It is not easy to be accepted, to be invited to share intimacy, especially with a camera in hand. As a journalist, I know that certain privileges or access to the truths of daily life are not things that can be reduced to contractual imperatives. Either there is immediate trust, and you sense the mutual rapport, or you simply abandon the effort, and force yourself to discard much of the work that you may have already done. That is why some are able to get interviews and information where others never will.

Vincenzo Pietropaolo knows how to earn that trust, because of the genuine respect that inspires him in every human being. Every one of his photographs tells us precisely about that. But it would not have been enough to merely draw the sometimes impenetrable curtain behind which Italian culture can also retreat to protect their private worlds. Pietropaolo remembers:

“…The time in Earlscourt Park near St. Clair, when I was photographing a group of men playing bocce, and one of them stopped me and demanded to know why I was taking these pictures. As I sheepishly offered that it was my modest intention to do a book about immigrants, he declared in a deadpan voice; ”Make sure you tell the truth about immigration”. And what is the truth? I ventured to ask. His reply was swift and decisive: ”L’America non è oro; è lavoro. E il santo dollaro non è altro che dolore.” (America is not gold; it is work. And the sacred dollar is nothing but pain and suffering.)



In greater Toronto there are 500,000 Italian-Canadians. In recent years, this great metropolis, which is also the capital city of the province of Ontario, has been considered one of the more desirable places in the world for its quality of life, according to statistics and data furnished by various international organizations. If it has forged this role for itself, if it has become a sort of alternative altar to the irritating and merciless American myth, if it has more humane rhythms, more well-balanced, congenial and bearable qualities, it is in great part due to the Mediterranean characteristics which it has acquired from its newer citizens as if by osmosis; to the Italian-ness of its gastronomy and good dining, its manner of communicating and socializing, its dress code, its sense of home décor and design, and its way of creating an atmosphere of cordiality in the delivery of public services.

The Italians who in the 1970’s were beholden to the contractors and the go betweens in business and industry, are no longer distressed, lonely men and women, and are no longer prey to isolation and urban alienation, or a distressing environment. They no longer live in homes with homily basements and overcrowded with three families, but in villa-type houses and respectable residential neighborhoods. They are movers and shakers, occupying key positions in politics and in the economy, from financial services to tertiary industry. They have invented a new language for themselves, italiese, and a hybrid, which bridges their mother tongue to the official languages of their new country, allowing them to travel back and forth over a linguistic bridge. In order to get this far, they have had to strategize both as a collective force and as individuals, as families and as groups, efficiently and astutely, so as to be able to compete within the extremely dynamic population of Toronto.

Ironically, today Italy, too, is a country that welcomes millions of immigrants, much like other Western European countries, and in the same way that Canada and the United States have historically opened their doors and imported massive numbers of people. These are all nations to whom it would bode well to look at the photographs in Not Paved with Gold, to circulate them in schools and provoke debate, with the same energy and the same resources spent to teach schoolchildren about the Italian Risorgimento, Canadian Confederation, or the American War of Independence. In this way, perhaps those who today are forced to venture onto that same journey of immigration, would be spared some of the expected pain and suffering, as they submit to the same forces of uprooting, and elicit the same distrust that the Italians used to elicit with their impromptu gatherings in the open, their odd-looking clothes, their spicy cooking: the Latinos, like the Ukrainians, the Mexicans, the Africans, the south east Asians, the Middle Easterners, and the Filipinos, or the man who this morning was driving our taxi.