In the 16 years I have been with my friend Mario I have heard many different stories of his travels around the world and he is one of those people who have lived, worked and hitchhiked through different exotic countries. Mario is a high school teacher in Toronto who teaches French and world issues. He spent time living and working in places like Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and Quebec and came face to face with very different cultures.
Mario is also an immigrant to two different countries, Australia, where he moved as a young child in the 1950s, and Canada, where he arrived as a teenager. Here is his story, the story of a global immigrant, traveler and adventurer.
1. Please tell us a little about your background. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in San Vita al Tagliamento in the northeast of Italy in the province of Friuli. But my parents are of Calabrian origin from southern Italy. After his military service in northern Italy, my father decided to stay there because of his fondness for the Friuli culture. In 1953, my father moved our family to Australia, where he worked for a French contracting company, and we settled in Brisbane, Queensland, when I was two and a half years old. It was there that I had my first memories of the immigrant reality, which was a very simple house made of wood. The roof was leaking in our house and we had plants growing through the kitchen floor. Conditions were very basic, but this would set the stage for 11 years of a very challenging cultural adjustment period, after which my father moved us to Canada in 1964.
At that time, Italians faced a lot of discrimination, including harassment or sometimes violence in different forms, physical and psychological. In fact, my family was targeted in various forms of attack because we were immigrants. It was quite a paranoid existence, constantly having to look over your shoulder.
Remember, this was in the 1950s and Australia was still governed under the “White Australia Policy”, a form of institutionalized apartheid. I witnessed various acts of brutality towards Aboriginal Australians who I was often mistaken for because of my dark skin. The proximity to the sea, however, made me appreciate the beauty of Australia in its purest form. During this time I developed a strong sense of self-sufficiency and learned the importance of standing up for myself.
In the mid 1970s I returned to Australia and found that the work of many of those early immigrants had paid off in the form of comfortable lifestyles and successful middle class experiences. Italians had finally become mainstream and accepted. This was also in line with Australia’s new multicultural policy. Australia began to open up to different nationalities, which made the society more tolerant.
2. You are a talented person who speaks several languages. How many languages do you speak and what are they?
English and Italian are my first two languages. I also speak French, Spanish and Portuguese at a fairly high level. In addition, I also get by in Indonesian and speak basic German and a few Russian phrases. I am fascinated by the sound of different foreign languages and I also appreciate that speaking the language is the key to these foreign cultures. Apart from the initial period during high school when I was first exposed to English, French and German, the rest of my languages were acquired by living in the culture.
3. How was the first time you came to Canada?
I remember that it was very, very cold ever since we arrived in Canada on February 16, 1964. My first sighting was a very abrupt introduction to Canadian weather. For several years I found it very difficult to adapt to the climate. On the other hand, when it comes to culture, I was finally able to take advantage of my Italian identity. In fact, it was in Toronto that the whole notion of being Italian took on a new meaning for me because I felt accepted. I felt embraced here and felt that I could express my Italian heritage, which led me to perfect my Italian, considering that I had suppressed speaking Italian in Australia. Once we got to Toronto I felt the desire to delve into the language.
High school in Canada was an appreciation of many other languages. They offered us courses in French, German, Latin and Spanish at the high school level. The school I attended reflected the transitional nature of Toronto at the time, which had been very WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) until the 1960s and began to shift towards a more cosmopolitan environment thereafter. There were people from different backgrounds who made you feel comfortable expressing yourself. By the time I went to college, I was quite comfortable with my own intercultural identity.
My appreciation for Portuguese began on a construction job in Tecumseh, Ontario, where two groups of construction workers, one Italian and one Portuguese, were confined to a very small house provided by the construction company and forced to live and interact with each other. they. . I started to appreciate the similarities and differences with the Portuguese culture, which I found absolutely fascinating. This was my initiation to the Portuguese language.
4. What were your first travel experiences?
Other than immigrant boat trips, my earliest travel memories are hitchhiking to Niagara Falls and Barrie, a mid-size city 90 minutes north of Toronto, when I was 15 years old. This gave me a sense of independence and the ability to design my own path on any journey. I felt in control and decided where I wanted to go. We didn’t realize we needed a passport to cross into the United States, so we learned a lesson that you need your documents in order when traveling to foreign countries.
The next big trip was at the age of 17, crossing Canada with a fellow student in a VW Beetle. We went to Vancouver for a month, picking strawberries, working on farms to survive. The second leg of that trip was to Mexico via California. This was the Height-Ashbury period, the summer of ’68, and we really experienced Flower Power in San Francisco. This left a lasting impression on me for the freedom and camaraderie among the youth. Anyone would open their home to you and you felt a bond with many young people.
The paradox of this period was that it was during the Vietnam War. So, just as young people rallied around each other, believing that peace was the answer to the world’s dilemmas, people were being killed on the other side of the world. The administration in Washington believed that war was the answer and these young people had in effect opted out of the system.
Mexico itself was a revelation. It was my introduction to Latino culture and the decrepit Third World conditions of the masses. This was my politicization when I realized the plight of the majority of humanity and it made me even more curious to go back and get in touch with these people.
When I returned from Mexico it was very difficult to adapt to the mundane values of the middle class, to fit into my place in my system. So I dropped out of my sophomore year of college and continued to travel without a fixed itinerary.
I first went to Europe, starting with London, worked in a hospital, and then spent 2 months traveling Europe on a Eurail pass. After Spain I visited Morocco where I met a guy named Giovanni Pozzi who gave me images and illusions of Afghanistan, a place he had been before. This created in me a great desire to discover that part of the world as well.
After Morocco, I intended to meet Giovanni and travel with him from Brindisi, Italy, overland to Afghanistan. In September 1971 I visited him in Milan after I had returned to discover my Italian heritage, and then connected with him in Brindisi from where we took a ferry to Greece and began our overland journey to Afghanistan.
We arrived at the Turkish-Iranian border after a harrowing incident in which a Turkish train derailed. Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned the lesson of my teenage years and hadn’t checked the visa requirements for Canadians. Iran required a visa for Canadians, so I had to go back to an Iranian consulate on the Black Sea where I got my Iranian travel visa. Somehow Giovanni and I got separated and this was the beginning of a true independent journey. I learned never to depend on other people’s information, always check everything yourself.
3. Tell us about your experiences and impressions during your first trip to Asia.
After traveling around Iran for about a week, during the repressive reign of the Shah, I hitchhiked with 2 Pakistani truckers from Tehran to Mashad, the site of the Blue Mosque, one of the most beautiful mosques in the Islamic world. From there we went to Herat, Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan, where I had access to some of the most fantastic images of Afghan culture. I saw riders in bright green silk pants, in garb more medieval than 1970s. The Afghans seemed to be a very proud, dignified, and fiercely independent people.
After a brief stay in Kabul, I crossed the Khyber Pass towards Peshawar in Pakistan. This was also an amazing view of the gun culture of this region. Each man had a 4.5 foot long weapon and it was truly an overwhelming sight to see so much weaponry on display. Unfortunately this would continue as a war would break out between Pakistan and India at that time, and after leaving Pakistan I ended up traveling through India during a time of war.
I was traveling on trains with a mobilized army, a people in frantic movement not knowing what to do. The whole country was in a state of tension. Foreigners were being asked to leave the country, so after a month in New Delhi I had to change my plans to visit Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and catch the next flight from Kolkata to Bangkok. Airfare at the time was US$80 each way in 1971. Calcutta was also the site of millions of refugees pouring in from what would eventually become Bangladesh. They literally took Calcutta. I was about to sleep outside when I was approached by an Anglo-Bengali couple who insisted that it was absolutely improper for a European to sleep on the ground like that. Then they insisted that I leave and stay with them for a couple of nights. His only requested favor in return was that he send them a Levi jacket when he returned to Australia.
4. From India you moved to Thailand. Tell us about your experience in Southeast Asia.
In 1971 Bangkok I was staying at the Atlantic Hotel for $1 a night, Bangkok was still a relatively small capital at that time. I left Bangkok and headed south, hitchhiking, where I was brutally introduced to Thai culture. I was in the back of a truck and dangling my feet out of it, the truck was overtaken by another vehicle whose occupants got out and threatened me, pointing to my feet. Fortunately, a young Canadian from Saskatoon, Murray Wright, was sitting in the front of my truck and explained that it was a big mistake to show the soles of your feet. This is a huge insult in Thai culture. Then I realized that when traveling it is very important to also understand non-verbal communication. This was a great lesson for me.
This meeting with Murray was fortuitous. He had had an accident while building a Japanese sugar factory and he asked me to take over his work as a carpenter. This led me to work for a month with Thais and understand Thai culture to some extent. It was also my first experience of amoebic dysentery, a tropical disease, which nearly killed me. This is how I was introduced to the food conditions of the developing world.