Waterloo, Guelph descendants of Italian-Canadians interned in WW II to receive apology

Local families will be in attendance tonight — albeit virtually — as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes an official apology to Italian-Canadians who were sent to internment camps during the World War II. 

At the time there were 31,000 Italians living in Canada. They were accused of being “traitors” due to Mussollini’s alliance with Nazi Germany and the Canadian government declared them “enemy aliens.” 

When Canada invoked the War Measures Act, it gave police and RCMP the authority to arrest and intern people who were suspected of undermining the war effort.

Around 600 Italian-Canadians, mostly men, were rounded up by police and sent to internment camps located across the country between 1940 and 1943.

The memory of the night Girolamo Barbaro was arrested at his home on Elizabeth Street in Guelph stayed forever etched in the mind of his daughter Phyllis Barbaro. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to formally apologize for how thousands of Italian-Canadians were treated during the Second World War, including sending hundreds to internment camps — but there are concerns the apology could also absolve some actual fascists. 2:42

It was June of 1940. Her son, Ron Cirotto, says his mother, 15, was sitting down with her siblings and father for dinner on a Friday night. 

Phyllis Barbaro was about 15 years-old when RCMP bust through the door of her parents home on Elizabeth Street, in Guelph, Ont., to arrest her father Girolamo. Here, Barbaro stands outside that home on Elizabeth Street in a photo dated April 9, 1944. (Submitted by Ron Cirotto)

“I guess the [police] busted in the door with one of those ramming rods, put cuffs on her father and took him away,” Cirotto told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo, his voice shaky.

“Can you imagine … you’re sitting at a supper table and the police rammed the door down, and took your mother or your father away in handcuffs? I mean, that memory,” he said, choking back tears.

John Tantardini Jr. of Beamsville was told a similar story by his father John and uncle, the late Donald Tantardini of Guelph.

“My uncle had a stamp collection and they tore all the stamps up and looked underneath for messages or something for spies or something. Maybe they were just so mean. It was unbelievable,” said Tantardini.

The family owned Tantardini’s Red and White Grocery on Wilson Street in Guelph. Police searched every corner in their raid, Tantardini was told.

“[Police] treated everybody like cattle and wrecked the whole place looking for clues. And [police] took my dad’s walkie talkie…it was a play walkie talkie. They broke it all. These are the kinds of stories I heard.”

‘He disappeared’

His grandfather Abel Tantardini was arrested and interned at Camp Petawawa. That’s where the grandfather of Waterloo’s Joan McKinnon was also interned.

She was five years-old at the time and living in Timmins. She recalls being teased on the school playground when she first heard her grandfather was arrested.

Leopoldo Masioli in an undated photo. The grandfather of former Waterloo Mayor Joan McKinnon was arrested during a business trip in Toronto in June 1940. (Submitted by Joan McKinnon)

“One of the kids at school went, ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah,’ you know how they do. And they said, ‘Your grandfather is in jail.’ Well, I denied that. And then, of course, ran home crying to my mother, saying, ‘I’m told grandad’s in jail?'”

The truth is, the family didn’t really know what had happened to Leopoldo Masioli, said McKinnon.

“He was on business in Toronto and he disappeared and we didn’t know where he was for a couple of days at that time. The [police and RCMP] were gathering, men and housing them at the CNE before they took them to Camp Petawawa.”

Masioli, like most interned Italian-Canadians, wasnever formally charged and released a year after he was arrested. He returned home to Timmins to a sour welcome, said McKinnon.

“When grandpa returned to Timmins people who he knew very well would walk to the other side [of the street] so they didn’t have to talk to him. So the exoneration didn’t really seem to mean a hill of beans to those people.”

Apology is necessary, say family members

RCMP and police arrested a number of Italian-Canadians in cities across Ontario besides Guelph and Timmins.

Oral historian and author Joyce Pillarella estimates the number to be around 260. As of June, 1940, they included: 

Pillarella, whose grandfather Nicola Germano spent three years in an internment camp in Fredericton, says despite the passing time, the apology is necessary for surviving family members.

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“They’ve been quiet about this for so many decades and they didn’t want to talk about it,” said Pillarella. “When their fathers came back from the internment camps, they had been silenced. When I tried interviewing people a couple of decades ago, they were afraid to talk. They were ashamed and they felt like they didn’t know anything about it. And so slowly, slowly, they came around.”

For Waterloo’s Joan McKinnon, she feels the apology is a kind gesture, but says she feels a little sad that it didn’t come sooner.

“My grandfather — in my presence anyway — never showed anger toward his adopted country, ever.” said McKinnon. “He was very proud to be a Canadian and to live here and to make a life. And he made a very good life for himself and for his family.”

While the interned men never got a chance to hear the apology, their legacy lives on with their family members like McKinnon who went onto become a councillor and eventually mayor of Waterloo. Ron Cirotto thinks his grandfather would have been proud to see him become a businessman in the Hamilton area and carry on the family name. 

Hundreds of Canadians of Italian origin were interned at Camp Petawawa in Ontario in 1940 after Canada declared war on Italy. (CBC)