Interesting people are everywhere. I met Ben Viccari a few weeks ago at the initial screening of a documentary called "Small Places - Small Homes". The documentary profiled the life of four immigrant families who had chosen to settle in small rural Canadian towns and spoke to their unique challenges and adjustment experiences. During the party afterwards I was introduced to Ben Viccari, a distinguished writer and journalist, and a pioneer of Canadian multiculturalism.
Ben is a fascinating individual - at almost 90 years of age he is in the process of creating his second television documentary and involved in multiple projects at the same time. Ben has decades of public relations experience and during the last quarter century also became involved in ethnic publications. At present Ben is the President of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association which speaks to issues of immigrant settlement, heritage preservation and the ethnic communities' role in nation building.
He is also a regular commentator on Omni Television and runs an online publication called "Canscene" which introduces the reader to multicultural issues in Canada. In this article Ben shares with us his life experience throughout his early years, the Second World War, and his almost 60 years in Canada. He also gives us insight into his unique views on Canada's role as a potential model nation in terms of how we deal with immigration and immigrant settlement, notions that are very dear to my own heart.
I was amazed by Ben's energy and creativity and enjoyed the time we spent in a little restaurant along Bloor Street, learning from a man whose life experience spans almost a century, a man whose energy, creativity and broad-mindedness captivate.
1. Please tell us about yourself and your background.
I am a Canadian well qualified, I believe, to speak for multiculturalism and diversity through my mixed parentage, early education at a London school with an international student body, travel abroad, followed in Canada since the late 1940s by a diverse career in communications much of which has placed me in contact with Canadians from a wide variety of origins and backgrounds
Ben at the provincial archive, Winnipeg with the complete issues of
the Icelandic Framfari, first ethnic newspaper published in Manitoba,
in a scene from The Third Element
2. You grew up in England as the child of Italian immigrants. Please tell us more about that.
My father, an Italian immigrant to Britain, met and married my mother, an Englishwoman. They had two children, my younger brother John and me, seven years his senior. Our delight was to grow up in a home in which husband and wife enjoyed mutual respect for each other's national traits. We lived in an ambiance of being loved and in turn, loving.
In those days, marriage to a foreign citizen who was not naturalized meant wife and children were Italian nationals and a sense of duality became natural to us. We ate chicken cacciatore and olives, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and rejoiced when Dad came home with sticks ot torrone, Italian nougat bought at Barale and Crippa an Italian grocery in the heart of Soho. Also their tangy salami. And while my Italian grandparents were still alive, they mailed boxes of home made salami, soppressata and goat cheese to us.
3. Your working life originally started out in the barber shop of your father. Please tell us more about that.
From childhood, I loved being read to and even made up my own stories. I remember my mother recounting that I had created a fictional country that I frequently "visited." It was peopled entirely by cats and I called it "Abloo Labloo Land." Even before I started kindergarten I knew the alphabet and could detect certain printed words and by seven sensational papers like News of the World were hidden away from me.
My favourite subjects were English, French and History and not being much of a sportsman or gymnast I reveled in opportunities to participate in school dramatics and class performances of Shakespeare.
There was a brief fling at pro theatre when at 15 I joined a troupe of youngsters at the spacious Wimbledon home of the Thursby-Pelhams. The husband was a prominent English lawyer and his wife born in Mexico but raised in England had brought up her children Lola and Marshall in a theatrical atmosphere. She had written a children's Christmas play in which a school is magically transported to all corners of the world.
Plane makes emergency landing on street.. by JahazVId
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/632698
Ben is a fascinating individual - at almost 90 years of age he is in the process of creating his second television documentary and involved in multiple projects at the same time. Ben has decades of public relations experience and during the last quarter century also became involved in ethnic publications. At present Ben is the President of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association which speaks to issues of immigrant settlement, heritage preservation and the ethnic communities' role in nation building.
He is also a regular commentator on Omni Television and runs an online publication called "Canscene" which introduces the reader to multicultural issues in Canada. In this article Ben shares with us his life experience throughout his early years, the Second World War, and his almost 60 years in Canada. He also gives us insight into his unique views on Canada's role as a potential model nation in terms of how we deal with immigration and immigrant settlement, notions that are very dear to my own heart.
I was amazed by Ben's energy and creativity and enjoyed the time we spent in a little restaurant along Bloor Street, learning from a man whose life experience spans almost a century, a man whose energy, creativity and broad-mindedness captivate.
1. Please tell us about yourself and your background.
I am a Canadian well qualified, I believe, to speak for multiculturalism and diversity through my mixed parentage, early education at a London school with an international student body, travel abroad, followed in Canada since the late 1940s by a diverse career in communications much of which has placed me in contact with Canadians from a wide variety of origins and backgrounds
Ben at the provincial archive, Winnipeg with the complete issues of
the Icelandic Framfari, first ethnic newspaper published in Manitoba,
in a scene from The Third Element
2. You grew up in England as the child of Italian immigrants. Please tell us more about that.
My father, an Italian immigrant to Britain, met and married my mother, an Englishwoman. They had two children, my younger brother John and me, seven years his senior. Our delight was to grow up in a home in which husband and wife enjoyed mutual respect for each other's national traits. We lived in an ambiance of being loved and in turn, loving.
In those days, marriage to a foreign citizen who was not naturalized meant wife and children were Italian nationals and a sense of duality became natural to us. We ate chicken cacciatore and olives, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and rejoiced when Dad came home with sticks ot torrone, Italian nougat bought at Barale and Crippa an Italian grocery in the heart of Soho. Also their tangy salami. And while my Italian grandparents were still alive, they mailed boxes of home made salami, soppressata and goat cheese to us.
3. Your working life originally started out in the barber shop of your father. Please tell us more about that.
From childhood, I loved being read to and even made up my own stories. I remember my mother recounting that I had created a fictional country that I frequently "visited." It was peopled entirely by cats and I called it "Abloo Labloo Land." Even before I started kindergarten I knew the alphabet and could detect certain printed words and by seven sensational papers like News of the World were hidden away from me.
My favourite subjects were English, French and History and not being much of a sportsman or gymnast I reveled in opportunities to participate in school dramatics and class performances of Shakespeare.
There was a brief fling at pro theatre when at 15 I joined a troupe of youngsters at the spacious Wimbledon home of the Thursby-Pelhams. The husband was a prominent English lawyer and his wife born in Mexico but raised in England had brought up her children Lola and Marshall in a theatrical atmosphere. She had written a children's Christmas play in which a school is magically transported to all corners of the world.
Plane makes emergency landing on street.. by JahazVId
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/632698
