23 - Respect through much hard work

Dan Iannuzzi and Johnny Lombardi break ground for Italian through their media outlets

Maybe there was little love lost between Dan Iannuzzi and Johnny Lombardi, but on thing was certain, they respected one another. This was proven by what Iannuzzi wrote when Lombardi passed away in March of 2002, and confirms today: "He contributed to putting something in motion, and not even his death can stop it." That something is information.
They both have strong personalities, stubborn, one could say. Both are Italian-Canadians who were born here, but with bonds linking their hearts and their minds to their roots, Calabrese for Iannuzzi; Lucanian for Lombardi. Both were precursors: the fact that Italian-language media in Canada, more than anywhere else, was an economic reality and not just an expression of nostalgia, is mostly due to them. Their initiatives spawned so many successors that the newspapers, radio and TV stations in Italian make this country unique in the world. A complete list is difficult to compile, as new media is born every year. But first came Iannuzzi's Corriere Canadese and Lombardi's CHIN Radio.
However, they are not the only symbols of success in the Italian-Canadian community. There is Vic De Zen, for instance, a world leader in prefabricated materials, recently honoured with the Order of Canada. The same decoration was presented to Iannuzzi and Lombardi, and also to Donald Ziraldo, winemaker, who appeared in 1999 in the National Post's ranking of the 25 greatest Canadian entrepreneurs of the last century. The Order of Canada was also given to Gaetano Gagliano, in recognition for his creation of a printing empire.
The list goes on, and it doesn't include men alone. There is Maria Minna, for instance, who was appointed as Federal Minister for International Development and Co-operation; Albina Guarnieri, Federal MP, who worked on the reform of the Criminal Code (and signed a bill for tougher penalties for multiple murderers); and Lisa Frulla, another MP, who was recently mentioned as a possible leader for the Liberal Party in Quebec. A woman outside politics is Rosanna Magnotta, co-owner of Magnotta Winery, who in 1999 obtained the prestigious title of "Woman of the Year for Innovation".
Other names in the list include Joe Zanchin - also known as "Mr. Automobile" - who owns Ontario's biggest dealerships (Honda and Toyota keep him happy), and Carlo Baldassarra can proudly proclaim that "nobody did more than we did." He's right; his Greenpark Homes, Canada's largest residential construction company, builds a house every 41 minutes.
There is also Richard Lovat, the inventor of a monstrous machine that digs subway tunnels steered by only three technicians, a marvel of technology; Fulvio Caccia and Nino Ricci, who won the Governor General's Award, the highest literary prize in Canada; Mario Cortellucci, leader in planning and developing new residential neighbourhoods; Frank Iacobucci, judge of the Supreme Court; Sergio Marchi, ambassador of Canada to the WTO; the late Minister of Economy of Ontario, Al Palladini; Julian Fantino, chief of the Toronto Police Service, one of North America's most important forces; Giuliano Zaccardelli, commanding that most Canadian institution, the Mounties.
Just a few names taken from a long list, showing that Italian-Canadians managed to "make it" in every sector of society. This is another aspect that cannot easily be duplicated elsewhere.
Men and women, but also organizations: COSTI, which gave hundreds of thousands of immigrants, not only Italians, the chance to learn English for free; CIBPA, the association of Italian-heritage entrepreneurs and professionals; CIAO, the organization of Italian-Canadian lawyers. Also, some great centres of aggregation such as the Columbus Centre and Villa Colombo (a residential complex for seniors) in Toronto, or Centro Leonardo da Vinci in Montreal. Even regional communities erected large buildings for meeting and caring for their seniors, like Casa Abruzzo or Famée Furlane.
"I never encountered an Italian community abroad that added quantity and quality like this," said Francesco Scarlata, the past Consul General of Italy in Toronto. "What I mean to say is that alongside those who succeeded, many but anyway limited in number, there is the mass of our immigrants, their children and grandchildren, who won the respect of this country by working with intelligence, determination and spirit of sacrifice."
Here, real numbers differ from official figures. First-, second- and third-generation Italian immigrants amount to almost two million, a remarkable figure considering that the country's population is 30 million. The consular lists (comprising registered voters) only include 137,000: Ottawa (seat of the Italian Embassy) has about 6,000, Montreal 37,000, Toronto 77,000, Vancouver 12,000, and Edmonton 5,000. Like elsewhere, also in Canada enrolling in the consular lists never was a priority for Italians, "but the recent law allowing people to vote abroad is beginning to elicit a response," says Elena Caprile, editor in chief of Corriere Canadese.
She adds: "It is anyway significant that Toronto's consular lists include more Italians then New York's: 77,000 here, 72,000 there, and New York is a much bigger city. All this means that Italian-Canadians are closer to Italy than Italian-Americans, but this is easily understandable. The great Italian immigration to Canada is much more recent than that of the USA or South America. This is another reason why the vote here raises more expectations than elsewhere. People are satisfied that the law finally allows those who left Italy to enjoy their Constitutional rights. We journalists add pride to that satisfaction."
Caprile clarifies: "Corriere Canadese, as well as all other publications in Italian printed abroad, gave an important contribution, in ideas and determination, to this law. We feel it as our own; that's our reason for pride."
Corriere Canadese has another, more substantial, reason for pride. For almost half a century it has represented the Italian community, reporting on their needs and hopes and on what went on in Canada and in Italy. It's the oldest continuously published newspaper in Italian in the Americas and Oceania.
Nowadays Corriere Canadese is not the only product of Dan Iannuzzi's organization. It still is the flagship publication, but it has been joined by Tandem, its Sunday issue in English; Correo Canadiense, tri-weekly in Spanish; Nove Ilhas, weekly in Portuguese; Insieme, Catholic weekly published in Montreal; and the eight Town Crier papers, Toronto's neighbourhood publications. It's a multimedia enterprise, and its premises accommodate two rotary presses that work full-cycle, printing the company's publications and also many other weekly and monthly magazines. "We also do commercial work requiring big print runs and four-colour printing," adds Iannuzzi, whose father ran an Italian-language weekly in the Forties in Montreal.
The first issue of Corriere Canadese was purposefully distributed on June 1, 1954, on the eve of Italy's Republic Day. At the time Iannuzzi was just over 20. He had left Montreal, where he used to live, for Toronto with the idea of making a newspaper. This was where the Italian community was growing by the day. He had little money, but a new car; he pawned it and paid for paper and ink.
The newspaper published on June 1, 1954 was a weekly. The print run was of 2,800 copies, costing 5¢. In addition to Iannuzzi, the paper was done by Arturo Scotti, an Italian journalist who had moved to Canada, and Augusto Saccucci, an ingenious and fast typographer.
It sold out because the idea was the right one: a service newspaper. This is what was needed by a community that had to cope with many problems, from learning the language (and the newspaper printed the list of the night schools where English was taught, but also campaigned for the classes to be free) to finding a job (a whole generation of immigrants found it through the classified ads of Corriere Canadese); to workplace safety and the teaching of Italian in grade schools. The newspaper's campaigns were memorable. Its motto (Fiercely Canadian, Proudly Italian) summarizes its editorial policy - no indulging in nostalgia, but awareness of the role and attitude that Italians should maintain in the country they had chosen.
Success arrived soon, and the paper became a bi-weekly, then a tri-weekly, and finally a daily (five days a week).
"When multiculturalism arrived on the political and social scene of Canada we supported it wholeheartedly," says Iannuzzi, "because equal dignity was not a matter for Italians only, but also for those other immigrants who were arriving in increasing numbers and, like the Italians, helped this country grow. Foreigners had always been welcome here, but tolerance needed to be rationalized due to the demographic pressure of those years. There was just one way: codifying tolerance into the laws of the nation. Corriere Canadese was at the forefront of that battle." Pierre Trudeau codified tolerance. In 1971 the Federal government proclaimed that multiculturalism was among its political objectives.
That's when Iannuzzi, farsighted entrepreneur, understood that the dominant positions created by the French and British "founding fathers" would not last long, and that multiculturalism would make Canada open up to the "ethnics". "Clearly, they would be the new protagonists, and they needed adequate information in their own languages."
By then, Corriere Canadese was printing some 20,000 copies and had its own press and a precise corporate identity: it could walk on its own legs. Iannuzzi moved to television. At first he rented two hours a day from Citytv, then he founded his own multicultural TV station, CFMT-TV - Channel 47, featuring programmes in other languages closed-captioned in English, backed by the structure of Corriere Canadese. Those were successful years, and their memory lives on.
Then came the great national recession of the Eighties and Nineties. The newspaper, deprived of its lifeline (advertising and sales) by the closing of scores of companies, which meant that people cut down on everything including newspapers, was forced to reduce its periodicity. It went back to being a tri-weekly publication, and Iannuzzi even had to sell the print shop and the TV station. Despite everything, however, the Corriere stubbornly kept being published.
A new leaf was turned seven or eight years ago: with the economy recovering, the newspaper also blossomed. Iannuzzi incorporated the company as Multimedia WTM Corporation, strengthened Corriere Canadese with a first-class editorial staff and the best that technology had to offer. The newspaper returned to five issues per week, gradually recovering sales, and in 1995 launched Tandem, the English-language weekend edition mostly designed for the younger generations. It was another success.
In 1997 Iannuzzi bought a previously used rotary press from Italy. He had it shipped to Toronto and struck a deal with La Repubblica, and since 1998 the foreign edition of that newspaper (32 pages) is electronically sent to Toronto, printed and distributed with Corriere Canadese (six days a week) for one dollar: two papers for the price of one. The experiment was an immediate success and was soon duplicated in New York City with America Oggi. Some months later, Corriere della Sera did the same with La Voce d'Italia of Caracas. Finally La Repubblica reached the same deal with two Australian papers, Melbourne's Il Globo and Sydney's La Fiamma.
These newspapers are very different from one another, published in faraway countries, but they are linked through Consorzio Giornali Italiani Transoceanici (COGITO), founded and chaired by Dan Iannuzzi.
The future is, once again, in television. Iannuzzi applied for a licence for a national multicultural network, i.e. able to broadcast all over Canada and the northern United States (his application is being evaluated by the Federal Commission). "However, the future is also the Internet," he says. "We created a company to deal with this. The website of Corriere Canadese is already interesting, but it will soon improve even further, because it will enable users to use e-commerce tools, and that's the global market for the third millennium."
In the meantime, he did not forget about the "ethnics", especially Hispanics ("they are becoming as numerous as we were in the Seventies"). That is the reason for the birth, last year, of Correo Canadiense.
Another entrepreneur who did not forget the "ethnics" was Johnny Lombardi, who put his creature, CHIN Radio, at their disposal. Not only for Italians, but also Hispanics, Asians, people from the Middle East. All of them found newscasts, talk shows, educational programs in their respective languages. He didn't stop with the radio; he also produced TV programmes, shows of great success, conceived the CHIN Picnic, an annual show attracting thousands of people who came to Canada from all over the world and here found new life and a different approach to reality.
He explained the meaning of that approach through the letters in CHIN: "C is for Canada, H for happiness, I and N for international. CHIN is the happiness of living in Canada in a multicultural, international environment."
The City of Toronto named a stretch of College Street after him, Johnny Lombardi Way, and when he passed away he was even commemorated in Ottawa's Parliament. While he was alive he was an icon, and yet he never showed it. He always remained the son of Leonardo Barbalinardo, born in Pisticci, who changed his name to Lombardi because the Anglo-Saxons had a hard time pronouncing it. An act of respect for others, who should always be put at ease. He, Johnny, never forgot his father's lesson. When he met somebody he did not say buon lavoro - and a well-done job is the basis of happiness - but fà 'na bona jobba, in perfect Italiese, to let everyone understand. He always smiled.
Nowadays even Anglo-Saxons can tell you fà 'na bona jobba. Some of his joy of living rubbed off even on them.

Publication Date: 2003-01-19
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2250