Steam boats and old stories...

Often it is important to know where we come from, for a fuller sense of direction in life, in participating to a larger general design. All those who contributed to our genetical map are in a certain sense still living inside ourselves, wherever their physical existence took place. You may answer many personal questions with a bit of undigging in your family's past, in the history, behaviours, customs that your parents passed on to you, and that you maybe unconsciously are transmitting to your children. There's a special reward when you find something that seemed lost forever, and maybe would, if you had not cared. From the dusty, crumbling papers of documents people who belong to what you now are come out of the mist of time and look at you silently, affectionately, waiting for you to decipher their stories, rescue them from oblivion and pass their as yet forgotten names and stories on to the next generations.

There are some old stories that I love to hear!
This is one of those stories : this is Licia's dad story!

This summer, after Sandra's marriage, Licia went on a trip with Gigino to Nova Scotia and New Foundland. Just a trip up north to get to know a little more of this immense and beautiful country. But this was not the only reason. This trip was also a quest through old volumes in the port of Halifax, searching for a sign of her dad. I can just imagine her excitement and heart beat when some records of her dad were found...

Many, many years ago on November 6th 1927, Licia's dad, Emidio Di Pietro, disembarked from the ASCANIA steam-boat (photo above) at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had left Vallinquina, Vallecastellana (Teramo) in Italy with 25 "soldi". He had crossed the Atlantic ocean with the dream of making his fortune in this unspoiled country called Canada.
He had travelled then, by train, from Halifax to Hamilton where he found a job at the steal company Stelco.

Many, many years after Licia and Luigi...followed Emidio Di Pietro's steps and started a family in Hamilton, where Emidio had lived for some years before coming back to Vallinquina and marrying Esterina, Licia's mother...but this is another story.