgium. From there they
embarked on a steamer for New York. After they arrived in New
York (Ellis Island), they went on to Montana. hey then moved
on to work in Spokane, the Crow's Nest Pass, Winnipeg, Fort
William, Ontario, and Edmonton. The number of Italian
immigrants in southern Alberta increased at the beginning of
the 20th century as economies of communities in the region
improved and diversified.
For concrete information about the earliest immigrants from
Italy, one must turn to Our Treasured Heritage: A History of Coalhurst and District.3
According to the community history,
the town of Coalhurst was named after its primary commodity as well as the
name of one of its earliest settlers, Jimmy Hurst (thus,
"Coal - hurst"). Mining
began in earnest in 1911 and Italian workers contributed not
only their labour in the mines but also to building the
community. The family profiles provide the basics of
immigration history from Italy to the region.
Silvio Baceda,
who was born in 1889 in the village of Cavedini, Trento, went
to the US in his early teens where he worked in a gold mine in
California. A few years later (probably around 1910), he went
to Lethbridge where his brother was located and worked in the
Chester Mine. In 1925 he moved to Coalhurst with his wife
Pierina and worked in the mine until the 1935 disaster. He
then moved to Lethbridge where he worked in the No. 8 Mine
until his retirement in 1952.
The
Ermacora family history, contributed by Anne (Ermacora)
Van Vreumingen provides a fascinating account of the struggles
but also the unbeatable spirit of this large family. Angelo Ermacora came to Canada in the early 1900s from Arzene, a town
in northern Italy near Pordenone (now an industrial suburb of
Venice). He and his wife had five children (one deceased)
before he emigrated. He travelled from LeHavre to Halifax and,
then, Calgary before going to Lac La Biche where he homesteaded
for a year. He found the life too difficult and moved to
southern Alberta to work in the mines where he could make more
money. He worked in the Royal View Mine in Lethbridge and the
Commerce Mine and made enough money so that his wife and three
children could join him. One child remained with her
grandparents and her parents never saw her again. The family
historian, Annie, was born in 1913 in Commerce. In 1914 the
family moved to Coalhurst and lived in a company house but this did
not satisfy Angelo who wanted a place of his own. He found and
renovated a house at Wigan outside Coalhurst and continued to
work in the mine as well as delivering coal and water. Next,
he bought a 60-acre parcel of land from the Coalhurst
Collieries and built a house and farmed during the summer
months while working in the mines the six winter months. A
son, Louis, went to work in the mines at the age of 14; Angelo
was killed in the 1935 explosion.
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