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John Potestio. Thunder Bay: The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 2000. 182 pp., $14.95 sc.
John Potestio is part of that generation of scholars that answered Robert Harney's clarion call in the 1970s for the need to produce more historical studies on Italians in Canada. Over the years I followed his intellectual odyssey with great interest. In Search of a Better Life is really the logical consequence of a labour of love - to convey the history of the Grimaldesi people (Grimaldi is a town in the southern Italian region of Calabria) in Thunder Bay. He captured part of that history in previous publications such as The Memoirs of Giovanni Veltri). But it is with this publication that the topic is explored at greater length.
Potestio's central theme, which he adeptly steers throughout the book, is that the emigration pattern of the Grimaldesi does not follow the traditional interpretation equating emigration to uprootedness. Rather, the experience of the Grimaldesi suggests that their emigration tradition established enduring links between villagers and immigrant communities abroad: "The immigrants maintained connections, some strong, others weak, that made their town an important part of their lives" (p. 19).
Having established this premise, he carries the reader on an historical journey beginning with an assessment of Grimaldi's emigration tradition....