The Hamilton Spectator

The day they took Nicholas Zaffiro’s father away

Retired Hamilton lawyer remembers the injustice of his dad being interned for three years in the Second World War

Mark McNeil

James Street North is no longer thought of as “Little Italy” the way it was decades ago. The area has become much more diversified.

But when it comes to Italian heritage in Hamilton, and poignant stories related to that history, there is no street more important.

One person with deep memories of days gone by is Nicholas Zaffiro, 91, a retired lawyer who helped build one of the biggest law practices in Hamilton. Agro Zaffiro LLP — named for John Agro, who died in 1998, and Nicholas — still operates with 28 lawyers in an 11th-floor office just west of the corner of King and James in downtown Hamilton.

Zaffiro was born in 1930 in his parents’ second-floor apartment on James Street near the corner of Colbourne. As a boy, he played in the surrounding neighbourhood. He spent time at his dad’s Supreme Shoe Repair Shop at 257 James St. N. and as a teenager he worked at a fish and chips takeout nearby.

And next month, his dad’s name — Francesco Zaffiro — will be included on a memorial plaque that will be placed at Immigration Square in front of LIUNA Station on James North. It will be one of 74 Hamiltonians listed on the sign that acknowledges the suspension of civil rights during the Second World War that saw nearly 600 Italian-Canadians from across the country interned during the war as “enemy aliens.”

The plaque comes after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a long-awaited, formal apology in the House of Commons on May 27 over the issue.

Francesco, who came to Hamilton from Racalmuto in Sicily in 1926, spent nearly three years at camps in Petawawa and Camp Ripples, N.B., in the early 1940s. He and the others were gathered up by police and interned after Benito Mussolini declared war against Britain and Canada in June 1940.

Italian Canadians were viewed as threats to national security because of their involvement in social clubs and other organizations that supported Mussolini before the war. But no charges were ever laid against any of those interned, and it is seen today as a sad chapter in Canadian history that was fuelled by prejudice, misinformation and overzealous law enforcement.

More than 80 years later, the memory is still vivid for Nicholas Zaffiro.

“I was at school in Grade 5. At four o’clock school is out. So, I went to my dad’s shop because my instructions were to go there every day before I went out to play so my dad would see that I was OK. And then I could go out and play,” he says.

“But when I got to the shop it was closed. Some kids in the area came up to me and said, ‘the police came to get your father because he was a spy.’”

He was shocked. He did not know what to think. As the days went by, he hoped his dad would return. But the years passed with only censored letters to keep in touch. His mom struggled to make ends meet as a seamstress at Coppley, Noyes and Randall. His older sister had to leave school to work to help support the family.

Nicholas says his father would have been pleased about the apology. He died in 1996 at the age of 95.

“Eighty years is a helluva long time to wait for it. The internees are all dead. But I guess its better late than never,” Nicholas says.

Other names on the commemorative plaque include Osvaldo (Ossie) Giacomelli, who launched a lawsuit against the federal government over his internment but was unsuccessful. He died in 2006 while the legal action was still ongoing.

The infamous Hamilton bootlegger Rocco Perri was also an internee. According to the academic article by Enrico Carlson Cumbo “The Italian Presence in Hamilton: A Social History 1870-2000,” it wasn’t because Perri was political. He and some other “big time bootleggers and racketeers” were held because “the War Measures Act served as a convenient screen to imprison them ...”

Another name on the list, Quinto Martini, went on to become an MP for Hamilton East, serving from 1957-1962. Born in Hamilton to Italian parents, he was the first Italian Canadian to be elected to the House of Commons.

Filomena Tassi, who is currently the MP for Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, and also Labour Minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, says she hopes the apology helps to bring “long-awaited closure to their families and descendants, many of whom still live in our

community.”

As it turns out, Tassi, whose family heritage is Italian, has a connection to the events of 1940 in Hamilton as well.

She recently learned her grandfather on her mother’s side, Ferdinando Volpini, was caught up in the backlash against Italian Canadians in June 1940.

“They actually questioned him,” she said. “He was taken to the police station and questioned for the day.”

Volpini did not end up being interned. But his interrogation, and suspicion about disloyalty to Canada, is a story from Tassi’s family history that she was never told while growing up.

“No one talked about it in my family. I had no idea.” The Shoeless Shoemaker

Joe Baiardo and Sam Cino, cochairs of the Hamilton Italian Canadian Internment Commemorative Committee, have put together a moving song video on YouTube telling the story of Francesco Zaffiro. It’s called “U Scarparu Senza Scarpi” (“The Shoeless Shoemaker)”.

It features Baiardo singing a song with words he wrote to the tune of a traditional Sicilian melody.

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