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Jan 15,2006 - Jan 22,2006 |
19 - The man who makes dreams come true
From Castelfranco Veneto to Toronto:the adventures of Gianni Bragagnolo (Albatours)
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-12-22
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Gianni Bragagnolo
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Travel agents sell dreams that can come true. They tend to their own interests, of course, because in business there's no such thing as a free lunch; but their business consists in opening to common mortals the doors of exclusive heavens, allowing them to cross oceans and continents, to explore unknown worlds. It makes no difference that these dreams last no longer than holidays do; what's important is that they come true, at least once in a lifetime. Travel agents make them come true: this is why they are quite untypical business people.
But 20-year-old Giovanni Bragagnolo, from Vittorio Veneto, was not thinking of this when he climbed onto an airplane and came to Canada looking for success. It was July 14, 1966, an emblematic date: the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, the event marking the beginning of the French Revolution and of a new era.
Was that date a portent of things to come?
"What portent?" he replies. "I can only remember that we, my friend Luigi Stocco and I, arrived on a Thursday, and some days later, on July 19, the famous soccer game between Italy and North Korea at the England World Cup was played, and we were beaten by a national team of beggars... I remember the embarrassment, but especially the teasing we Italians had to bear, particularly from Anglo-Saxons."
While still in Italy Bragagnolo and Stocco, after completing high school and attending a university course in petroleum drilling, started looking for a job. "But we got nowhere," Bragagnolo remembers, "and on the other hand, after the economic boom, Italy was heading for the recession of the Seventies. Politicians, who were then really blind, called it 'a growth crisis', but growth or no growth, if you wanted to work you had to go away. So we did."
An acquaintance of theirs, Professor Ottorino Bressan, had come to Canada some years earlier, where he was teaching Italian and history. The two friends wrote him to inquire about the Canadian job market. Bressan replied in a timely fashion: "There are jobs, but it would be much better if you came and saw for yourselves."
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