Whoever Gives Us Bread

The Story of Italians in British Columbia (2011)

Italian emigration has been described "as the largest exodus ever from one European nation," a situation so extreme that one writer has called it 'well-nigh expulsion.'" Millions of Italians emigrated from a land they had no wish to leave, from a climate and terrain essential to their being.

Fleeing grinding poverty they went to other European countries and to South America, Australia, the United States and Canada. Whoever Gives Us Bread tells the story of the Italians who came to British Columbia. Lured at first by California gold in the 1850s, they came north to the isolated valleys and cities of the province to pan for gold, raise cattle, dig coal, fell timber, build railroads, smelt copper and refine lead, and start small businesses.

Although British Columbia was desperate for workers,its citizens viewed Italians as undesireable immigrants. Canadian lawmakers were equally ambivalent. Whoever Gives Us Bread shows what the immigrants endured and how they became valued citizens over the course of the next 150 years.