@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix dc: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Education, Faculty of"@en, "Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Arruda, Antonio F."@en ; dcterms:issued "2008-09-12T23:42:13Z"@en, "1992"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Master of Arts - MA"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """A history of growing up in Vancouver with immigrant Portuguese parents was constructed by interviewing seventeen adults who were teenagers in Vancouver between 1962 and 1980. Sixteen emigrated as children or adolescents from a variety of social and economic backgrounds in the Azores and Continental Portugal and one was born in Vancouver. This thesis examines aspects of their adolescence in the family, at school, at work, in friendship and courtship, as well as at church. Their lives in Vancouver often differed considerably one from another, a diversity that was already apparent in Portugal. In Vancouver, many parents attempted to maintain or even intensify control over their children who resisted to varying degrees. Other parents allowed their children much more social freedom. As adults, many of these subjects retain an interest in Portuguese culture and traditions. Some limited comparison is made with other subjects in Kitimat, Penticton, and Toronto."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/1922?expand=metadata"@en ; dcterms:extent "7689754 bytes"@en ; dc:format "application/pdf"@en ; skos:note "\"Growing up in Portuguese-Canadian Families: an oral historyof Adolescence in Vancouver, 1962-1980\"byAntonio Filomeno ArrudaB.A. The Univiersity of Western Ontario, 1979B.Ed., The University of Western Ontario, 1980A THESIS IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFMASTER OF ARTSinTHE FACULTY OF EDUCATIONDepartment of Social and Educational StudiesWe accept this thesis as conformingto the required standardTHE UNIVERSITY OF BRITI H COLUMBIA8 OCTOBER 1992© Antonio Filomeno Arruda, 1992In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanceddegree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make itfreely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensivecopying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of mydepartment or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying orpublication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my writtenpermission.(Signature)Department ofThe University of British ColumbiaVancouver, CanadaDate^c^2_DE-6 (2/88)iiABSTRACTA history of growing up in Vancouver with immigrantPortuguese parents was constructed by interviewing seventeenadults who were teenagers in Vancouver between 1962 and 1980.Sixteen emigrated as children or adolescents from a variety ofsocial and economic backgrounds in the Azores and ContinentalPortugal and one was born in Vancouver.This thesis examines aspects of their adolescence in thefamily, at school, at work, in friendship and courtship, as wellas at church. Their lives in Vancouver often differedconsiderably one from another, a diversity that was alreadyapparent in Portugal. In Vancouver, many parents attempted tomaintain or even intensify control over their children whoresisted to varying degrees. Other parents allowed theirchildren much more social freedom. As adults, many of thesesubjects retain an interest in Portuguese culture and traditions.Some limited comparison is made with other subjects in Kitimat,Penticton, and Toronto.iiiTABLE OF CONTENTSAbstract^ iiTable of Contents^ iiiAcknowledgement ivChapter One Oral History and the Construction of Adolescence 1Chapter Two Emigration from the Homeland^ 17Chapter Three From Portuguese Homes to Vancouver Homes^ 47Chapter Four Portuguese Children in Vancouver Schools^ 81Chapter Five Growing up With Work^ 107Chapter Six Friends, Courtship and Leisure Time^ 126Chapter Seven Church and Adolescent Spirituality 151Conclusion ^ 171Works Cited 181Appendix I^Copy of Statement of Consent^ 189Appendix II Recruitment Letter (English) 191Appendix III Recruitment Letter (Portuguese) ^ 192Appendix IV Interview Schedule^ 193ivACKNOWLEDGEMENTAlthough many people have helped me in this research, I wishto acknowledge some in particular. I wish to thank thosesubjects who gave so generously of themselves and whose lives Ihave pondered for so many hours. They must go unrecognized. Iam also indebted to Ana Paula Horta who assisted me in gettingthis project underway.I have been fortunate to work under the guidance of twoscholars in two fields. Dr. Neil Sutherland provided solidadvice based upon his considerable experience and writing in thefield of childhood history. He never forgot to scribble a wordor two of encouragement on even my poorest drafts. I owe a greatdeal to Dr. J. Donald Wilson who devoted considerable time andeffort introducing me to the literature in the field of ethnicstudies. I thank Dr. Jean Barman for the interest and enthusiasmshe has shown for my research.Last but certainly not least, I must recognize my twochildren, Christopher and Brittany, whose lives in the present Ioften overlooked as I tried to poke about those others in thepast.Chapter 1 -- Oral History and the Construction of Adolescence\"History cannot be written unless the historian canachieve some kind of contact with the mind ofthose about whom he is writing.\" 1Tiago, a fatherless, fifteen year-old boy from a tinyvillage in the mid-Atlantic Azorean archipelago, had been workingfull-time, doing \"almost a man's work\" for five years to supporthimself and his mother when he emigrated with her to Canada in1975. As an adult in 1992, he remembers that from the moment helanded in Vancouver, British Columbia, his eyes were opened wide;as he says, \"I thought I'd died and went to heaven -- I was soamazed with everything.\" For Tiago, Canada became a veritableheaven of material prosperity; indeed, using the overworkedexpression, he praised Canada as a \"land of opportunity\" and \"thebest country in the world.\" 2What is typical about Tiago's case is that some of thedecisions he made here reflected his homeland frame of reference.1E.H. Carr, What is History, 2nd. ed. (London: Penguin Books,1990), 24.2M16075.12He had just won a scholarship enabling him to continue past thefourth grade on Sao Miguel when his father died suddenly. Out ofa deep sense of responsibility to support his mother, he turneddown the educational opportunity and turned to full-time work.He was ten years old. Five years later, in Vancouver, hecontinued to feel the same responsibility, and despite hismother's hopes that he enter school, he did not do so. Oneconsequence of his decision is that he never learned how to writewell in English. Regardless of their socio-economic mobility,for Tiago as well as for the other children and youth ofPortuguese descent in this study, Canada became and remains a\"world\", a land, \"more theirs than their parents.\" 3 Whetherimmigrant or Vancouver-born, these subjects became more familiarwith the English language, as well as anglophone schools,customs, symbols, literature, and the wider popular culture thandid their parents. 4 Nevertheless, and despite the fact thatthey generally enjoy higher socio-economic status than theirparents, it is significant to remember from the outset that somehave not entirely embraced Canada as their own.3Elliott West, Growing up with the Country: childhood on thefar western frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1989),132.4While it is not the purpose of this thesis to undertake asystematic comparative study of immigrant childhood and adolescencein Vancouver, there are probably considerable overlaps in thegrowing up experiences of immigrant children.3IThis thesis is an oral history of the growing up years ofsome of the first Portuguese children and adolescents living inVancouver between 1962 and 1980. These emigrant Portuguese beganto grow up in Portugal and finished the process in Vancouver. Inall, I conducted interviews with twenty-one adults of Portuguesedescent. Of these, sixteen subjects, now aged 28 to 44,emigrated as children or youths from Portugal, and wereadolescents in Vancouver at some point between 1962 and 1980. Aseventeenth subject, aged 28, was born to Portuguese parents inVancouver. I also mined interviews with four adults fromPenticton, Kitimat, and Toronto for brief comparisons. 5 Thoughall but one of the seventeen were born in Portugal, I think muchof what is said in this study may resonate rather loudly for manyothers born here to Portuguese parents. Parental length of stayin Canada, their socio-economic status in Portugal, as well astheir personal disposition as parents, probably had more impacton parental child-rearing notions and practices than the factthat a child was \"Canadian-born.\" 65One was a Canadian-born woman who grew up in Kitimat;another, a man who emigrated as a seventeen year-old to Penticton;a third was a woman who grew up in Toronto after emigrating therebefore her second birthday; and a fourth was a man who hademigrated as an eighteen-year old to Toronto.6A shorter study of five other Canadian-born girls suggests tome that many Portuguese-born and Canadian-born girls could facepretty much the same parental expectations. Isabel Pinto, \"Growingup Portuguese in Canadian Schools: social and cultural conflictbetween parents and their children\" (unpublished paper: UBC, 1988).4This sample is not necessarily representative of thePortuguese community in Vancouver or Canada. By 1964, anestimated sixty percent of Portuguese in Canada were from theAzorean archipelago, thirty-eight percent from the Continent,while only two percent came from Madeira. In 1976, some thoughtthis figure had \"remained constant, if indeed, the Azoreanmajority has not been accentuated.\" 7 In chapter two, I discussmore specifically what sources say about the Azorean andContinental constituencies in Vancouver. I need only mentionhere that the Azorean constituency, largely from the island ofSao Miguel, has been placed at, or over fifty percent. Eightsubjects emigrated from the Continent: a brother and sister andtwo others from Lisbon; two from small rural towns; and two fromvery isolated settings in the countryside. Eight emigrated fromSao Miguel: two sisters, and one other from small cities; andfive from tiny villages. The remaining subject was Vancouver-born to parents who emigrated from another Azorean island in thelate fifties. This sample may over-represent ContinentalPortuguese and those who emigrated from better, what subjectsusually described as \"middle-class\", Portuguese families.Most subjects were found by snowball sampling. A few othersresponded to my advertisement for subjects. All candidateseither contacted me, or had agreed through a subject or a7Grace M. Anderson and David Higgs, A Future to Inherit: AHistory of Portuguese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClellandand Stewart in association with the Department of the Secretary ofState, 1976), 21.5contact, to be contacted. At approximately the half-way point ofthe research, I attempted to balance out the geographic and classskew that I thought was occurring. Informants were assuredcomplete anonymity before the interview began and were asked togive their written consent only after the interview was over.Half of the subjects consented of the use of their full name inthis thesis, and almost all wished to donate the recordedinterview to an oral history collection (see Appendix I-III forConsent and Recruitment). In the interest of maximizingconfidentiality, interviews are cited by number and do notnecessarily appear in their proper order within each footnote.Oral testimonies provided me with valuable insights intovarious aspects of their growing-up years: family, school, work,friendships, and church and spirituality. I also asked subjectsto recall other forces in those years, particularly, their hopes,fears and world view. Most interviews ranged in duration fromabout two to five hours with a formal taped portion of betweenone to just under three hours. Two taped portions conducted atplaces of business, however, lasted just under an hour. A moretypical interview demanded an entire evening in the subject's ownhome. All interviews but one were conducted in English except inone case where a subject was more comfortable speaking inPortuguese.I made three assumptions in the construction of thishistory. First, I assumed adolescent histories were a product ofwhere children and youth grew up, where they studied, played,6worked, went to church, and what they thought, dreamt of, andfeared -- whether in Canada or Portugal. Thus, listening totheir description of school life in the liceu in Ribeira Grandeon Sao Miguel, or in a Lisbon private school, becomes critical toan understanding of their attitudes and responses to Canadianschools.Second, I assumed, especially in the case of older childrenand youth, that the emigration fact was a watershed event intheir lives. I assumed emigration wrested them away fromfamiliar contexts -- some pleasant, some not. I thought I mightbetter understand their Vancouver adolescence if I knew somethingabout this central event.Third, I sought to understand the homeland as these subjectsthemselves had probably seen it in so many backward glances. The\"there\" I most sought to understand was a subjective image: itwas the \"there\" they remembered as they faced a present \"here\".III undertook this history because it appears there has beenlittle systematic treatment of Portuguese childhood andadolescence in Canada and especially in Vancouver. The generalworks concerning the Portuguese in Canada discuss children,youths and families in broad terms. 8 Those describing the8The study by Anderson and Higgs remains the single mostcomprehensive historical and sociological treatment of Portuguesecommunities of Canada. They provide indications that thePortuguese family is in a state of dynamic flux, as women assertthemselves in the new world and children \"exert strong pressures on7Portuguese communities of British Columbia do not investigatechildren on their own terms. 9 This local study is but one steptoward a pan-Canadian synthesis of Portuguese-Canadian childhoodhistory, if indeed, the latter is possible.\"Portuguese immigrant adolescence in Vancouver wascharacterized by a considerable diversity of experiences,the family for change\" (pp. 131-2) As a commissioned text, ofcourse, it had to accomplish tasks other than the construction ofPortuguese-Canadian childhood and adolescent history. See A Futureto Inherit. Another study accords the family similar weight,though the authors expanded upon the observation that Portugueseimmigrant parents were pre-eminently concerned with their children.See Joao Antonio Alpalhao and Victor Manuel Pereira da Rosa, AMinority in A Changing Society (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,1980). The large bits of undigested oral testimony unabashedlyplaces some of the first immigrant men in the centre stage in athird large study: Domingos Marques and Joao Medeiros, PortugueseImmigrants: 25 Years in Canada (Toronto: Marquis Printers andPublishers, Inc., 1980).9The exception is one study which I found very useful: IsabelPinto, \"Growing up Portuguese in Canadian Schools: Social andCultural Conflict between Parents and their Children (unpublishedpaper, UBC 31 March, 1988). Two studies were also useful for mypurposes: See Ana Paula Beja Horta, The Salience of Ethnicity: occupation and ethnic manifestations among the Portuguese inVancouver (unpublished M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1989);and Rosa Maria Batista Pereira Munzer, Immigration, Familism, andIn-group Competition: a study of the Portuguese in Victoria (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Victoria, 1982). Two wereless so: Alison Isobel Boulter, Constituting Ethnic Differences: anethnography of the Portuguese immigrant experience in Vancouver(unpublished M.A. thesis, UBC, 1978); and Annamma Joy, Accomodationand Cultural Persistence in the Okanagan Valley: the case of theSikhs and the Portuguese in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia (unpublished M.A. thesis, UBC, 1982).10For example, Roberto Perin agrees with Robert F. Harney'sobservation that \"given Canada's intense regionalism\" a synthesisof the immigrant experience would be more of \"an intellectualconstruct than a reality.\" Roberto Perin, \"Writing aboutEthnicity,\" in John Schultz, ed., Writing about Canada: A Handbookfor Modern Canadian History (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada,Inc., 1990) p. 223.8something not too different from what Deborah Gorham found in herstudy of middle-class Victorian girls.\" Sometimes theexperiences these subjects described differed from thosedescribed by other Canadian and New England sources examiningPortuguese children. 12 By focusing upon the adjustment problemsPortuguese children and youth no doubt encountered, those sourcesseem to have paid little or no attention to investigating otherexperiences, or changes in their lives over time. One offeringfrom Southern Ontario, Papers on the Portuguese Community, is sosaturated with \"problems\" that had translated copies been sent tothe Azores and northern Continental Portugal, forward-lookingparents might have remained within miseria, or emigratedelsewhere in greater numbers. 13The informants in this study emigrated with different sets11 See Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (London: Croom Helm, Ltd., 1982).12For studies which deal more closely with Portuguese childrenand the family in Canada, see, for example, Fernando Nunes,Problems and Adjustments of the Portuguese Immigrant Family inCanada (Oporto: Secretaria de Estado das Communidades Portuguesas,Centro de Estudos, 1985); For the American context, see, Fernandode Meneses, Entre dois mundos: vida quotidiana de criancas portuguesas no america [Between Two Worlds: The Daily Life ofPortuguese Children in America] (Cambridge, Mass.: NationalAssessment and Dissemination Center, 1977) ERIC, ED 179075;Cornelius Lee Grove, \"Six Non-Language-Related Problems FacingOlder Immigrant Portuguese Students\", paper presented at the [3rd]Annual Symposium on the Portuguese Experience in the United States,(Garden City, NY: November 17, 1977) ERIC, ED 151447; as well ashis \"Cross-Cultural Problems Facing Older Portuguese Students inAmerican Schools\" [1977] ERIC, ED 151472.13Coelho, Ana-Maria and Fatima Peres et. al., Papers on thePortuguese Community (Toronto: Multicultural Development Branch ofthe Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation, 1977).9of childhood and adolescent experiences from varied geographicand socio-economic backgrounds. They emigrated at different agesand spent varying lengths of adolescence in Vancouver. Theirparents held varying expectations of class, motives foremigration, and horizons of child-rearing philosophies. ManyPortuguese parents attempted to prevent their children fromengaging in the wider Vancouver youth culture. Some of theirchildren abided by such strictures. Some resisted and wonconcessions. Others seemed to live with values that \"made sense\"to them as adolescents, whether these values were Portuguese orCanadian. A few, finding little that suited them, little withwhich they could identify within the Portuguese community, simplyignored its supposed tangible and intangible boundaries, andpropelled themselves into the wider youth culture. These ledlives remarkably different from \"other\" Portuguese they saw here.Some testimonies lent credence to the view that ethnicity is notalways the most important variable in one's life. In sum, I havemore confidence in the range of experiences I have uncovered thanin any \"typicality\" that may be suggested by this study.IIIOral interviews have generated most of the primary evidencewhich informs this history. Robert Harney advocated its use infinding the voice of hitherto silent people, 14 cautioning that14Robert Harney, \"Italian Immigration and the Frontiers ofWestern Civilization,\" in John Potestio and Antonio Pucci, eds.,The Italian Immigrant Experience (Thunder Bay: Canadian Italian1 0\"oral testimony is a historical source, not history.\" 15 Studiesinvolving histories of childhood, adolescence, as well as theimmigrant experience, are particularly suited to investigationthrough oral history for three reasons. First, these historicalactors leave fewer \"footprints\" in the form of written recordssuch as diaries, journals, memoirs, than do, say, politicalfigures. Second, these mutes may offer a perspective whichdiffers markedly from what adults observing them perceived. Forexample, one Vancouver teacher who had taught in the sixtiesremembers that many Portuguese youths in his school \"had been inthe system since grade one ... they were Canadian kids -- notlike foreigners\" , 16 though that is not how some of thesesubjects themselves felt. Third, as Neil Sutherland pointed out,written sources such as police reports, census-taking, andreporter interviews begin in oral form, and even the diaristHistorical Association, 1988). Roberto Perin makes a similar pleain \"Writing about Ethnicity,\" Writing About Canada: A Handbook forModern Canadian History. Peter Li suggests oral histories providea \"fresh insight\" into a past which normally escapes the attentionof historians and social scientists in \"The Use of Oral History inStudying Elderly Chinese-Canadians,\" Canadian Ethnic Studies 17:(67-77), 69. In particular, Franca Iacovetta made extensive use oforal interviews to construct an exciting history of the living andworking conditions of emigrant South Italian women. See \"FromContadina to Worker,\" Jean Burnet, ed., Looking Into My Sister's Eyes: an exploration in Women's History (Toronto: MulticulturalHistory Society of Ontario, 1986).15Robert Harney, Oral Testimony and Ethnic Studies (Toronto:The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, [n.d.]) [p. 5].16lnterview, August, 1992.11\"overhears the conversation of her youngsters.\"\" As hesuggested, in order to find out what growing up was like, one hasto go to the subjects themselves. Fourth, the oral interview hasthe advantage of two-way communication with a living subject 18 -- not the one-way communication that is left open to theresearcher sifting through sanitized biographies, journals,diaries, and autobiographies. Each of those sources was writtenwith the knowledge, and therefore the prerequisite caution, thatthese documents might one day be read. 19 Instead, two-way,face-to-face interaction increases the possibility of approachinga mutual, or as E.H. Carr put it, an \"imaginative understandingfor the minds of the people\" with whom the researcher isdealing -- \"for the thought behind their acts.\" 20I approached the research as an \"outsider-insider\" withrespect to the Vancouver Portuguese community. I was an outsider\"Neil Sutherland, \"When You Listen to the Winds of Childhood,How Much Can You Believe?\" in Curriculum Enquiry 22 3 (Fall 1992):7.18\"Historians prefer their people safely dead.\" Everett C.Hughes made this unkind comment in his review of Oscar Handlin'sclassic, The Uprooted. See American Journal of Sociology 59 (1953-54): 583.19Elliott West, for example, places too much trust in hissources when he says, children's \"diaries went week after weekwithout any hint of heavy hands.\" Growing up with the Country.Linda Pollock, while distrustful of other \"overwhelminglysecondary\" sources, places too great a trust upon diaries andautobiographies in order to build an argument that, in part,parents were not so severe with their children. Linda A. Pollock,Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).20Carr, 24.12because when I first began the research, I knew only onePortuguese person in Vancouver. I was an \"insider\" as I hadfirst-hand experience of growing up under Portuguese immigrantparents in Manitouwadge, Ontario, in the 1960s and 1970s. Ibecame familiar with folk culture in what was a relatively-sizeable Portuguese community. In 1977, as a young adult, Ireturned to visit the Azores for six weeks and spent a week inContinental Portugal. I considered myself an informedinterviewer wielding some of the \"levers\" that \"lift intoconsciousness and expression the more abstruse and out-of-the-wayfacts or series of facts\" that Beatrice Webb and Paul Thompsonthought important in interviews. 21 In retrospect, I feel Isometimes jostled a subject's guard, and was made privy to one ortwo of the unspeakable treasures -- as well as albatrossskeletons that have lined the unopened vault all these years. Icould triangulate both within and outside the interview. Livesubjects can, and did, evaluate, substantiate, or correct aprevious statement they, or others, made earlier.On the other hand, I remained concerned about some of thepitfalls associated with the tradition of oral history. Subjectswere far more successful in recalling for me even intimatedetails tied to particular events, than in recalling childhoodand adolescent hopes, dreams, fears and adolescent points ofview. Perhaps they did not wish to tell me particular aspects ofNebb, cited in Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past, Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 167.13their lives -- just as they might not wish to reveal certainfacts to the police, census-takers, or reporters. Perhaps somedid forget aspects of their youth. Perhaps some had recastmemories with an adult perspective. One woman who said sherecalled few childhood dreams added wistfully she \"had changed somuch since then. 1122 Karen Fields pointed out that \"memoryfails, leaving blanks and memory fails by filling blanksmistakenly.\" 23 If this is true, there cannot be a betterargument to capture childhood and adolescent memories beforememories fade, mutate further, or the subject dies.IVAside from the problem of memory is the general question ofreliability. Before the research commenced, I was reminded ofthe need to stay clear of leading questions. 24 (See Appendix IVfor Interview Schedule). In the interviews, I did probesubjects' responses and reworded questions, but otherwise I triedto refrain from intruding upon the interview. I also knew it wasnot possible to be a \"neutral medium,\" 25 which I thought would22F16400.23Karen Fields, \"What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly,\" Oral History Journal 17 (1989): 44.24See Appendix I for the interview questions. Some questionswere suggested by a guide: Harney, Oral Testimony.25An often-consulted university text on research states:\"interviews are essentially vocal questionaires\"; and furtheralong, \"to mitigate the disadvantages of interviewing, theinterviewer should be thought of as a neutral medium through whichinformation is exchanged.\" James H. McMillan and Sally Schumacher,14remain an ideal position. Robert Harney pointed out \"a goodinterviewer will try to minimize the effect of his presence whileusing it to ensure honest results\"; for example, an interviewershould interrupt \"to challenge something which seems patentlywrong\" or \"to mention contradictions or similarities in others'testimony which might encourage the interviewee to enlarge oncentral themes.\" 26 I encouraged, rather than discouraged,subjects when they departed into longer stories. Nonetheless, Imade it a point to ask every subject the same set of questions --though I sometimes varied the order if I thought it was morenatural to do so. The interview schedule, therefore, often actedas a \"landing field\" from which to embark, and return. With somemore \"passive\" subjects, I took great comfort in the fact that Icould consult a ready-made schedule for the next question. In myfirst interviews, I tried to make notes, but I quickly abandonedthis artificial and self-conscious act and relied upon a verysmall microphone and recorder set up as inconspicuously aspossible. I took up a folded-hands approach thinking I would geta better interview if subjects were looking me in the eye insteadof watching my pen.I began every interview with general questions of what ithad been like to grow up in the homeland. From that point on,whether discussing the variables of family, school, orResearch in Education: A Conceptual Approach. 2nd ed. (Glenview,Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989) pp. 265-6.26My emphasis. Harney, Oral Testimony, [p. 3-4].15friendships, some continued to refer to their experiences \"there\"as opposed to \"here.\" I wondered if this in itself was a skewedresponse -- if the aspects of the methodology had caused them togive such responses. I certainly wanted to understand some oftheir experiences \"there\" if they were important \"here\", but somecontinued to make this comparison without being asked to.I transcribed all the Vancouver interviews except the twoadded late in the study, though I did not transcribe every word.In the end, the requirements of analysis demanded the sacrificeof individual stories. The narratives were atomized to bits ofdata, which I coded and assembled by category in order to checkfor emergent patterns. It seemed to me there was a time tolisten to individual histories and a time to distance oneself toseek the broader contexts. 27 As one graduate student advisedme, \"it is now your story and not theirs.\"Though tapes and transcripts survive, the existentialreality and intimacy of the interview within which I thought Iunderstood their lives is gone. Here were stories I thought Iheard which I have synthesized for further transmission to avariety of future readership, and horizons of understanding, overwhich I have little control. Yet I have made judgements aboutthose lives. My interest lay in establishing a range ofexperiences and I tried to maximize incorporation of as manyverbatim \"phrases\" to provide more \"transmissions\" from a greater27Jean Barman, \"Constructing the Historical Ethnography ofChildhood through Oral History\" (unpublished paper: UBC, 27 March,1979), 28.16sample of people. Thus, rather than illustrating my analysiswith well-chosen, but fewer, lengthier narratives, I compromisedbetween two needs: providing \"historical evidence\" as well asanalysis.Thirty years from now, when the sixties and seventies arewell behind us, when the Portuguese have been in Canada for sevendecades, the surviving tape recordings of the interviews willtransmit the voice of these historical actors with morefreshness, nuance and transparency than any analysis ortranscript. Perhaps the tapes most consented to donate to anoral history collection are the greatest merit of this research.Chapter 2 -- Emigration from the HomelandGazing at Pieter Bruegel's \"Peasant Wedding\" one wonderswhat other forces underlay that medieval scene. Similarly,scenes of Azorean and Continental women conversing or singing asthey husked corn, of Continental children in afternoon sestas under olive trees safe from the blazing sun, or of men drinkingrough red wine in corner stores are too simple a portrait. 1 Thatpatina overlay less than pastoral forces which pushed and pulledmany Portuguese parents and children out of familiar contexts.This chapter examines three aspects of that process. First,it considers Portuguese settlement in Canada as one manifestationof a global Portuguese diaspora. Second, it views emigration toVancouver as an artifact of general economic and politicaladversity in the homeland. Third, it illustrates the varyingmotives as well as expectations parents had when they emigrated,these shaped by class as much as by geographical context.1M15971; M15367: F16177.^As I have pointed out (p. 5),interview citations are not necessarily arranged in proper order ofcitation to help preserve subjects' anonymity.1718IThe Portuguese had a centuries-long tradition ofemigration. 2 Only recently did they favour Canada as a target. 3In the era of the Portuguese commercial empire, 1497 to 1612,400,000 Portuguese left for India, only ten percent of these everto return. 4 In the late nineteenth-century sojourners venturedinto Spain from northern Portugal. They migrated to France indroves after the First World War, and by 1980, there were over800,000 Portuguese living in France, and Paris with half amillion Portuguese had become the third largest \"Portuguese\" cityin the world. 5 Azoreans and Madeirans had looked elsewhere toescape homeland conditions of adversity in the form of compulsorymilitary service, impoverishment, crop failure, and2See the collection of migration essays in David Higgs, ed.,Portuguese Migration in Global Perspective (Toronto: MulticulturalHistory Society of Ontario, 1990). The Portuguese are not uniquein this respect. See for instance, Harney, \"Italian Immigrationand the Frontiers of Western Civilization\"; Peter D. Chimbos, TheCanadian Odyssey: The Greek Experience in Canada (Toronto:McClelland & Stewart in association with the MulticulturalismProgram, Department of the Secretary of State, 1980).3In contrast, the Italians had established a Little Italy inVancouver in the area of Westminster, now Main Street, at least by1910. Gabriele P. Scardellato, \"Beyond the Frozen Wastes: ItalianSojourners and Settlers in British Columbia,\" Roberto Perin andFranc Sturino, eds., Arrangiarsi: the Italian immigrant experiencein Canada (Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1989), 148.4Higgs, Portuguese Migration, 9.5William Graves, \"After an Empire ... Portugal,\" National Geographic 158 (Dec. 1980): 818, 822.19overpopulation. 6 They settled with families in Brazilparticularly in the early nineteenth century, 7 and by the midwaypoint of that century, had begun to cast their eyes toward NewEngland and Hawaii.Most Portuguese migrants to the United States and Canadawere Azoreans. 8 With a population peak of 327,421 in 1960, thisarchipelago furnished, officially, 146,899 emigrants to globaltargets between 1950 and 1975. 9 The Azorean phenomenon ofemigrating to North America to improve their material status inthe homeland was well-rooted in their psyche and folk culture, asit was in other sojourning cultures.\" In the early decades ofthe twentieth-century, Michaelense (those from Sao Miguel)families saw such material evidence as superior houses built by6Jerry Williams, And Yet They Come: Portuguese Immigrationfrom the Azores to the United States (New York: Center forMigration Studies, 1982), 59-80. See also Lyman H. Weeks, Amongthe Azores (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882).7Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trinidad, \"Portuguese Migration to Brazilin the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,\" Higgs, PortugueseMigration, 30-1.8Anderson and Higgs, 21, 23-4. Jerry Williams, \"AzoreanMigration Patterns in the United States,\" Portuguese Migration inGlobal Perspective, 145.9Williams, And Yet They Come, 107, 109. Williams estimatedthat the 1904 population of the Azores would have been 300,000 to350,000, instead of 247,686, had there been no emigration.pp. 70-1.1 °By 1816, Italians \"dreamed dreams of going to the newcontinent across the Atlantic, already a subject of folk myth.\"Harney, \"Italian Immigration\", 12.20retornados from America.\" Emigration as a theme even found itsway into a 1953 dance on the island of Faial. 12 That theme hadcertainly infiltrated the conversation of youths at least by the1940s as families received remittances from America. Theseconsisted of not only money, but used clothing, shoes, evennylons, stuffed into long pillow cases and sent through the mail,a practice one Vancouver subject herself adopted in 1973. 13Whether Continental or Insular, emigrating with a view toreturn, emigrar Para voltar, 14 was for many, a family strategy;indeed, as Rudolph Vecoli said of the Italians to America, it wasoften a \"mission.\" 15 Even in 1980, the \"dream\" for those.Portuguese who went abroad from Douro in northern Portugal, forexample, remained the same: to sojourn and return \"to build ahouse in Douro and retire.\" 16 Those who returned sometimes11Based upon my own recollections and conversation with DialinaFurtado Arruda, July 12, 1992.12Francis M. Rogers, Atlantic Islanders of the Azores andMadeiras (North Quincy, Mass.: The Christopher Publishing House,1979), 412-3. Rogers, a long-time observer of Insular andContinental Portugal, is of Irish and Portuguese descent. Hetraces his name to a Portuguese-American immigrant, \"da Rosa.\"13My recollections. Also F15773.14Caroline Brettell, \"Leaving, Remaining, and Returning: TheMultifaceted Portuguese Migratory System,\" in Portuguese Migration,72. Women were active participants in every aspect of thatdiaspora. Caroline Brettell, We Have Already Cried Many Tears: The Stories of Three Portuguese Migrant Women (Cambridge, Mass.:Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc., 1982).15See Rudolph Vecoli, \"Italian-American Ethnicity: Twilight orDawn? Italians in the U.S.A., A Comparative Perspective,\" Potestioand Pucci, The Italian Immigrant Experience, 132.MGraves, 809-10.21built houses of desenho 'importado' (imported design) and criticsworried such architecture transformed regional character.\"'Portuguese began to emigrate to Canada, and later toVancouver, when this country was added to their mental maps.Faced with a post-war shortage of labour, Mackenzie Kingannounced Canada's need to \"foster the growth of the populationof Canada by the encouragement of immigration\" in 1947.Legislation and \"regulation\" would ensure immigrants could be\"absorbed in our national economy\" and that the nationalcharacter of Canadians be preserved. 18 Canada's \"historicalties with Europe\", her \"obvious Atlantic orientation in foreignpolicy\", together with the \"absence ... of deliberate promotionand encouragement for immigrants in other parts of the world\",determined who should come. 19 Though the 1962 immigrationregulations \"abolished discrimination in general\", the Chinese,\"This theme is found in a Portuguese reader stamped as anofferta (gift), from the Portuguese Ministerio da Educacao eCultura, to the Vancouver Portuguese supplementary school where itis in current usage. Maria Alzira Cabral and Maria ErmelindaRibeiro, 0 Menino Azul: Portuques - 2. Ano do Ensino Preparatorio(Lisboa: Platano Editora, Sa, 1988), 98.MMackenzie King's Statement included, a cautionary note,\"'there will, I am sure, be general agreement with the view thatthe people of Canada do not wish as a result of mass immigration,to make a fundamental alteration in the character of ourpopulation.\"' Quoted in Canada, Canadian Immigration and PopulationStudy: 2. The Immigration Program (Ottawa: Dept. of Manpower andImmigration, 1974), 206.19Freda Hawkins, Public Policy and Public Concern (Montreal:McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972), especially pp. 59-61.22for example, suffered restrictions until the 1967 pointsystem. 2° Until that year, immigrants to Canada were mostlythose from northern as well as southern European countries,though the large numbers of Italian \"unskilled\" workers whoentered had some Canadians worried. 21Between 1946 and 1951, only 267 Portuguese immigrants had,officially, found their way to Canada. 22 In 1951, a privateLisbon initiative failed to secure the emigration of 2,000Portuguese for the farms and forests of Canada. Yet, theexercise opened eyes wide to the possibility of Portugueseemigration into Canada. Lisbon saw Canada as a destination forthe excess population of her Azores particularly, the overcrowdedSao Miguel, and for its part, the Canadian government saw thePortuguese as much-needed farm labourers and railway workers. 23Portuguese families saw only a new opportunity. The leadingdestination for Azoreans became North America. The overpopulatedagrarian Sao Miguel thus \"emerged as the principal recruitmentcentre of cheap labour for the American continent. \"24From 1952, when 1,903 Portuguese immigrated into Canada,Portuguese immigration increased steadily in all years but one to20Ibid. See also, Peter S. Li, The Chinese in Canada, Studiesin Canadian Sociology (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988), 88-9.VHawkins, 61-63.22Anderson and Higgs, 267.23Ibid., 23-29.24Alberto Viera, \"Migration from the Portuguese AtlanticIslands,\" Portuguese Migration in Global Perspective, 44.23a peak of 10,478 in 1967 for a total of 89,585 immigrants by1970. 25 Between 1946 and 1950, Portuguese constituted thetwelfth largest immigrant group entering Canada; between 1963 and1967, they ranked sixth; at the end of the 1968 to 1973 period,Portuguese and Italian immigration figures compared very closely(Italy: 54,556; Portugal: 54,199), though both laggedconsiderably behind American and English immigration. 26 By1964, the problem of visitors applying to stay permanently \"gotbadly out of hand\", especially among the Italians, Greeks, andPortuguese. 27 After 1967, the immigration point systememphasized the education and work-related experience ofimmigrants. Subsequently, fully seventy-five percent of the64,699 Portuguese who entered between 1968 and 1974 weresponsored and nominated immigrants. 28Three characteristics of Portuguese migration to Canada and25In every year from 1962 to 1965 and again in 1974, Portugueseemigration to Canada exceeds that to the United States. Portuguesestatistics cited in Horta, 90. In every year, emigration figuresfrom the Emigration Board in Portugal are lower than CanadaImmigration statistics. Anderson and Higgs, 25.26The largest number of immigrants in this period came from theUnited States -- 139,857; from England -- 117,322; followed by thatfrom Greece (35,621), France, Scotland and Germany. Canada,Immigration and Population Statistics (Ottawa: Department ofManpower and Immigration, 1974), Table 3.2, 32.27Canada, Canadian Immigration and Population Study: 2. TheImmigration Program (Ottawa, Department of Manpower andImmigration, 1974), 30.28The sponsored category includes immediate family (fiance,spouse, unmarried children under 21, parents, and grandparents over60); the nominated category referred to sons and daughters over 21,brothers and sisters, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nephews andnieces. 1974 Green Paper on Immigration.24Vancouver must be examined more closely. First, the VancouverPortuguese community like others in Canada has its roots deep insojourning. Many early sojourners escaped the isolation, andhard work of railway camps and Central Canadian farms and began asecond internal migration within Canada to large cities offeringhigher pay, and sometimes better working conditions inconstruction and factory jobs. 29 Some sent for family andsettled in the British Columbia communities of Vancouver,Victoria, the Okanagan, Terrace, and Kitimat. 30 By 1976,Vancouver, with 15,000 Portuguese, was the third largestPortuguese community in Canada after Toronto and Montreal. 31Second, while Continentals constitute the majority of thePortuguese in Montreal, Sao Miguel, with over half thearchipelago population, furnished almost eighty percent ofAzorean emigration to Canada and provided the bulk of the29A Toronto priest in 1970 wrote that they had \"rushed to thecities after factory and construction work\" because \"they foundCanadian farm machinery and techniques too sophisticated for theirskills.\" Cited in Anderson and Higgs, 30. See Marques andMedeiros, Portuguese Immigrants, for immigrant men's own stories.30See Anderson and Higgs. For a discussion of social networks,see Grace M. Anderson, Networks of Contact: The Portuguese inToronto (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University, 1974). In one studyof Osoyoos-Oliver, fully 91% of those from \"mainland\" Portugaloriginated from one province, Beira Baxia. Rosa Pereira Munzer,\"Immigration, Familism, and In-Group Competition: A Study of thePortuguese in the Southern Okanagan,\" Canadian Ethnic Studies XIII2 (1981): 99-111, 103.31Anderson and Higgs, 103. The 1986 Census enumerated only10,955 in 1986 while Horta cited Portuguese Consulate 1988 figuresat 16,000. This under-representation is probably due to illegalimmigration, failure to complete census forms, and the optionprovided by the 1981 Census of self-identifying as \"Canadian.\"Higgs, 143; Horta 123-4.25Portuguese population of Toronto. 32 In their 1976 study of theVancouver Portuguese community, Anderson and Higgs reported oneestimate that Azoreans constituted thirty percent of thecommunity, while \"others\" had suggested they formed fiftypercent. In her 1974 study, Isobel Boulter cited a Portuguesesource that claimed \"'the major group which comes here is fromthe Azores and is rural,'\" while Ana Paula Horta found that the\"majority\" of Portuguese immigrants arriving in Vancouver in the1960s were from the Azores and the rest from the Continent.These conclusions are more in line with what subjects suggested:between fifty and seventy percent Azorean, the rest Continentals,with few Madeirans. A home-school liaison worker with Portuguesefamilies estimated sixty percent were Azorean, the remainderContinental, with many from Lisbon. 33Third, Portuguese families hailed from different socio-economic niches. Not all led the same kinds of lives in Portugaland not all came to escape harsh impoverishment. As subjectsexplained, some emigrated with a view to improve the quality ofmiddle-class lives they led in Portugal. Others emigrated inorder to save their sons from the matadoro, the killing fields of32David Higgs, The Portuguese in Canada (Ottawa: CanadianHistorical Association, 1982), 3-4.33Anderson and Higgs, p. 107;^Alison Isobel Boulter\"Constituting Ethnic Difference\" p. 74. Horta, 124. The Azoresprovided three-quarters of the adult emigrants to Victoria, whilethe remainder were mostly from \"northeastern\" Portugal; in Osoyoos,exactly the reverse is true. In both cases, few come from largecities or from southern Portugal. See Munzer, \"Immigration,Familism, and In-Group Competition.\"26Angola and Mozambique. 34 The political oppression in Portugalmay have been another factor. Some came out of a sense ofadventure and ambition. Whatever the case, emigrant parents werelooking backwards to Portugal as much as they were lookingforward. Looking backward, they did not forget the contexts intowhich they had been born. Looking forward, Portuguese emigrantparents could not be expected to abandon traditional child-rearing attitudes and practices, long-fashioned within thefamiliar milieu of Portuguese families, churches, and schools.IIMany Insular and Continental Portuguese experienced theeffects of regional disparity and poverty. By 1979, for example,annual remittances from Portuguese abroad, estimated at 2.4billion American dollars, constituted the single largest sourceof income for the country. This sum overshadowed revenues fromeven the most rapidly expanding tourist industry in Europe, from\"a leading sardine fishery\", from agriculture, and from thefamous cork industry. 35 From the late 1970s through the early1980s, remittances made up between 6 and 12 percent of Portugal's34This term was used by M15565. Rocha-Trindade cites anineteenth-century source illustrating to support her statementthat \"historically, it was not uncommon\" for young Portuguese boysto emigrate. She says, \"many young emigrants left Portugal beforereaching fourteen years of age at which time they would have to paya special tax to exempt them from conscription.\" They emigrated toSpain in the second decade of the twentieth-century from northernPortugal to escape enforced military service. \"PortugueseMigration to Brazil\", 68.MGraves, 809-10.27GNP and between 20 and 46 percent of the value of her exports.After the 1974 Revolution, remittance levels rose to anunprecedented level. 36Many families subsisted on the earnings of a lavrador, alivestock herder, or a campones, an agricultural labourer, whoseearnings were low. In 1960, a lavrador on Sao Miguel was paidthe daily wage of about 20 escudos, or 65 cents. This had risenby 1970, to about 40 escudos; by 1980, to 100-150 escudos; and by1990 to 1000 escudos. 37 In 1977, wage increases wereinsufficient to meet the generally-high cost of consumer goods.One store empregado, employee, who earned 6,000 escudos monthly,then about 200 Canadian dollars, was \"unsatisfied with the salarysystem\" at a time when some commodity prices rivalled or exceededCanadian counterparts . 38A child's labour might be vital under marginal conditions asdescribed and many turned to full-time work after a few years ofcompulsory education. Some parents never completed even thethree years of required residency in schools. Consequently, inmilelen Graham, \"Money and Migration in Modern Portugal,\"Portuguese Migration, 82-4.37In 1964, when most owned little, if any of their own land,a hectare sold for 2,000 escudos, or 60 Canadian dollars. In 1977,following the revolution in Portugal, the same land sold for 20-25,000 escudos in 1977. These estimates were provided by EvaristoArruda who owned some land until the late 1970s.38A \"small frozen chicken\" cost 55 escudos, almost two Canadiandollars, while a simple SLR camera in Ribeira Grande, was priced attwice its Canadian counterpart; a woollen overcoat -- made inPortugal -- was purchased at the equivalent of eighty Canadiandollars. Antonio F. Arruda, Ribeira Grande, Meu Diario, 20January, 5 February, 1977.281968, Portugal had the highest illiteracy rates (thirty percent)in Europe. 39 In 1960, illiteracy was generally higher in\"Continental Portugal\" (40.1 percent) and the \"District of PontaDelgada\", which includes Sao Miguel (44.2 percent), than Lisbon(28.1 percent). 40 Subjects themselves attested that manychildren simply finished the four, and in 1967, six years ofcompulsory schooling and began to assist in the family economy.In fact, five subjects, one Michaelense girl and two Continentaland two Michaelense boys, completed the required four years ofcompulsory schooling and had been assisting the household economywhen they emigrated. One boy's father was working in Canada. 41Portugal also had the highest infant mortality rates ofEurope: 58.0 per thousand in 1970 and 44.8 in 1973. A geographicbreakdown of the 1970 rate reveals regional disparity: Lisbon,40; continental Portugal, 57; and the district of Ponta Delgada(which includes the island of Sao Miguel), 74 deaths perthousand. 42 Even though there were five hospitals in the Azoresin 1977, they were in the small cities sometimes only accessibleby paths or the sea when calm. 4339Anderson and Higgs cite UNESCO figures, 141.40Rogers, 345-6.41F15773; M15565; M16075; M15367; M14862.42Rogers provides Infant Mortality rates for 1970, 1973 forcomparison purposes: Sweden -- 11.0, 9.9; Ireland -- 19.5, 17.8;Spain -- 27.9, 15.1 (Spain excluded Ceuta and Mellilla figures from'71 on); Italy -- 29.5, 25.7; Greece -- 29.6, 24.1. AtlanticIslanders, 375.43Annuario Estatistico, cited in Rogers, 365-66.29Finally, an ethos of mistrust, even fear of the State,pervaded Portugal during this period of study, especially duringthe 1960s. 44 In the sixties, adults sanitized their speechthinking they might be \"scrutinized\" by the PIDE, the Policia Internacional e de Defesa da Estado, the state police, who wouldput \"certain people\" \"away in jail\". 45 The PIDE had a well-known reputation for \"brutality\" and politics became \"toodangerous a proposition\" for the \"average\" person. 46 Manycontinued to distrust the government even after long-timedictator Antonio Salazar's death in 1968. There had always beengraft: payment of a special tax once freed a son from militaryservice, 47 and even in 1968, an affluent Continental parent paida considerable sum under the table to allow her child to emigrateto Canada before his seventeenth birthday. 48 After thepeaceful Revolution of the 25th of April, 1974, clergy andpeasant in northern Continental Portugal, feared a leftist\"See Antonio de Figueiredo, Portugal: Fifty Years ofDictatorship (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1975).45N15971. One Portuguese subject feared that research on thisVancouver community, undertaken in the late eighties, was beingdone on behalf of the PIDE. This subject had a \"vague idea\" of the1974 coup and was generally-unaware of the structural changes inPortugal. The researcher was an employee of the PortugueseConsulate. Horta, \"Salience of Ethnicity\", 19.46De Figueiredo, 137, passim.47Williams, And Yet They Come, 72-3.48M25168.30Lisbon. 49 Similarly, Azoreans, particularly the Michaelenses,talked of Azorean independence. At least one parent who hadbecome involved with the FLA, the Front for the Liberation of theAzores, slept nightly in full clothing expecting to be picked upin the night as others had.\" Radical young Michaelenses hadonce examined Azorean annexation to the United States in the lateeighteenth-century,\" and now one had little difficultyobtaining the blue and white Azorean flag. 52 In 1976, a newConstitution of the Portuguese Republic was enacted to turn thecountry \"into a classless society\" and the Azores and Madeiraeach gained their own Regional Assembly and government.Homeland conditions were reflected in sage folk expressions.Such expressions were historically rooted upon material hardshipswhich household after household had faced for centuries \"in theatmosphere of medieval Europe.\" 53 Indices of poverty commonlyheard in households included: quarda a tua saude, \"guard yourhealth\"; \"mas vale a saude que o dinero\", \"value health more thanmoney\"; mas vale pao duro que figo maduro, \"better hard bread49See Tom Gallagher,^Portugal:^A Twentieth-CenturyInterpretation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983).50F16377.51See Weeks, Among the Azores, 1882, 226-7. In that century,even the US Consul to the Azores predicted these \"Western Islands\"and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) would be annexed. Rogers, 13.52Rogers, 14.53For one traveller's detailed description of the \"medieval\"conditions prevalent on the Azores in the late nineteenth century,see Lyman, 1882, 12.31than soft figs\"; and there existed a fundamental understandingwithin families that to eat any meal sim-pao, \"without bread\",was simply the privilege of os ricos. 54IIIMy subjects grew up in a variety of contexts which meritdescription at this point. They emigrated from the ruralContinent and Lisbon, as well as from tiny villages and smallcities of the Azores. One Continental subject began life in asingle, isolated home, a casal. Another grew up among a clusterof perhaps \"eight or ten houses.\" There, a ten-year old neverenjoyed a single store-bought toy, and like others of his class,made his own toys and games. He had completed school and wasassisting as he could in the household economy. With only ayounger brother to play with, his playground extended forhundreds of feet and was easily surveyed by parents, orgrandparents who lived nearby. There, families worried about thepossibility of natural disaster in the form of drought or rain.On nights of \"heavy rain\" this man remembers his father gettingup early to see if crops had been washed away by the rain andoverflowing river. In another area around Serra do Santo Antonioin central Portugal which sent \"80\" or \"100\" families toVancouver, people often lived in houses made of stone andfamilies survived mainly by farming wheat and corn. Here,another boy from a more \"middle\" home also completed his54F16170.3 2schooling at the age of ten and assisted a grandfather in thefields and his father with carpentry. 55In such settings, there was conformity. Though one subjectdescribed people from these rural areas as \"very friendly\",another told me of the stares she received when she returned toher native rural continental village as a fourteen year-old. Ina village \"where there were a lot of people who couldn't evenafford to wear shoes,\" she explains, it was \"scandalous\" that sheshould go barefoot and wear a miniskirt -- \"people literallystopped.\" People in that small village had \"very narrow lives.\"They met their \"simple\" needs of eating and sleeping. Childrenwere \"expected\" to grow into a lifestyle characterized by \"fouryears of education\" and work on the land. According to thissubject, \"you found a mate and you married and you had children\",which was similar to what another woman from the rural Continentsaid. 56 Divorce was virtually unknown, 57 but that fact cloudedanother: some women dreaded marriage while others preferred55F15356; M15565; M15367.56 125168; F15356; F15570.57In 1974, the divorce rate was 1% for Horta district (Faial);.6% for Ponta Delgada (Sao Miguel); .8% for Angra (Terceira), 5.7%for Lisbon; and 6.4% for Setubal, just south of Lisbon. Moredramatically, these percentages translate to just 4 divorces on SaoMiguel; even in greater Lisbon with a population of 1.58 million,there were 519 divorces in this district. Calculated fromPortugal, Annuario Estatistico; Continente e Ilhas Adjacentes,1974, 19.33widowhood, or spinsterhood, to a life of dual labours. 58Life in rural areas did not always consist of \"hard work.\"Around Serra, \"most people\" took shelter from the hot sun, sometaking sestas (sleep), perhaps under an olive or fig or \"in thebarn\", while women would \"gather at someone's house and talk.\"People also awaited festas (festivals), \"the highlight of theseason\", which centered about patron saints days and involvedfirecrackers, fireworks, and music. In Serra, the feast one\"really looked for was Domingo Gordo (Fat Sunday) -- that was agreat feast\" with Mass and marching bands from severalneighbouring areas.\" 59 The apparent simplicity of rural life innorthern Continental Portugal is reflected in a popular anddescriptive travel guide of 1955; for example,Minho is the province where one finds the most colourfulcostumes, the liveliest holidays ... [a] vivacity and flairfor living which is all the more remarkable because it is sopoor .... Life would be grim in Minho if these people didnot know how to combine pleasure with work. Each task is anexcuse for a game. °Other guides illustrate that there were inequities betweenContinental regions. The Tejo district is a \"fertile and58Some single women, even widows, were not powerless. SeeCaroline B. Brettell, Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Populationand History in a Portuguese Parish (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1986).59M15367; M15565; M25168.60I speculate that if it had been this author hauling grapesalong roads through the \"hot dust\" raised by ox-drawn carts, hemight have felt a grape harvest less \"gay\", and less \"like a balletscene!\" See Eugene Fodor, ed., Spain and Portugal (London: NewmanNeame, Ltd., 1955), 430.34beautiful valley\" , m while the Alentejo is \"one enormous wheatfield, the granary of Portugal\", harvested by the \"groups offarmhands\" from the poor regions of Algarve and Beira. 62 Thenortheastern province of Tras-os-Montes, literally, \"beyond themountains\", is considered the most impoverished:The dour region ... is like a world apart ... renderedmore remote by poor roads, the mountaineers of this regionhave kept a curious, medieval character, rich in tradition... a rare if bitter, charm ... not a land for tourists.And endless space of rocky terrain, windswept crests, fromtime to time the crumbling tower of a ghostly chateau, townsof somber granite, flagged streets, present a savageprofile. 63One Continental man was probably right in thinking this aridregion was in more dire straits than the Azores.\"In contrast, children and youth from \"working-class\" Lisbondistricts grew up, and congregated, amongst buildings from the\"past century.\" Older children and youth played in the narrowstreets. A parent might accompany a youngster to one of the few\"green\" patches available, a local playground left unlockedduring the daylight hours. An engineer's son lived in a co-operative duplex rented from the government with the option ofsubsequent purchase. A pharmacist's son said only a \"few\" Lisbonfamilies lived in a \"bungalow.\" More frequently, they lived in61Baedeker's Touring Guides, Spain and Portugal (Frieburg: KarlBaedeker, 1959) , 12.62Fodor, 1955, 436-7.63Ibid., 433-4.64M15367.3 5multiple-story buildings, often above commercial enterprises inapartments featuring running water, hardwood floors, and theubiquitous blue hand-painted tile covering walls. A brother anda sister came from a newly-built middle- and upper-class suburbanLisbon neighbourhood featuring \"beautiful open spaces.\" There,children played with purchased toys such as handpainted sets oftoy soldiers, or bikes, or they read \"excellent\" comiccollections. One middle-class boy was a member of theEscouteiros, \"Scouts.\" As early as 1961, he watched \"Rin-Tin-Tin\" and BBC adventure shows like \"The Saint\" on the familytelevision. The sea was a \"constant -- a very pleasant constant\"in his growing years. Together, middle-class youths from threeLisbon families enjoyed long automobile forays into thecountryside, annual vacations at a relative's farm or vineyard,or even a month at a seaside resort town. 65Children and youth on Sao Miguel also grew up in differentneighbourhoods and with different experiences and expectations oftheir class. Unlike the rural Continent or the terraced Madeira,the Michaelense lived in villages or towns. Some subjects grewup in small cities such as Ribeira Grande, or Ponta Delgada, thedistrict and Azorean capital. Others emigrated from smallfreguesias, once the limits of a parish, and now the smallest65M15967; M15870; M15468; F15668. The Penticton youth from asmaller Portuguese town, vacationed at Nazare by the sea. M25168.For a British parallel of the middle-class \"seaside\" vacation, seeSteve Humphries, Joanna Mack, and Robert Perkins, A Century ofChildhood (London: Sidgwick and Jackson in association with ChannelFour Television Company, 1988).36civic administrative unit. In Ponta Delgada, an \"official's\"daughter recalls that in 1970, it was generally boys and notgirls who played in narrow streets without sidewalks. As a nine-year old, she played with other girls in the protectedenvironment of small backyards. Sometimes she conversed with aboy across the street on his own verandah. Along with other more\"middle-class\" girls, she played with bought dolls and madeclothing for them. On trips to the small rural village where herrelatives lived, she noted children played openly on the streetswithout strictures. Here, through traffic was more likely to bea donkey or a horse than a car. In this village, the same girlplayed with home-made \"ragdolls\" or even corn-husk dolls; inothers, boys might spend a Sunday afternoon kicking around asoccer ball comprised of a bundle of rags by a cord. 66Within Michaelense towns there were class contrasts. In1977, Ribeira Grande was a small, clean city with cafes andstores, a cinema, and a fine 'ardim (garden). Two sisters from awealthy entrepreneurial family congregated with children andyouths of all ages about that garden. They also swamunchaperoned in mixed company consisting of other youths from theliceu (high school), and along with even young children, enjoyedhevening dances initiated and run by youths. Yet in that city aselsewhere on that island, one could encounter women and girlswashing clothes in one of the many streams flowing down from the66F16170; M16075. A photo of such a doll said to be in use onSao Miguel is found in the Portuguese reader, 0 Menino Azul, 9.37lagoas (crater lakes). One could find the poor cooking atop asmall, single-burner, kerosene stove. 67 As in the ruralContinent, some still went barefoot; one child from the tinyFateira Grande where poverty was more visible, had only one pairof shoes, which he used \"to go to church.\" Nonetheless, he had\"fun\" growing up there. In the early 1960s, poor fishermen fromRabo de Peixe, literally, Tail of the Fish, shuffled barefootinto Ribeira Grande, pained by the weight of fishbaskets. 68Years later, there were still \"a few\" children without shoes inthis impoverished fisher village, and some children \"in the nude... playing with the little pigs!\" From the age of ten on, manypoorer boys walked barefoot from their homes with their fathersout to bocados de terra (pieces of land), to put in a day's work.They helped cultivate cash crops such as bataral (sugar beet) andpeanuts, as well as vegetables such as potatoes, corn, or kalefor home use. Produce was also bartered for items such as flourand butter, which families couldn't produce themselves. 69The concept of a family economy allowed marginalized,traditional Portuguese families to survive. Fernando de Menesesexplains the vitality of this institution to the Portuguese:Since in agrarian society, parents provide for thefuture of their children through inheritance, thesechildren will work for the father in his land or business sothat later they will inherit the fruit of their labour ....67Arruda, Meu Diario, January-February, 1977.68Dialina F. Arruda. July, 1992;69F16170; M14862; M15971.38In their minds, the old agrarian structure is stillfunctional. mThis may help explain one's loyalty to family as opposed to non-kin. The Vancouver-born woman recounted \"one of the most vivid\"stories she can remember being old as a child which originated onher parent's island -- and it takes as its theme, undying loyaltyfor family. 71In the process of work, Michaelenses and Continentals alsosocialized. Thus, there was a natural integration of work andplay in small geographic settings, 72 whether they gathered atthe harvest, or for the washing of clothes, or in order to cookfor funerals and festas. One man recalled with fondness thematanca, the annual pig slaughter, which yielded the family'smeat for a year. Relatives would gather during the day, while\"neighbours would come by at night ... to check out the fat [onthe pig] ... the more fat there was, the better it was.\"Michaelenses prepared for festas centered ostensibly aboutmde Meneses, Entre dos mundos: Between Two Worlds, i.71This was one of the rare stories subjects were able to recalldespite an occasional statement that parents had told many stories.\"There's one that sticks out in my mind. My grandfather used totell it to my mother\" [My summary follows] A man whose father wasdying took him to the top of a mountain. He wrapped the father ina blanket and left him there. As he began to walk down themountain, the father called out, 'my son take the blanket' to whichthe son replied, 'no father, you take the blanket because you'll becold and you'll need the blanket.' At this the father said, 'no,no, you take the blanket because you'll need it when your soncarries you up here.' The son turned around and carried the fatherback down the mountain. F16400.72See de Meneses, Entre dois mundos: Between Two Worlds.3 9religious processions. Towns would be decorated and a statuetaken out of the church to be paraded among the faithful liningnarrow cobblestone streets and whitewashed houses. As on theContinent, festas were also occasions for merrymaking, and wereprobably the most visible manifestations of an intensesociability. What one woman said of life in the tiny village ofPorto Formoso, \"everyone always knew what you did and who youwere\", was not too different from what the two Continental womenremembered about their own birthplaces . m Thus, on feast days,families sometimes climbed the volcanic mountainside throughvegetation \"lush and wet from continuous rainfall and drizzleeven in the summer\" to \"picnic away a festa afternoon.\" 74The Azoreans had long-favoured the Americas with goodreason. Continental matters were seldom on their minds, thoughit is likely that Continentals were even more ignorant of themid-ocean islanders. 75 The Continental Portuguese never knewthe \"ilheus, 'ocean hicks',\" claims Rogers, \"in fact, they reallydid not care about them.\" 76 For Azoreans, Continental Portugal\"appeared to occupy the position vis a vis the motherland of a73M15971; F16377.74Ribeira Grande, Meu Diario, 1977.mThis theme of centuries of neglect is found in Lyman, 1882.It pervades Rogers, 1976.76Rogers, 12.40forgotten stepchild.\" 77 Control of Insular Portugal had beengiven to donatarios, members of the royal family, in thefifteenth-century. These remained absent from the islands andNruled through agents, capitaos (captains) do donatarios. Neitherdonatarios, nor Salazar, ever visited these colonies, 78 thoughin 1951, when \"colony\" had become an unfashionable terminternationally, they were renamed \"provinces.\" 79 OneMichaelense subject reported that an Azorean male returning frommilitary service in Africa had tried to book a passage to theAzores and was offered a train ticket! 80 A Continental subjectprobably didn't realize just how much he was saying when he said,I am very proud to be Portuguese, European ... I look on themap and Portugal is a very special place, I think -- it's inEurope, it's near everything, and far from everything.\"It was in Vancouver that many Michaelenses and Continentals meteach other for the first time.Michaelenses had long been born into villages where theymarried, raised children, and where they were later interred,many without ever having seen the whole island, let alone everleaving it.'\" In the experiential literature of the Azores,77Estellie M. Smith, \"Portuguese Enclaves: the invisibleminority\" (Wrightville Beach, N.C.: paper presented at the SouthernAnthropological Society Meeting, March, 1973), 5.78Rogers, 39.79Ibid., 59-60.80M15367; F16377.81Dialina Arruda.41Francis Rogers found a narrative probably as significant forthose on Pico or Sao Miguel, as for those in remote Continentalvillages. Consider the \"push\" factor in Black Robes, written bythe Pico writer, Dias de Melo, in 1964,Do you see these paths? To be living in an island is tolive in a prison ... no one dares to go by land to any placewhatsoever, except out of absolute necessity, for all of usare appalled by those horrible paths. Thus every precinct[freguesia] is a cage, within the larger cage which is theIsland.... We die there like dogs. 82IVAccording to their children, parents emigrated for a varietyof reasons. A few subjects said their parents left \"for a betterlife\" or \"to see what was around the corner\" or \"over the hill.\"These seemed relatively imprecise reasons compared to theliterature, as well as conventional wisdom, both of which suggestmany uprooted for economic reasons. 83Others were more specific. Altogether eight of the ninemales stated that the existence of compulsory military servicewas a factor in the decision to move; of these, five males statedexplicitly it was the main reason for the family's emigration. 8482Rogers, 402.83For example, see the essays in Higgs, Portuguese Migrationin Global Perspective, as well as Anderson and Higgs, Alpalhao andda Rosa. See also, Rosa Maria Pereira Munzer, \"Immigration,Familism and In-Group Competition: A Study of the Portuguese in theSouthern Okanagan,\" Canadian Ethnic Studies.84M15565; M15367; M15971; M25168; M15870. My question wasphrased, \"How did you come to Canada?\" or \"Why did your parentsemigrate?\" The Penticton youth said his widowed mother emigrated42Two males from relatively humble backgrounds said their familiesemigrated because of that service and not because of poverty.Two women who had younger brothers did not cite it as a reasonfor emigration.Families with sons had reason to fear military service.Tom Gallagher reported that between 1961 and 1974, an estimated110,000 conscripts failed to report for service, most havingemigrated to France. With a population of just over eightmillion Portugal saw one out of every four men in militaryservice, a ratio exceeded only by Israel, and North and SouthVietnam. More importantly, the number of Portuguese soldierskilled in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola was proportionallylarger than the numbers of Americans killed in Vietnam. 85 AnaPaula Horta concluded that military service together with anoppressive Salazarist dictatorship resulted in heavy emigrationby the mid-1960s. 86 Of the five fathers aged 35-45 interviewedfor Isabel Pinto's study, \"most came to get away from thearmy. 1187to marry in Canada while he, approaching military service, was leftbehind with grandparents: \"you could not escape the draft in thoseyears ... we paid our way through to get a military licence ....paid a lot of money.\" The cost of the \"military licence itself wasinsignificant. He came to Canada and later became a Canadiancitizen for the sole reason he wished to avoid the draft forever.Of his mother's remarriage, he says, \"to this day, I think she wasdoing it for me.\" M25168.85Gallagher, Portugal, 182-3.86Horta, 97-8.87Conversation, 10 September, 1992.43At least two families came for economic reasons. For Tiago,the draft was \"years\" away and not really on his mind at thetime. A wealthy businessman facing the loss of his business inPortugal also emigrated with an economic mission. In the lattercase, emigration cost both parents considerable hardship andhumiliation, forced the mother out into work, and resulted in animmediate and dramatic loss of socio-economic status for thefamily including their two adolescent daughters. 88Others offered a variety of unique explanations for theirfamily's emigration. An officer's said \"we were fine\" inPortugal; rather, her parents emigrated for \"freedom.\" TheVancouver-born daughter was born to a young couple who emigratedas newly-weds from the Azores in the late 1950s. She said herfather, \"really, really, really, wanted to come.\" He had\"ambitions\" and \"came to stay\" even though her mother who had toaccompany him \"cried every night for the first six or sevenmonths.\" In contrast, it was the wife of a Continental landownerliving in a lonely casal who pushed her own husband intomigration and thus wedged her family through Mackenzie King'sdoor. Infant in hand, she waited for her hesitant husband tocomplete the immigration interview and upon hearing that he wouldnot be accepted, she pushed into the office with her baby and\"pleaded\" with the official. Her daughter said her parents cameto provide better \"social and educational opportunities\" fortheir children. Two parents who worked together in an office on88M16075; F16377; F16177.44Sao Miguel migrated, according to their son, \"to see how greatthis place [wa]s.\" A pharmacist in Lisbon emigrated probablybecause he was curious and \"adventurous\" and \"of course, therewas the draft.\" Another Lisbon middle-class family emigratedbecause the father exhausted himself with two jobs in order tomaintain a more middle-class lifestyle. This father activelysought out a Canadian destination through the immigration office.Vancouver was suggested to him because of his work and heemigrated independently in 1967. He secured a rental home andsent for his family within months. His son was the only one maleto state explicitly that they had emigrated because of hisfather's long working hours, too little time with family, and notbecause of impending military service. 89Only three of the Vancouver families emigrated to Vancouverindependently: the landowner from the casal, an academic, and anengineer. All the others were sponsored by a close relative,almost always by the brother or sister of one of their parents.These emigrants generally resided with sponsors for longer,rather than shorter periods of time, periods varying from one ortwo to eight and ten years. Two families left before a year wasup, one of these because life with relatives \"drove mom crazy.\"Most fathers except two, entered new occupations in Canada.Regardless of their homeland occupation, whether they were890n this issue, he said, \"the draft was five years away\";furthermore, he had \"glasses\" and might have gone \"into some sortof officer's training as some of my friends did.\" The draft was a\"low risk\" and \"not a heavy factor.\" M15468.45carpenter, stone mason, agricultural worker, landowner,pharmacist, customs officer, policeman, or agricultural workers,their work in Canada involved either railway work away fromVancouver, at least for a period of time, or janitorial work, orwork in the construction industry. One middle-class father fromLisbon became immediately employed in his chosen profession.Another middle-class father from Lisbon had once had been acrucial part of a large electrical company. Here, he laboured\"breaking cement\" for months before establishing himself in arelated business.Three mothers had worked outside the home in Portugal: asecretary, a teacher, and an \"office\" employee. Here, only theteacher did not enter a formal work setting. The other mothershad never laboured for wages outside the home in Portugal,especially in the Azores where they generally were not seen evenin the fields. Eight of these women stepped out intodishwashing, kitchen work, and janitorial services in Vancouverin order to contribute to the family economy.Poverty, illiteracy, and worry for crops, were found on boththe Continent and Azores. Historically, overpopulation, crop-failures with accompanying near-starvation, violent seismic andvolcanic activity, and centuries of neglect characterized life onthe Azores.\" Together such factors probably justified these9 Did. See also Williams, And Yet They Come.46islanders' sense of acorianidade (Azoreanity), 91 somethingclosely related to the more general Portuguese sense of fatalismwhere \"'it was not worth taking one step to reach anything onthis earth ... because everything resolved itself ... in dust anddisillusion.\" 92 Those factors certainly constituted amplejustification for emigration. Yet according to their children,it is clear that these were not the only reasons that parentscame to Canada.91Rogers, 34.92The Maias, cited in Sarah Bedford, Portugal (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1973), 23.Chapter 3 -- From Portuguese Homes to Canadian Homes\"Here in the big city, you could grow up being Portuguese.\" 1Traditional Portuguese families had certain attributes.Though this is an oversimplified composite, a typical family wascharacterized by clearly-differentiated male and female rolesover which a father both assumed and was ascribed master status.It was child-centered, and featured close and constant contactbetween offspring and parents, especially the mother. Olderchildren and youth contributed to the family economy often up tothe day of their own marriage. Parents exerted control overchildren, especially daughters, when it came to courtship andmarriage. A traditional household often included grandparents,sometimes cunhados and cunhadas, brother and sister in-laws; ifnot, these usually lived nearby. In past times, if there weremore mouths to feed, 2 there were also a greater number of handsto assist during illness, childbirth, funerals, or thepreparation of foods for festas. Padrinhos and padrinhas weregodparents at a child's birth and then sponsors at their1M15367.2One Continental man told me that two of his father's brothershad gone into the seminary for no other reason than \"there were twoless mouths to feed.\" M15967.4748confirmation. Later, standing for the bride and groom, theybecame compadres and comadres of the parents, and the closecircle of friendship and intimacy might tighten further. 3Subjects themselves emphasized the centrality of the family, andalmost all described their family life in Portugal as a generallyhappy time despite the problems of the homeland. Whateverparental strictures existed there also mattered less, probablybecause they applied to others of their socio-economic niche andregion.Some may think the Portuguese concept of the family with itsreciprocal rights and obligations was \"transplanted\" 4 into thisimmigrant North American community. It is probably best to viewit, like the local Portuguese newspapers, 5 or the localPortuguese church, as a transformed institution. Emigration toVancouver immediately exposed these families to child-rearingpractices most had not known. Many parents resisted thosepractices they believed to be morally wrong, or those they felt31 base this upon the interviews, my own experience, as wellas the literature: Anderson and Higgs, Alpalhao and da Rosa, Coelhoet. al., and Rogers.4Globe Magazine (April 1960) cited in Coelho et. al., 115Despite its subtitle, The Portuguese Newspaper For WesternCanada, the Portuguese newspaper, 0 Mensageiro, published bi-weeklyin Vancouver probably interests older immigrants rather than thesecond generation. It is in its \"25th Year.\" Not only is itwritten almost exclusively in Portuguese, but it is largely made upof homeland politics, and sports reports -- these are placedadjacent to advertisements for local business. A second newspaper,Periodico News, tackles more local issues such as\"multiculturalism\" and \"teenage suicide\" reporting in English andPortuguese. See Vol. 1 No. 3 Fevereiro (1992) February.49threatened the traditional form of the family, courtship, andeven philosophy of life. Some of their children abided by newcontext-specific parental strictures. Some children were moreresistant. Other children, as well as parents embraced aspectsof Canadian culture that their Portuguese compatriots did not.This chapter discusses four aspects of growing up withinPortuguese families among that first wave of family emigration toVancouver. First, it describes some impressions children andadolescents formed of the migration process as well as some ofthe adjustments families made in this new context. Second, itillustrates some child-rearing philosophies and practices foundin their Vancouver homes. Third, it sheds some light on thegeneral quality of family life and family relationships. Fourth,it examines traditional practices maintained within thehousehold. Family emerged as the bedrock variable in the livesof many subjects.IThe process of emigrating itself did not seem to worry mostchildren or adolescents. Many in fact regarded the prospect ofemigrating as an adventure. Three said it was \"exciting.\"Others remember that as children they simply went along with theparental decision without giving it much thought, while several,as adolescents, anticipated being united with a father. Ofcourse, some held stereotypes of Canada. As a result of hisstudies and a postcard, a twelve year-old middle-class boy from50Lisbon looked forward to Canada, but anticipated a country thatwas \"a piece of ice\", \"an icicle.\" A twelve year-old middle-class girl from that city was excited because she \"was going tobe a movie star 'cause that's what they did in the Americas.\"Another Lisbon teen thought \"it was sort of exciting .. akin to[going] to the United States ... this was '67, '68, summer oflove, flowers in the hair.\" At thirteen, the younger of twoMichaelense sisters was the only one in her family excited at theprospect of emigration. She had attended many funerals on herisland and had been of the opinion that \"people in Canada didn'tget old and didn't die.\" 6All arrived by airplane and were driven into Vancouver.Most who remember their arrival were favourably impressed, even\"amazed\" with the city, one thinking it \"looked like one giantChristmas tree.\" Another arrived at the airport to encounter the\"whole town was there\" (\"about fifty people\") from his nativeSerra do Santo Antonio in the rural Continent, as it was then a\"custom\" to greet new arrivals. Overall, their first impressionswere of spacious, paved, \"organized\" city streets with widesidewalks. Even those from Lisbon faced more cars, larger cars,and garages. They, along with others, also noted the presence ofmanicured lawns with a purely ornamental function, something theywere largely unaccustomed to seeing. Those who had lived insmall, white-washed stone houses with few rooms, or an urbanapartment were surprised to see large, detached, multi-bedroom,6F15668; M15468; M15870; F16377.51multi-storeyed houses. ?Not all were impressed upon arrival. Compared to his Lisbonneighbourhood, the pharmacist's seven-year old boy considered hisnew surroundings to be \"rough, unfinished\", even \"ugly. toVancouver had \"very ugly buildings\", had \"no gardens\" and withits \"one-storey\" \"wooden\" buildings, \"looked like the wild west.\"One boy from Lisbon was one of four adolescents who continued tomake comparisons between \"here\" and \"there\" from the start;according to him, \"there\", the beaches were a \"hundred timesbetter than here\", buildings were \"older\", and there was a \"lotmore history.\" 9Children and their parents made adjustments soon afterarrival. For most, this meant adapting from a closely-knit,agrarian context to a more populous, impersonal and urban one.They were escorted about Vancouver by automobile soon after theirarrival in order to be shown the sights: the beaches, StanleyPark, even Mount Seymour in winter where one sixteen year-oldgirl stood \"in awe\" of small children on skis. There were the7M16075; M15367; F15668. At least six of these adolescentshad lived in flats or homes with plumbing and electricity, theMichaelense sisters prominent among these with a \"beautiful\" five-bedroom, two-kitchen stone home.8The first Portuguese settled in the area bounded by the portand the CNR tracks where many Portuguese were employed. CensusTract data has been used to construct the spatial boundaries of thePortuguese \"community\", that area wherein at least 1.7 percent ofhouseholds are Portuguese. It now extends, roughly, from Main toBoundary and Terminal to 49th. See Horta, 126; Carlos Teixeira andGilles Levigne, The Portuguese in Canada: A Bibliography (Toronto:York University, The Institute for Special Research, 1992), 16.9]M15967; M15870; M16370; M15565; F16377.52inevitable encounters with snow and the quick adaptation to itsdelights and hazards. One boy had seen occasional frost in therural Continent, while another, anticipating snow, was surprisedto find snow in Vancouver was actually \"wet.\" Within the homesome children were quickly instructed to substitute \"knife\" forfaca, and \"corner\" for canto -- even while speaking Portuguesewithin the private sphere of Portuguese family and community.Encountering a larger supermarket, a Safeway, one mother who hadpreviously purchased \"fresh\" foods in Lisbon now served \"cannedproducts for the first few years.\"It was soon apparent that people here behaved, even lookeddifferent. \"Here\", said one, strangers did not acknowledge youas they did on the Azores. A girl felt people in Lisbon were\"warmer and closer.\" It was in Vancouver that they, even theLisbon-born, say they encountered different nationalities. OneMichaelense had \"never seen people from the Orient or blackpeople.\" A rural Continental had \"never seen a Chinese person.\"One adolescent who immediately went out to work full-timeremembers he was perplexed when a man, who later turned out to bea judge in the Supreme Court, made it a habit of stopping tospeak to him as he swept the floors of a large office tower. \"Iwas so amazed\", he said, for there, \"lawyers and doctors\" didn'ttalk to \"the little people.\" Almost immediately upon hisarrival, one seven year-old Michaelense who had been prepared byhis parents to expect Canadian people to be different, remembers10F16177; F15570; M15565; M15870.53asking his father what was \"so different\" about Canadians. Inhis case, this was a perception that soon changed.\"It was in Vancouver that these emigrants developed a sensethat they, themselves, were different. A boy from a middle-classLisbon home remembers feeling different at first because he waswearing \"flannel wool pants when all kids had jeans.\" It waslanguage, however, that posed the greatest difficulty. For most,but not all adolescents, leaving friends and relatives in theAzores or mainland, seemed less difficult than learning a newlanguage and making new friends. Two younger boys who were veryhappy in their birthplace found life lonely here throughout theteenage years and sometimes fought with others in theirelementary years. One seven-year old had been outgoing in theAzores and became more \"cautious\" and sensitive to how otherstreated him in Vancouver. A ten year-old developed an aversionto being called insulting names here, a practice he thought wasunusual on the rural Continent. This led to fights in elementaryschool. Some managed to maintain a strong sense of self whichthey were unwilling to compromise. 12Not surprisingly, some harboured saudades (a pining), forthe homeland. They missed friends and relatives, the mildweather of the Azores and the hot sun of the Continent, at leastin the beginning. Writing frequently to friends in Portugal wastypical at first, and adolescents wrote to friends and cousins11M16370; M15668; 15367; M16075; M16370.12M15967; M16370; M15565; F16377; M15870.54while children sometimes included a short note among parents'letters to Portugal. Two sisters wrote frequently and faithfullyto their friends about Canada. The younger sister was the onlyperson to keep a diary throughout most of her teenage years.She had little time or opportunity to make friends and her diarywas the only place where \"she could talk to someone\" about herloneliness. Meanwhile, her older sister's \"main goal for thefirst six or seven years\" was to return to Portugal. Others feltdifferently about Vancouver. One male fourteen year-old who hadclaimed the draft \"was the primary reason\" for emigrating said,\"I never felt that [saudades]. Incredible. I just feltcomfortable here.\" Of course, here he was reunited with familyand neither of his parents ever regretted the move. 13IIBeing \"Portuguese\" in Vancouver was perhaps less a factorfor some parents and their children than others. 14 Within the13F16377; F16177; M15367. The Penticton youth pined for \"thebeach, Nazare\", friends, and wrote to a \"sweetheart\" he planned tomarry -- feelings that dissipated after a year. Faced with fewPortuguese his age, he made a deliberate effort to integrate fullywith other Canadian youth. M25168.14Ana Paula Horta found one's ethnicity was a matter of degree.Portuguese who enjoyed higher socio-economic status in Vancouvergenerally had less involvement with the Portuguese community andgreater involvement with the wider Canadian context. In view oftheir greater choice, she stated, \"if the ideal 'multiculturalperson' exists, perhaps he/she is to be found among theseindividuals.\" \"The Salience of Ethnicity,\" 227.Fernando Nunes acknowledges patterns of young immigrants' responsesto \"pressures of assimilation\", but like Coelho et. al., overlooksthe class variable among immigrants. See Problems and Adjustments [1985].55private sphere of family, many immigrant Portuguese parentsprobably felt their child-rearing principles and practices werecorrect, if not superior, 15 to those they witnessed as practicedby non-Portuguese parents. In fact, observations andconversations that took place in other Canadian geographicalcontexts suggest many working-class Portuguese in Canada chattedin a decidedly condescending tone about Canadians. For example,many spoke derisively of canadianos and canadianas beingprotestantes -- akin to their being pagan. They despised theliberdade (liberty) they saw in their child-rearing practices.They worried about sons who acted like cabritos (male goats) andespecially, of daughters free-ranging like promiscuouscabritas. 16In Vancouver, some immigrant Portuguese parents not onlydisapproved of the freedom extended the children of canadianos,but they levied that disapproval upon some Portuguese childrenand adolescents whom they perceived to have a similar freedom.Village eyes had simply moved to a larger context. At least two15Ronald Louis Fernandez, The Social Meaning of BeingPortuguese (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario,1979)161 heard this among several families in northwestern Ontarioduring the 60s and 70s. In Toronto, one woman born of ContinentalPortuguese parents who emigrated in the fifties to Canada, becamea reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail. She wrote of hergrowing up years in Toronto: \"my mother and aunts spokedisparagingly of the canadianas, Canadian women who (they weresure) [sic) knew nothing about how to keep a clean house or cook adecent meal .... she and my aunts teased my brother, saying somedayhe'd marry a canadiana and would end up doing all his ownhousework.\" Isabel Vincent, \"Finding a nationality that fits,\"Globe and Mail, 3 December 1990.56adolescents, both males from more middle-class backgrounds inPortugal, felt themselves under the scrutiny of Portuguese eyesin Vancouver.\" Perhaps they drew attention because of theirdating practices, long hair, fashionable dress, and theconsiderable freedom they enjoyed relative to other Portugueseyouths.\" A third middle-class subject from Lisbon, however,remembers it was not easy to win over parents. He remembers the\"first fight\" with his own \"father\" was over long hair while the\"second one\" was over bell-bottoms. Immigrant Portuguese parentsin Vancouver, as well as elsewhere, probably worried about whatother Portuguese thought about their children, because their\"appearance and behaviour\" reflected the \"image of the home.\" 19Accusatory parents may have been ignorant of changes in Portugal\"One comparative study of child-rearing values among immigrantparents (Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and other groups) in NewEngland, concluded that immigrant Portuguese parents (all Azorean),unlike their Italian and Greek counterparts, \"model more onAmerican working-class standards\" than their middle-classstandards. Immigrant Portuguese parents remained \"harsher in theirreactions to social temper\" and were less tolerant of \"autonomydisplays\" in their children. Fathers were \"more vigilant thanmothers with respect to sex-role differences.\" One of thevariables this study did not hold constant was level of parentaleducation. See Wallace E. Lambert, Josiane F. Hamers, and NancyFrasure-Smith, Child-Rearing Values: A Cross-National Study (NewYork: Praeger Publishers, 1979), 274, 281, 308-9, 13.18M15468; M15967. The Kitimat girl had considerable socialfreedom. She thought her father \"got flak\" from his Portuguesefriends over this.^Her mother, a \"feminist\", was well-liked byher daughter's many Canadian male and female friends.^Thishousehold was a popular congregating area for all types of youthswhom some non-Portuguese parents would have scorned; however, whenher daughter brought a Portuguese girl home unexpectedly, themother became decidedly worried that this girl would go home totell her mom the house had been a mess. F36500.19Alpalhao and da Rosa, 138.57while those who visited the homeland saw changes for themselves.Some may have been unable to accommodate the changes they heardabout. 20Most women spoke of strict parental control in theiradolescence. The shift in parental attitudes towards adaughter's freedom in Canada is epitomized by the two middle-class sisters' experiences in Vancouver. Scant weeks before theywent to the first Portuguese dance here, accompanied by theirfather, they had enjoyed the unchaperoned companionship of maleand female friends, something that poorer children and youths atwork in households or on fields had less opportunity toexperience. In the case of the older sister, a boyfriend walkedher to school and she sometimes had \"coffee\" with him. InVancouver, \"a fellow asked us to dance and my dad took us home.\"The father had been warned by a brother, who had emigratedearlier to Canada, \"not to let us out\" for girls could quicklyearn \"a bad reputation in the Portuguese community\" andthereafter \"not be able to marry.\" Almost immediately from themoment of their arrival, the two sisters, together with siblingsolder than ten, worked either before or after school in order toassist their father out of his financial woes on Sao Miguel. Theyounger sister made it clear that, as far as she was concerned,al'on Sao Miguel, in 1977 , long hair on boys was certainly notubiquitous, but it was seen and boys were already pressing theirparents to allow it to grow. Arruda, Meu Diario, 1 February, 1977.Also see Horta, \"Salience of Ethnicity\".58\"Canada was a prison for girls.\" 21Other girls were also kept at home. One man's youngersister \"was never allowed out\", and \"was over twenty-two\" whenshe went out \"to go see a movie with her friends.\" Sometimes thebrother spoke up for more freedom for his sister and sometimes hedid not: \"She ha[d] to learn life on her own. I didn't havecontrol over that.\" Another from a more middle-class home on theContinent harboured one simple adolescent dream: \"I wanted to bebig enough to get out of the house.\" She perceived her situationwas \"temporary, it would change\" and that teenage years were\"stepping stones\" to another life:I wanted to get past my teenage years as fast as I could. Ialways wanted to be thirty.... I was independent as I couldbe until three o'clock in the afternoon and then [I would]have to be home after school.... I had a strict mother. Ihad a terribly-strict mother.This adolescent was denied \"a lot of opportunities\" becauseof this parent: track and field, though she was athletic; an\"opportunity to go to France with my French class\"; even a chance\"to go and study there.\" In her family, \"a lot of things\" \"justweren't allowed ... w[ere not] talked about.\" 22In Vancouver, some parents probably did see \"only disgraceand shame in the new freedom of the new land\" or accused21 F16377; F1617722M15971; F15570.59daughters who wanted to go out of \"promiscuity.\" 23 While nowoman in this sample said she was \"beaten senseless\", one youth'srelationship with her parents was a continuous fight for moresocial freedom. 24 One daughter from another more middle-classAzorean home remembers quite specifically that what she wantedwas not more time with family, but with her friends. A lot oftears were shed in her bedroom and she would say to her motherwho \"was more understanding\" than her father:Well, if you expect me to get married, you can't lock me upinside the house. The boys are not going to knock at thedoor and ask 'do you have a daughter for me to go out with!'I used to tell her that all the time. 25Three women admitted that their experiences, like theirparents, were probably atypical of the Portuguese community.They spoke about Portuguese peers and many other \"quiet\" teenagePortuguese girls who, indeed, were not permitted to go out exceptunder close supervision, or in cases where the parents approvedof the destination. The Kitimat girl, for example, rememberedPortuguese girls enquiring about what a high school dance hadCorrell, Toronto Daily Star 7 June 1969, cited in Coelho et.al., 12.25When her parents discovered a clandestine relationship shehad maintained for years, her Portuguese boyfriend came with hisfather to secure permission for the courtship to continue. Sheremembers the warning her father gave her boyfriend in the form ofa rhetorical question which she translated to mean, in her words,\"are you coming to be serious, or to have a good time?\" F16170.60been like because they were prohibited from going. 26Of course, there were ways for teenage girls to escapeparental eyes. One \"sneaked out\" while another maintained aclandestine romantic relationship with a Portuguese teenager forthree years, someone who worked full-time and had his own car.When he became the \"most important\" person in her life, shedropped some friendships, and particularly avoided establishingclose friendships with other Portuguese girls purely out of thefear that such girls would tell their mothers and it would getback \"through the grapevine\" to her own mother. She was the bestexample of an adolescent in \"full revolt against parentalauthority\" in this sample. 27 She feigned errands to the storeto meet her boyfriend. She developed a routine of attendingschool in the mornings, and going truant in the afternoon to ridearound in his car. She trusted loyal friends who championed hercause to inform her of missed work. She smoked -- \"God forbid ifmy mom and dad knew\" and \"talked back to the teacher.\" Herteenage years were \"a dangerous time\" because \"you tried almostanything.\" Only the academic's daughter and Vancouver-born girlhad more freedom simply because they, in fact, lived under fewerparental strictures. Like the Kitimat girl, these two took part26F16170; F16400; F36500. M15971.27F16170. Toronto Daily Star cited in Coelho et. al., 12. Onegirl not only began to \"hate\" her father as she grew up, but liedto parents telling them she was \"with Portuguese friends\" when shewas really out \"at Canadian parties,\" Pinto, 10. The Kitimatsubject said the other Portuguese girls fell into two generalcategories: the \"nerdy\" group, and the \"bad\" group. She was amember of the \"in\" group, which was atypical.61in after-school sports, and socialized, with non-Portuguesefriends. At sixteen, for example, the Vancouver-born had asteady boyfriend. She would have to phone home only if she wasstaying out past midnight or one o'clock in the morning. 28Teenage boys, generally, suffered fewer restrictions, butsome probably not by much. Frequently, boys had curfews of nineor ten o'clock. At least three didn't go out much after school.One from Sao Miguel \"didn't see the need\" to stay out late as thefriends he associated with didn't stay out late. Two otheradolescents were from the continent; one had a sunset curfew --home by dark, summer or winter, while the other didn't leave thebackyard much until the age of sixteen. Nonetheless, this lastyouth resisted his parents' control. He had a girlfriend whom hesaw at school. Sometimes he sneaked out, pointing out, \"as theysay, where there's a will, there's a way\"; moreover, he said,\"she was Italian and she couldn't go out either!\" 29There were exceptions to this scenario. Two of the threeLisbon males were generally unencumbered by parental strictures,and like many other non-Portuguese youths, they came and went asthey pleased, associated with whomever they wished, and dated.It appears their parents didn't say much about whether they wore28F15668; F16400. The Kitimat woman admitted she \"was not verytypical\" of the Portuguese girls in that town. She was in the\"cool\" group, played tennis, was active in extra-curricularactivities and went on out-of-town road trips. She probablyrepresents the pinnacle of an already small minority of Portuguesegirls in Kitimat who had more liberal parents. F36500.29M16170; M15468; M15565.62beads, bell-bottom pants, or longer hair. The pharmacist's sonhad no curfew, but came home \"when he was tired\" and one storysituates his parents' disposition which probably contrastedsharply with that of other Portuguese parents. Once on a visitto his home, another man, after \"a few glasses of wine\", remarkedabout the son's longer hair to the father. \"Look at your boy\",he said, to which this adolescent promptly replied, \"Fuck you.\"Uttered in front of two sets of parents, there was norepercussion then, or later, even though the offended couple soonleft the house. His mother had been \"hurt\" and his father\"embarrassed\", but this subject pointed out his parents usuallydefended his actions, and that he had been a \"spoiled brat.\"mSometimes parents enforced their authority with corporalpunishment. Usually, this was left to the father, but in onehousehold, a sister and her brother who had an upbringing thatwas \"a little stricter\" than most were \"both very disciplined --by mother\": \"If you looked at my mother the wrong way, you wouldbe under the table.\" One Lisbon adolescent observed that otherfathers would \"slap\" adolescent sons \"on the side of the head orpull their ear.\" This subject had one Portuguese friend for awhile whose father he found \"almost like a bully to me. Myfather being so liberal ... I found this parent to be sort ofrevolting.\" One sixteen year-old was talked into going downtownfor the evening with a cousin and when he returned aboutmidnight, found \"Dad was waiting. He had a belt.\" His father30M15468; M15967; M15870.63was \"setting an example\" for his younger brother and sister. Atleast three adolescents experienced harsh discipline at the handsof parents. One argued \"continually\" with his father until theend of elementary school about having to come home immediatelyafter school. His father would \"belt me continually\", herecollects, and \"I had to bend my thoughts\" to his wishes. Hethought his parents treated him \"almost like a European girl\"into his mid-teens. Another father would \"never hit me without areason\" and \"usually would give me a choice.\" If the son had \"abad exam\" in \"Math\", for example, and the father had thought thiswas due to the son \"being lazy ... he would say either I give youa spanking .. or you won't go play for a week\"; he went for the\"spanking.\" Sometimes the beatings were \"pretty bad\" he said andhis mother interfered on a few occasions. Then, \"the beatingswould be worse because it wouldn't be just us, it would us andher.\" This individual's narrative was characterized byunquestioning respect for his parents. He would never have swornin front of his parents, just as \"you wouldn't go into a churchand spit on the floor.\" 31Two scholars considered parental \"recourse to corporalpunishment\" as being \"rarely a sign of ill treatment.\"Admitting, \"it might be considered a questionable disciplinarymethod\", Alpalhao and da Rosa explained it was \"a manifestation31F15570; M15967; M15971; M15565; M15870. The Toronto teensaid her mother, was \"really great\" and was \"always in the middle\".Though she was \"always kind of afraid\" of her husband whom she\"obeyed\", her mother did at times step in between the father andthe children. F97072.64of the parents' interest in their children.\" 32 A counselloremployed by the city of Vancouver to work with the Portuguesecommunity during the 1970s was closer to some of the worst casesof abuse of children, adolescents, even young adult daughters. 33This counsellor also thought that Portuguese parents often hadthe best interest of their children at heart when they resortedto corporal punishment, though she thought alcohol sometimesobscured the purity of that intent. Several subjects spoke ofthe Portuguese tradition of drinking in moderation from an earlyage. For young children, a fraction of wine was mixed with agreater fraction of water. With age, \"the wine got a littlemore; the water a little less.\" 34 None were critical of whatthat might lead to.Parents appeared to relax their hold on the reins as theirCanadian residency lengthened. An older son admitted that it washe who \"broke some of the laws\" making it \"easier for theothers.\" Another said he knew of a family where the youngersisters had a \"more liberal upbringing\" than a brother. A photoof one middle-class teenage son in long, thick hair wasaccompanied by a verbal qualification: \"my [older] brother didall the fighting and then we all benefited from it.\" Anothersaid \"dad changed slowly\": he was \"very strict\" with the older32Alpalhao and da Rosa, p. 138.33Conversation, July; Interview, September, 1992.^For oneperspective of the dark side of parent-child relations, see Lloydde Mause, History of Childhood (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).34M14862; M15870.65brother, \"a little looser with me and with my younger brother hewas looser yet.\" Again, their narrative reveals that mostconsidered the father as the ultimate lawmaker -- andenforcer. 35Many of the subjects said their parents wanted them to marryother Portuguese. 36 One man said \"the first girl I broughthome, I kept.\" Some others also knew the first girl or boy theybrought home was the one that parents expected them to marry.One subject referred to another mother who had \"promised thechurch that she would give the church a hundred dollars if herdaughter got married as a virgin.\" One man born in the ruralContinent said that his parents had never actually specified thathe should marry a Portuguese girl, \"but it seemed to be imprintedin me, like if you bring this girl home, she has to be the one\",and the experiences of his other two brothers were the same. Amiddle-class daughter thought her father would have been pleasedif she'd become interested in a particular, well-educatedPortuguese man. The Penticton youth, also from a better socio-economic background in the Continent, said, \"my mom alwaysexpected me to marry a Portuguese girl.\" A Continental womansaid her parents had wanted to get her out of Canada before the35M15971; M15870; M15367.36This is not unique to the Portuguese. Endogamy generallyappears strongest among first-generation immigrants. Jean R.Burnet with Howard Palmer, Coming Canadians: An Introduction to aHistory of Canada's Peoples (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart inassociation with the Multiculturalism Directorate, 1988), 98-9.66issue of marriage arose. 37 A priest with the Portuguese parishin Vancouver said parents were concerned about exogamy, thoughsome viewed a marriage to Italians to be the second-bestalternative. 38 The size of Vancouver's Portuguese community wasprobably a factor in the persistence of endogamy. 39IIII was interested in the quality of relationships within thefamily. Fernando de Meneses suggested immigrant Portuguesefamilies in North American urban settings faced a more discretedivision of work and play than they had known in the homeland.Many parents who disappeared into a \"factory children never saw\"failed to integrate \"other aspects of play, enjoyment\" and did\"not plan these activities into the day.n o Alpalhao and daRosa thought that working-class Portuguese in Quebec probably37M15565; F16377; M15367; M25168; F15570.38lnterview with Father Antonio Deangelis, 7 July 1992. SeeBurnet and Palmer, 98-9. Chimbos states that the Greeks, \"like thePortuguese\" are \"predominantly endogamous.\" This may be more truefor the first generation than others. Peter D. Chimbos, TheCanadian Odyssey: The Greek Experience in Canada (Toronto:McClelland & Stewart, 1980), 112-3.39Citing a Hull study, Alpalhao and da Rosa suggested endogamyappeared to increase \"in proportion to the density of ethnicconcentration.\" 141.OSee de Meneses, i-iii. This was precisely the scenario theToronto teenager faced; in fact, both of her parents worked in thesame factory. F97072. There were few mothers working outside thehome among working-class Portuguese in Manitouwadge.67reduced their entertainment \"to its simplest expressions.\" 41This may have been true in Vancouver as well.If there were fewer factories to swallow parents in theVancouver context, there were other ways parents might disappear.Only three of the Portuguese mothers had worked outside the homein Portugal. At least eight stepped out of Vancouver homes, andexcept for one woman, all performed janitorial and kitchen work.One daughter noticed that the fracture which had developedbetween her parents in the homeland widened \"just shortly\" afterarrival. Throughout the whole period of her parents' residencyin Canada, the mother worked evenings in a restaurant while thefather laboured in a railway camp in the interior. As ateenager, she remained responsible for her younger brother withwhom she ate simple meals. This woman spoke sadly about herrelationship with her parents. When her father returned forshort weekend visits he'd \"go off to the coffee shops\" to seekmale friends, or simply watch television with the children. Sheknew her mother loved her, \"but she's never told me ... she'snever kissed me ... she's never shown it\", yet she didn't feellike \"an unloved child.\" Similarly, a middle-class fatherpreoccupied himself in his janitorial service and his son \"sawvery little\" of his father from the age of eleven on. His motherdisplayed physical affection toward her son, but his father\"never hugged or kissed\" him after he was eleven or twelve years°For this theme of a lack of creative use of leisure time byparents, see Alpalhao and da Rosa, 185-7.68of age. He remained \"very cold\", and \"very stern\", \"even when hewas happy.\" In another case, the \"tenderness\" which had beenthere between a father and daughter was lost after the daughter'spuberty. As a child in Vancouver, she used to walk \"hand-in-hand\" with her father through his construction sites and hadattended soccer games with him. In her pre-teens, she had evenaccompanied him on weekend trips into \"the interior [to] gohunting with his friends\" for \"rabbits, venison, bears ... it wasthe only thing I could share with my father because I was a veryquiet and respecting child.\" 42 In her teens, he became silentwith her, spoke to her through his wife, spent evenings insilence watching television before going to bed early. In thisway her father became \"very much background material.\"Conversely, the mother who was \"very gay\" and \"very theatrical\"became her daughter's \"best friend.\"A few Portuguese parents, however, took a greater interestin drawing upon Canadian leisure-time activities. One set hailedfrom a new Lisbon suburb where neighbours were judges, lawyers,42F15570; M15967; F15356. The adolescent in Toronto took upwatching hockey regularly with her father -- the only thing shecould share with him. She later wrote that her father was \"veryauthoritarian\" and \"demanding and whatever he says goes.\" Heplaced \"high value on external characteristics, such as obedience,cleanliness and neatness\"; there was \"very little communicationbetween us because of my fear of not pleasing him.\" F97072, \"TheInfluence of my Childhood and Adolescence on my Adult Character\"(unpublished paper, UBC, 20 March, 1992) The Kitimat girl was muchcloser to her mother than her father. The Penticton teen whosemother remarried in Canada felt he didn't have much of arelationship with his mother or his step-father, especially thelatter, who \"stepped aside\" as far as discipline was concerned.F36500; M25168.69and doctors -- people that were educated \"and in touch with theworld.\" The Portuguese their son encountered here were \"not thePortuguese I knew. Here most of the Portuguese at the time[1960s] were more concerned with material wealth than adapting toCanada.\" His family invested money and time in things that had\"intrinsic value\" such as going to the theatre and the cinema.In his words, \"we had a good life in Portugal so our lifestyledidn't change in coming to Canada.\" In his view, \"what didchange was my dad's availability to the family and himself.\"This father not only encouraged his son to take up Judo, butactually participated in one lesson. Similarly, the Vancouver-born woman whose father had emigrated with \"ambitions\", joinedhis teenage daughter and her neighbourhood friends in throwingbaskets in their driveway as her mother watched. 43If children found faults in a parent, they sometimes alsopointed out their other qualities. The two sisters who put longhours into the family janitorial business actually discussed withsiblings \"how much [they] hated\" their father and \"what he haddone\" to the family. A \"lot of in-between fighting\" sometimesclouded the \"common goal\", and the younger sister thought that\"if my father had not died when he did, my family might havesplit up.\" Nonetheless, siblings \"loved working\" with him\"because he was so funny.\" 44 On late summer nights, this father43N15468; F16400.\"One of the very first Portuguese children in Vancouver workedin the family restaurant from the age of ten, the younger brotherfrom the age of seven. The first cherishes the memories of the70would take the children out for a soft drink after the work wascompleted, even at midnight, and \"we would all talk about thedays in Portugal and the things we did.\" Alternatively, theyoften stayed up late as a family, drinking, eating, and talking.For this family, the integration of work and play probablyintensified in Vancouver and they simply became closer than theyhad ever been on Sao Miguel. An engineer, like a retired teacherwho tutored her son daily in Portuguese, seemed to be one of thefew parents with the skill, as well as the endless patience forteaching his children. He was also capable of waiting into theearly hours of the morning for a \"rebellious\" son to return --with whom he would only talk. They would \"sit there and talk andtalk all night till four, five, six o'clock in the morning\", andwould \"spend as much time as was needed\", with his children. 45There appeared to be a segregation of male and femalespheres within their households. 46 All in all, what some saidwas not too different from what one scholar noted in Portugalwhere the law and the church both worked to \"uphold the authorityof the husband in the conjugal unit\" while \"a woman's maternalsmells and general ambience of the restaurant and loved the work.See The Canadians: The Portuguese Community (CBC British Columbia,1984), video.45F16177; M15870.46The Toronto subject wrote, \"Growing up, I remember my parentsemphasising the importance of learning 'how to be a goodhousewife.'\" \"The Importance of My Childhood and Adolescence,\" 4.71role remained supreme.\" 47 As one Portuguese migrant woman saidof the relationship between Portuguese husbands and wives:It is over a woman's behaviour that a man has control.For that we have a saying in Portugal, Em casa manda ela, mas nela manda eu. (\"In the home she rules, but Irule her\") .48Despite studies which suggest that sojourning may have encouragedmen to assist in household tasks while women's work outside thehouse led to greater emancipation, 49 what subjects said,suggested that most fathers probably dominated their household,though mothers were not powerless. The father of the two sistersmade all the \"financial decisions\", decisions which threatenedthe very cohesion of the family. Three sons said their fatherswere the decision-makers, one saying, this was the \"ultimatedecision\" in the house. A second son said the father was theauthority figure, though the son \"never saw my dad bossing my momaround ... or bossing us around ... we knew [there] was anauthority in the house and it was my dad.\" A third son thoughthis motherwould have to be in very harsh disagreement before she wouldspeak back to him [the father]. But she could speak back tohim .... when he saw she was really in disagreement, hewould respect that.\"47Brettell, We Have Already Cried, 34-5.48Ibid., 103. See also, Alpalhao and da Rosa, 132-5; Andersonand Higgs.49Alpalhao and da Rosa, 132-7. See also Brettell, We HaveAlready Cried, and Anderson and Higgs.72The Toronto woman said, in fact, her mother \"obeyed\" her fatherand was \"afraid of him.\"\" Two others, however, made it clearthat their mother ran the household and made the decisions. Athird father defaulted on any authority he might have had in thehousehold when he absented himself in railroad camps andVancouver coffee shops.\"It appears many mothers and fathers maintained emotional andphysical distance at least when their children were around. Oneman \"never saw them kissing each other.\" His parents huggedopenly when they departed on a trip to \"Europe\". In his opinion,\"the so-called Canadian family had more affection.\" Anothersaid, \"I don't see any Portuguese adults being as affectionate asCanadian adults are.\" A third subject said there was affectionshown between his parents and put it this way: \"between my momand my dad, yeah; between my dad and my mom, not so much.\" Thatwas typical of Portuguese families he thought where \"the womanwould cater to the husband like a maid\" and say, perhaps, \"get mea glass of water, get me this, get me that.\" 52A few subjects mentioned marital problems between theirparents. One woman thought her parents had a \"dysfunctionalrelationship.\" She recalled her mother's humourous attempts todisengage her father from the television set. One father left50F16377; M15870; M15967; M15367; F97072.51F15356; M25168; F15570. The Kitimat father did not appearto have master status. F36500.52M15367; M15870; M15971.73for Portugal for a time and only later did the mother leave tojoin him. One subject learned in Canada that the father had been\"jealous\", and had \"probably spanked\" the mother in Portugal,something which apparently changed in Vancouver. From virtualnon-existence in the homeland, the divorce rate was climbingamong the Vancouver Portuguese just as it had in other New Worldcontexts where women were becoming more emancipated. 53 InVancouver, some married Portuguese women also learned to assertthemselves even more when they were left at home while \"the guysare going all night\" at the \"pool halls\" and watching the\"strippers.\" One subject observed a few couples divorced intheir \"thirties and forties\" in Vancouver, not because of extra-marital affairs, but because wives were neglected while men went\"hunting\" and \"weekend after weekend the wife sits at home.\" 54Only a few spoke of relationships with siblings. Some hadgood relationships. Three did not. One girl \"never had asisterly relationship\" with her older sister, who had \"a beachparty sensibility.\" What she recalled \"very clearly\" wasaccompanying her sister and her boyfriend in the car: \"he used tothrow quarters at me in the back to look the other way.\" Anothergirl said she \"didn't have a good relationship\" with a brother53F15356; M15367; F15570. In Fall River, Massachusetts, thedivorce among the Portuguese who have been found there for severalgenerations became \"a real epidemic\": in Bristol County,Massachusetts, 60% of all divorce cases were among the Portuguese-Americans though only 35% of the total population was of Portuguese\"stock\". Leo Pap, The Portuguese Americans (Boston: TwaynePublishers, 1981), 129.54M15367.74whom she felt had treated her \"with disdain\" and hadn't done asmuch housework as she did. Another girl became closer to asister six years her junior than to a brother who was closer toher own age. The fact that her brother got a bike though neitherof the sisters ever did was particularly \"frustrating\" for her.The teen who sometimes stood up to his parents on behalf of asister was \"good friends\" with his younger brother who became hisbest man at his wedding. As an older teen, he felt his fatherput pressure on him to advise the younger brother, and so he \"wasmore like a father\" to him. 55Adolescent outlooks were probably shaped to a degree byfamily members. In most narratives, references to fathersovershadowed those made to mothers who seemed to have beenforgotten somehow. One woman developed a keen sense ofresponsibility toward a younger brother, an artifact sheattributed to being the oldest child. Her interest in workingwith children continued past her adolescence. Another subjectsaid she maintained the \"same ideals\" in Vancouver, ideals forgedin part, by family as well as a priest in the homeland whom shehad admired. Here, both sisters remained \"very much\" in thepresence of family. The older one \"didn't have much peerpressure\" stimulating change. She recollected that in school she\"would voice my ideas ... I guess because of the way we werebrought up -- we knew what we wanted.\" In contrast to achildhood dream, her younger sister \"didn't expect\" and \"didn't55F15668; F15356; F16170; M15971.75want\" to get married or have children \"because I didn't want tolove anybody as much as my family.\" One woman thought a morefeminist mother had helped foster her independence while shethought her father had not contributed any sense of ambition toher. And, of course, one fifteen year-old denied himselfschooling in Vancouver because of his sense of responsibility tohis mother. 56However strict their upbringing had been, adolescentsthought that growing up in a Portuguese family had value. Onesubject \"never rebelled\" against his parents. He had been\"curious, a risktaker\" and \"could have got into drugs\" as a youthif he hadn't listened \"what my dad has taught me.\" He remembersfondly sitting and listening \"for hours\" to the stories that\"built character\" told by \"older folks, the wise men\" there inPortugal as well as here in Vancouver. Another attached the samemerit to the folklore he remembers being told, especially\"there.\" A third reminisced about the long conversations thattook place consistently at the dinner table in Vancouver. ThePenticton subject thought the family unit had been useful duringhis adolescence for practical reasons. He thought any sense ofcareer drive he may have had was not an intrinsic one. It was \"adrive not from myself, but from my parents -- the same thing thatChinese kids are going through right now ... the drive is afamily-oriented drive\".5756F15570; F15356; M16075; F16400; F16177; F16377.57M15367; M15565; M15870; M25168.76IVPortuguese families maintained some important traditionalpractices in Vancouver. For many, Sundays consisted of church,and family gatherings. The Vancouver-born woman said it \"gotextremely important to my father in my teens\" that \"every Sundaywas family day.\" The family took Sunday drives \"as far asChilliwack\", and had picnics in parks and beaches, sometimes evenspontaneously on a weekday \"as soon as Dad would walk in thedoor.\" For a middle-class Lisbon family, \"Sundays were prettymuch a Portuguese day\", consisting of church followed by cozida portuguesa, Portuguese cooking. This family often spent the daywith other Portuguese families with whom they might would goiceskating, for example. Car trips on weekends, and longerholidays in general remained important to those families who hadenjoyed that in Portugal. Another Lisbon subject, however,didn't think much of similar excursions in Canada. Gone were thenumerous automobile trips into the small villages of thecontinent, even Spain, to sample the wine and the good food heremembered the family had enjoyed. He considered this to be acritical difference between \"there\" and \"here\" as far as how hisfamily spent their time together. He explained, \"our wholesociety revolves around food, everything we do revolves aroundfood, not great quantities ... but the quality, the taste, theatmosphere.\" In Canada, the entire family missed the \"typicallittle places ... I think that's the biggest thing that we lost.\"They tried to maintain the extensive Sunday drives they had once77enjoyed, but \"we'd drive to Hope -- what is there, a drive-in anda hamburger.\" 58One Portuguese tradition that did not disappear withinVancouver homes was the serving of Portuguese food. In onefamily: \"We still had our bacalhao [salt cod], our caldo verde[soup with potatoes and kale].\" Many families continued to eatchorizo (spicy sausage), cozido a portuguesa, carne asada, roastmeat marinated in wine and garlic. Another ate \"cuzidos [stews]of pigs' feet, meats, potatoes, cabbage, chorizo\" all boiledtogether as well as \"a lot of spicy\" foods. One family's fareremained \"predominantly Portuguese\": batatas con bacalhao (potatoes and salt cod), sardinhas, as well as cuzido portuguesa and quizado (another stew). In one Continental household pigeonsand quail were sometimes served and occasionally they drove to aPortuguese-farm in Richmond for rabbits or for a cabrito, a kid.Even the Vancouver-born teen ate caldo verde and she \"loved\"favas (stewed broad beans), but \"hated\" salt cod. Mothers whoworked in restaurants probably influenced the family's dinnerfare. One \"started making a lot of soups\" while another beganserving apple pies. 59Whether they emigrated as children or adolescents, thesesubjects continued to speak Portuguese in the home. Thepharmacist's son spoke \"always Portuguese, never English,\" toparents at home, even when his anglophone friends were in the58F16400; M15870; M15468.59F15570; M15870; F16377; M15367; F16400; F15570; M25168.78house. He remembers translating for his friends which he didwithout any embarrassment. Some were aware their parents spokepoor Portuguese and one adolescent who spoke \"a workingPortuguese\" took steps to learn formal Portuguese as an adult. AMichaelense admitted to a difficulty understanding theconversation of some Continental Portuguese, notably the Consul,to this day. Another father, \"always made us speak Portuguese athome and my Dad never learned to speak English properly.\" Hisfather became more fluent in English after a six-month stint in anorthern railway camp, a skill he quickly lost once back inVancouver. One man who emigrated as a youngster spoke onlyPortuguese to his parents with whom he lived until an adult.\"Over time, there was a general decrease of Portugueselanguage use, and fluency, particularly among youngersiblings. 61 One man said his brother blended English andPortuguese, which some term \"Portingles\", when he spoke to hisparents. Another subject continues to speak only Portuguese tohis parents while his younger brother \"speaks in English and theyreturn in Portuguese\" -- a pattern followed by a brother and60M15967; F15356; M15565. M16170. Also CBC, The PortugueseCommunity, video.61In 1971, the Portuguese were represented as having thehighest mother-tongue retention rates of the ethnic groups studiedfollowed closely by the Greek, Chinese, and Italians. Of course,given their time of arrival in Canada, the Portuguese also had thelowest numbers of second- and third-generation families, followedclosely by Greeks. One can expect mother-tongue language retentionto be higher in Toronto with a greater number and density ofPortuguese. K.G. O'Bryan, J.G. Reitz, and O.M. Kuplowski, Non-Official Languages: A Study in Canadian Multiculturalism (Ottawa:1976), 211; 34, 208-9; 56-7.79sister when one was angry with the other. 62 As one subjectnoted, the presence of an offspring's disability might shift thefamily \"focus\" from the fact that a family were \"immigrants\" toan intensification of the desire to learn English.The traditions in the home subjects remembered best werethose clustered about Christmas. A Michaelense family continuedto follow the homeland Advent custom of setting wheat to sprout.A custom among some Continentals seemed to be the serving of saltcod before Midnight Mass which continued in Vancouver. OneLisbon family then opened presents after Midnight Mass and serveda \"traditional\" meal of fried pork, steamed clams mixed withonions and sauce and lima beans. 63 Christmas Eve was one of therare times a daughter witnessed parents spending time together.The two would take up the evening making sugar-sprinkled filhaos,flat dough fried in a cast-iron pan. One man said Christmas hereinvolved \"the turkey dinner\", \"visiting friends\" and\"storytelling\", but there was a less religious tone than inSerra. Here, probably fewer families built a prezapio, anativity scene, while more of them set up a Christmas tree -- apractice which did not seem to be new to some Lisbon families.Birthdays were celebrated, but I had the sense, as one man in62The Penticton youth quickly immersed himself in anglophoneculture. There was probably \"a tiny bit\" of anti-Portuguesenesswhen he began to answer his mother in English. His sister, laterborn in Canada, \"did the same thing.\" M25168.63M15367; M15971; F15570; F15668.80fact said, \"it wasn't a big thing\" in many homes.\"Parents had varying expectations towards the social freedomthey permitted their children, dispositions that seemed to havemore to do with socio-economic status in the homeland thangeographic origin. Some, cherishing memories of the homelandthey remembered, appeared to intensify parental controls inVancouver even as Portugal -- and Portuguese parents changed.One man whose family was \"the first Portuguese family\" inVancouver pointed out that when his grandmother later visited sheremarked, in his words, \"boy, these Portuguese people here arebackwards.\" In the Portuguese church, she also noteddifferences: \"it's like when you guys left the old country.\" 65Here, many parents simply did not want their children togrow up like other children they saw about them and they werevery specific in their strictures. They did not want theirchildren to stay out late, and some did not even want them tosocialize after school. They were especially afraid that theiradolescent children would resort to drugs and that daughterswould date. Yet it is obvious that some Portuguese children,probably a minority, were granted considerable social freedom.For others, such freedom was only possible when they were freefrom the parental gaze. Some fell upon the use of deceit whileothers clearly looked forward to the school day.64M15367; F15570.65CBC, The Portuguese Community_, video.Chapter 4 -- Portuguese Children in Vancouver SchoolsPortuguese children and adolescents found their Vancouverschools to be different from those they remembered. Threeemigrants who had finished their Portuguese schooling discoveredthat most Vancouver children under the age of fifteen wereengaged in school labours, as working-class families had\"increasingly\" come \"to view high school graduation as thenatural end of schooling.\" 1 These three subjects returned toschool. Two other emigrants, one fifteen, the other sixteen,immediately began to work full-time. This chapter firstinvestigates emigrants' early experiences in Vancouver classroomsand differences between Portuguese and Canadian schools thatseemed to remain important. It also reports some of theirpositive and negative school experiences here. Finally, itexamines parental perceptions of Vancouver schools as well asparental attempts to involve themselves in their children'sformal education.During the Portuguese parliamentary republic, 1910-26, some1 \"The 1951 Census found only 437 boys and 70 girls under age15 in full-time work\" in the province. Yet some children underfifteen were working \"virtually full-time, especially in domesticsituations.\" Neil Sutherland, \"'We always had things to do' thePaid and Unpaid Work of Anglophone Children Between the 1920s andthe 1960s,\" Labour/Le Travail 25 (Spring 1990): 135, 110.8182progressive educational reformers \"were proud to have substitutedthe ABC for God\" in Portuguese curriculum. 2 Even withinSalazar's Estado Novo, 1932-69, progressives criticized the poorstate of Portuguese education as \"the principal obstacle tonational development.\" 3 Nonetheless, between 1902 and 1960 onlythree years of compulsory education were required. In 1960, afourth year of attendance, but not necessarily completion of theauarta classe, was added. In 1967, six years were madecompulsory, though this was enforceable only after 1972 and onlyon the Continent. In 1973, larger cities experimented with eightyears. 4The Portuguese state seemed intent upon ushering studentsinto simple classrooms as much to make pacific, deeply-patrioticand Catholic citizens, as to provide a rudimentary education. 5A few facts attest to this. Portugal had the highest reportedilliteracy rate in Europe in 1968. 6 Primary teachers had loweducation levels relative to their university-trained liceu counterparts and relied upon simple rote teaching. There was aninsufficient number of schools, and facilities were generally2Gallagher, Portugal, 99.3lbid. For the New State: 65, 168.4Anderson and Higgs, 141.5Gallagher, 99. Compare with the early twentieth-centuryBritish context where schooling consisted of \"school work devisedto produce an obedient and unquestioning labour force for the newfactories and offices,\" and learning hovered about the \"Three Rs.\"See Humphries et. al., A Century of Childhood, 27.6Anderson and Higgs, A Future to Inherit, p. 141.83inadequate. ? From 1940, the Church had control over religiouseducation in all schools. 8Within such schools, teachers delivered a highly-centralizedand nationalistic curriculum without parental and teachers'\"managerial input.\" 9 Among other subjects, Portuguese childrenlearned the nationalistic epic poem of Os Lusiadas by thecelebrated writer, Luis de Camoes, and they memorized the historyof Portuguese kings, navigation, and padraos (stone markers)erected along the African coast.\" Even in 1974, at leastaccording to the Minister of National Education,National education ... cannot not help having as a goal ofmolding of good Portuguese -- creating in them a love forthe Fatherland and habits of work, initiative, discipline,fulfilment of duties, and correction of manners.\"Portuguese schools moved rapidly through the curriculum. AMichaelense in primeira classe, grade one, received a History,Mathematics, and Science book. She \"learned to write, notprint.\" In this first year, students also learned multiplicationand division; in the second grade, syllabication. 12 In gradetwo a student learned \"all the different dynasties ... and you7Rogers, 363.8Brettell, We Have Already Cried, 34-5.9Rogers, 347-8.\"Ibid., 291.\"Ibid., 344.12Cornelius Lee Grove, \"Cross-Cultural Problems Facing OlderPortuguese Students in American Schools\" [1977], 3ff.84[had] to know all the kings in order, what happened during thattime.\" 13 Students who went on past quarta classe were taughtFrench in the fifth grade and English in the seventh.My informants saw or experienced far more frequent corporalpunishment in Portuguese schools than they would later encounterin Vancouver. In one Lisbon state-run school where \"teacherswere all heavy disciplinarians, they strapped at will,\" one youngboy witnessed \"kids being strapped pretty well every class --every day.\" Punishment seemed to be meted out spontaneously: oneboy who turned in a library book with soiled pages was \"hit\"first and \"then\" asked for an explanation. Children were slappedwith an open hand across the forehead, or were \"whipped\" acrossthe palms by rulers, yardsticks, or a rubber strap. The threatof physical punishment hung over even the best students who couldsuffer for making errors on a dictation or for failing to listento the teacher. Sometimes, they were even selected to punishtheir own classmates. 14 However little pedagogical freedom theyexperienced within the classroom, they enjoyed considerablesocial freedom the minute they stepped outside those walls. 313F16377.14One exceptional student was made to \"kneel on rocks\" when sheresisted a teacher's order: F16377. M15565; F15570; M15967.Another study reported that two fathers had sent young daughters toPortugal to attend school. There, both experienced similarpunishments. Pinto, \"Growing up Portuguese in Canadian Schools,\" 8.This rigid authoritarian atmosphere is not too different from thatreconstructed of early twentieth-century British schools. SeeHumphries et. al., A Century of Childhood.15See Grove, \"Cross-Cultural Problems\", 3-7.85The two Michaelense sisters were the only ones to emigrateafter the 1974 Revolution. According to them, younger teachers,some with radical ideas, began to take their turn in front ofclasses. At least one school on the island was paralyzed by astrike that lasted several months. Classrooms became places ofdebate, some students became quite political and \"fourteen,fifteen\" year-olds not only debated party platforms openly, butclaimed to belong to \"such and such a party. “16IMost subjects attended Vancouver public and not Catholicschools. Within the public school, many spent varying amounts oftime in multi-age New Canadian classes to learn English beforeentering regular classes. If they did not go to such classes,they were generally placed with younger children until they couldpick up the language after which they might be accelerated tomore age-appropriate classes. In the 1969/70 school year,however, at least two Portuguese females in Vancouver would leavetheir grade nine class at, or very near, the age of seventeen.\"16F16377; F16177.17A scan of Vancouver School Board Registers of Brittania,Vancouver Technical, Gladstone, Windermere, and Charles TupperSecondary Schools revealed some \"Portuguese\" surnames. But in the70s, Portuguese and Italian names are clearly overshadowed byChinese ones. In 1986, a random sample of 653 students in EastVancouver schools was broken down into the following \"CulturalGroups\": Chinese, 281; English, 153; Italian, 45; Indo/Hindu, 35;Vietnamese, 27; Sikh, 21; European, 21; Portuguese 14. Thebreakdown for the South Vancouver sample is roughly similar. TableIX, Vancouver School Board, Evaluation Report on the VancouverSchool Board's Race Relations Policy (Donald Fisher and Frank86The two sisters and their siblings entered the Vancouver publicschool system, split between two east-side Vancouver elementaryschools. The two sisters entered regular and not New Canadianclasses, but the younger still thought:The school board had made a mistake and sent me backto grade four even though I had completed it. I hadjust won an award [in the Azores] two months beforefor being the best student of all the islands and theyput me back in grade four and not even anywhere closeto my home. 18Not all parents wanted their children in public schools, ofcourse. One set of parents opted to enroll their daughter in aCatholic School as well as paying for a tutor when they found outtheir nine year-old daughter would not be accepted in a regularclass in a public school because she \"didn't know a word ofEnglish.\" The Vancouver-born girl was enrolled in a catholichigh school because her parents \"always thought catholic schoolswere better than public ones ... I really had no choice ...education was always important to them.\" In another case, ayoung girl was enrolled in a Chinese catholic elementary schoolprobably for the practical reason that it was closer to her home.For a time, this girl believed that Jesus Christ was\"Chinese. ,,19Echols), March 1989, 27.18F16377. She later corrected her story: she was the firstMichaelense to receive a full \"20\" marks in Mathematics. 6 October1992.19F16170; F16400; F15356.87There were mixed feelings about first experiences inVancouver schools. A seven year-old who had spent only a fewmonths in a Portuguese elementary class which he nowcharacterized as \"rigid\", thought there had been less emphasis onlearning in his Vancouver school. He had resented the \"naps\" hewas forced to take. Emigration had interrupted a \"fifth year\" ofstrenuous studies on Sao Miguel for one boy and here he spent\"one year watching Sesame Street\" in his New Canadians class foran hour every day, in addition to reciting \"1, 2, 3s, ABCs.\" Onesubject pointed out that in his first year of \"high school\" inLisbon, he \"was doing the new Math, infinitives, and all thatstuff.\" He didn't think much of the \"kindergarten stuff\"presented to him in the New Canadian class. A few, however, saidthey didn't mind being with younger children. One subject whocompleted Grade 12 at the age of nineteen said his school hadacted prematurely in their decision to advance him to anothergrade. Whether he felt that way as a child or not, he now feltthat others who had remained behind a little longer had had moresuccess later in school. One Lisbon youth's experiences in a NewCanadian class seemed almost pleasant. In his multi-aged class,immigrant students were largely European. Some could converse inFrench which he knew and they shared an interest in soccer.Along with others in that class, he had observed that Canadianstudents generally did not seem interested in discussing politicsmuch. He recollects there were no particular problems fittinginto the New Canadian class; indeed, he summarized his88experiences, but not those of others, with the statement,\"children being children, everyone gets along.fl nAttempts to forge friendships met with varying levels ofsuccess and frustration. In one catholic school, a teacher\"introduced\" a nine-year old to \"an Italian girl\", which was oflittle use, because \"I didn't speak Italian and she didn't speakPortuguese!\" 21 Emigrating from a milieu where the school wasthe nucleus of close friendships, the younger of the two sistersfelt alienated at her east-side public elementary school. It wasnot the numbers of \"Chinese\" students per se that made her feelthis way; rather, it was because \"there [was] nobody that wecould talk to not even in English because the Chinese kids didn'tspeak English either.\" 22 The seven-year old who had enteredkindergarten was never really comfortable in elementary classeshere. He even dreaded going to those classes where some\"isolate[d] you as being different\" and \"would be there pickingon you again.\" After an \"odd scrap or two\", this boy \"startedstaying away from the bad kids\" and he continued to look towardsteachers to create a \"certain environment\" of safety andlearning. This is not too different from what Cornelius LeeGrove summarized, through his fictionalized student, as the20M16370; M15971; M15565, M16170; M15468.21F16170.22F16377. According to the 1977 VSB Task Force on English, 28%of secondary students were ESL. The number of Chinese-speakingstudents was rising and accounted for 14.9% of total VSB enrolment.Cited in Mary Ashworth, The Forces Which Shape Them (Vancouver: NewStar Books, 1979), 88-9.89differences between an Azorean school context and the Americanone:In my opinion, the best situation of all would be to be in aschool where the students were disciplined as they are inPortugal, but where the teachers taught as they do inAmerica. In Portugal, I feared my teachers. In America, Ifear my fellow students. 23These emigrants quickly realized that the intent behindpunishment in Vancouver schools was different. Two subjects saidthey were strapped here -- but for social misbehaviour such as\"fighting.\" In Portuguese schools, however, corporal punishmenthad been administered for substandard academic performance: \"ifyou didn't know something, especially one of them, would hit youacross the forehead ... with their hand.\" Or, \"if you didn't doyour homework ... for every misspelt word you'd get whipped onyour hand ... if you couldn't read properly ... actually foranything they would whip you with that yardstick.\" Consequently,one ten year-old was \"scared, really scared\" during his firstdictation in a Vancouver school and began \"crying, hollering\",petrified that the \"teacher was going to slug me. \"24 The Lisbongirl had disliked her \"depressing\" \"grey\" and \"militant\" stateschool, but here, was \"really shocked\" by \"the lack of disciplinein the classroom ... how a teacher could not have control of thestudents.\" She found it \"really disgusting\" that students were\"really unruly, very rude.\" Her brother, on the other hand,23M16370. Grove, \"Cross-Cultural Problems\", 15.24M15967; F15668; F16170; M15565.90thought that student deportment in Canada was probably \"better\"than that exhibited by those in his class of repetants (repeaters). Another Lisbon youth despised being treated \"like akid\" in his Vancouver school. In his liceu students had beenwell-dressed, conducted themselves properly, and had beenextended greater social freedom and \"respect.\" Older studentswere even permitted to order and consume a beer in the cafeteria,though most would not. \"There\" he \"was a somebody\" and wastreated with more dignity; even the janitor of the schooladdressed him as \"Senhor.\" 25There appeared to be consensus on the matter of theprovincial curriculum not being as academically-demanding as thePortuguese one. Some were not only proud of this, but wishedschools here had been the same. 26 Subjects consistently madereference to an elementary grade in Portugal being equal to anumerically-higher grade in Vancouver. One boy who would havegone \"only to grade four\" if he had not emigrated from the ruralContinent suggested its Canadian equivalent: \"it wouldn't be agrade four level, it would be more like a grade ten level.\"Another who had finished schooling on the rural Continent had\"quarta classe, fourth class, whatever than means here, grade sixor seven, maybe.\" One bright female student also from the ruralContinent, found her \"college\" there, \"a lot harder ... when I25F15668; M15468; M15870.26M16370; M15971; M15870. For similar complaints, see Grove,\"Cross-Cultural Problems\" as well as his \"Six Non-Language RelatedProblems Facing Older Immigrant Portuguese Students.\"91came here, I found school super easy.\" The Lisbon girl thought\"school here was a lot easier than school there ...scholastically, I was way above their [other non-Portugueseclassmates') knowledge .... I didn't have to work too hard to getgood marks.\" Here, said the pharmacist's son, \"I noticed thateveryone passed the first few years. If you showed up, youpassed. I didn't know any English -- I passed .... In Portugal Iremember a lot of kids didn't pass into grade two.\" A \"lot\" ofhis \"street friends\" stayed in grade one. 27Those informants who had attended Portuguese schoolsemigrated well-prepared for some subjects. Mathematics, inparticular, was touted by many to be taught at a much higherlevel than here in Vancouver schools. One arrival \"understood\"only the \"Math, the arithmetic\" which was learned at such a\"faster rate\" that \"grade two\" Mathematics in Portugal \"was goodfor [grade] five.\" The thirteen year-old sister said she arrivedalready familiar with English grammar and could read English onlymonths after her arrival; moreover, she thought \"compared toPortuguese grammar, English is a laugh.\" However, many othersubjects cited difficulty with language in the beginning as theirbiggest problem in school. A home-school liaison worker withPortuguese families in Vancouver in the late 1970s also thoughtthat language generally remained the salient problem for thefirst five years of residency. 2827M15565; M15367; F15570; F15668; M15967.28F16377; M15367. Interview, 1 September 1992.92A few subjects did not appreciate fully the intent of someof the \"fun\" activities, or those involving operational thinking,in Vancouver schools. Grove concluded that \"virtually withoutexception,\" immigrant Portuguese students considered schooling inAmerica \"comparatively very easy\" and that they tended to \"reactpoorly\" to films, filmstrips, and \"other activities which areintended to be enjoyed by the students.\" He cites one studentwho, disgusted by the \"fun\" features of American education, said,Ja nao somos criancas! (\"we are no longer children\"). 295There were other youths like Tiago who harboured a desire togo to school here, but did not do so. A fourteen year-old whoemigrated to Vancouver in 1962 said that many others his age didnot finish high school. One subject's older brother was one ofthose who began to work to help repay a father's \"debt.\" ThePenticton subject pointed out that it was \"very unusual, veryunusual\" and \"very tough\" for a seventeen-year old emigrant youthto complete high school as he did. 30 Such testimony was but asmall window into the lives of other Portuguese teenagers whofaced another set of circumstances in the world of work. 31II29Grove, \"Cross-Cultural Problems\", 19-22.30M14862. M25168. M15367. In one \"problem\" inner-city TorontoCatholic school where Portuguese (Azoreans) predominate, evenyouths with good grades dropped out to support the family economy.See Peter McLaren, Schooling as a Ritual Performance (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).31M14862; M15367; M25168.93Those subjects who were permitted more social freedom byparents seemed to integrate more fully into the social life ofthe school while two others from restrictive families viewedschools as an ideal opportunity to socialize more freely. Thesegenerally had more positive things to say about Vancouverschools. Others saw schools differently. An athletic girl witha very strict mother participated in Vancouver track and fieldmeets, and \"some basketball\", but not in the evening. She wasnever allowed out \"until my parents went to Portugal and I gotmarried.\" Even away from parental eyes, she socialized little.In grade ten, incoming grade eight students would butt outcigarettes when they saw her entering the washroom \"because Idressed and carried myself as a teacher.\" The thirteen year-oldsister \"hated\" Canadian schools, \"felt stupid\" and disliked theprejudice she saw \"when all the racial fights started ... fightswith bats between Chinese and whites.\" She sometimes tried toset things straight, particularly in one History class where shethought the teacher gave her free rein to do so. Her story isworth telling, because this vocal adolescent dared utter whatother immigrants probably thought, but did not say:After we'd been here eight months, my dad bought a house andwhen I told some of the kids at school they got mad becausethey said that we came here and stole their jobs and we weremaking all this money -- that we could afford to buy a houseand a car and yet their parents couldn't. So I got reallymad and I told them all off ... I told everybody exactlywhat my life was all about and I said, if you think I'mstealing your job, you can go clean toilets any day for me,but you don't want that kind of job, so don't tell me I94stole those jobs from you. 32A few were even more negative about their overallexperiences in Canadian schools. One middle-class son wasadamant that \"from grade eight to grade twelve, [he] neverlearned one thing about the history of Canada.\" He pointed outhe had come from \"a very challenging system\" where the \"teachersdidn't give a shit\" if you passed or failed, to another contextwhere \"you could just talk your way through grade twelve.\" Here,there was \"no motivation -- at all. There was no challenge.\"Here, he made up his \"own story\" as a book report at the lastminute to get a \"C, C plus -- just enough to pass.\" According tohim, he had one goal in high school: \"to finish the stupid thingand get out of there.\" Another middle-class adolescent didn'tseem to have great difficulties in Canadian schools but thoughtthat high school \"here\" left him with \"very poor work habits\" anddid not \"prepare you for university.\" One subject who hademigrated in the late fifties as a young child thought thatschooling at her particular high school \"was pathetic to say theleast for a woman.\" She thought, \"being of the female gender hada lot to do\" with being steered into a commercial stream\" for shehad always been a very academic student. A six-month long visitto Portugal had jeopardized her school year. She chose a \"pass\"with the condition that she enter the \"commercial\" program that32F15570; F16377. Of course, admitting that as an immigrant,she did a dirty job, she probably did little to bridge perceiveddifferences that were already there.95\"most women went into\" and felt the nature of the counsel shereceived \"was definitely an East-end thing.\" 33Some had positive experiences in Vancouver schools. Forthese, invariably, it was because they integrated more fully intosocial aspect of school. The pharmacist's son who had enjoyedconsiderable social freedom at home said he \"really lookedforward to going to high school\" after an early morning run, and\"an hour blow-drying\" \"shoulder-length hair\" which \"had to lookjust right every day.\" \"School was a big social event\" for thisyouth and he did not recall that there were negative experiences.While the Penticton youth viewed his school as much more \"lax\"than his Portuguese one, it was clear he also appreciated its\"freedom.\" The Vancouver-born woman said her experiences \"weregenerally quite positive\", and she had been treated with \"quite abit of respect.\" She considered herself a class \"leader\", hadserved on the Student Council, and had participated in extra-curricular activities such as dancing, music, basketball,scorekeeping, and counselling. Unlike a few others, her \"lunchhours were socializing times.\" Her negative experiences \"weremostly related to the fact that it was a Catholic high school\"she attended. Like the Kitimat girl, the Lisbon girl was activein sports, went to \"all the basketball games\" and track and fieldmeets and also became involved in a major fund-raising campaignin her school. 3433M15468; M15870; F15356.34M15967; M25168; F15668; Emphasis in narrative, F16400.96High school was an opportunity to escape parental eyes. Oneyouth whose \"fighting years were only in elementary school\" andwhose parents restricted his socialization well into his teens,considered \"high school probably my most favourite time of all inCanada.\" He skipped classes with friends. The girl who hadmaintained a clandestine relationship with a boyfriend for threeyears, and was restricted from going out of the house, maintaineda discrete and separate sphere at her east-side secondary school.There, she \"was always accepted in the 'in' group ... the populargroup.\" She could not think of another Portuguese girl in herschool that was as integrated as she was, but saw \"loners\" who\"were always by themselves.\" 35Often a teacher or counsellor was influential in theirschool life. 36 Despite her \"horrific memory of high school\"which was \"a prison to me\", the woman who had gone into the\"commercial\" stream, said two teachers nurtured her academicside, \"this whole other area that wasn't touched.\" These were\"very extraordinary teachers who made me, who kept me theresomehow.\" One teacher in particular was \"quite a remarkablewoman ... my earliest recollection of a feminist woman and shemade a big impression on me.\" The younger of the two sistersdescribed having two counsellors \"who were the best\", who would\"stick out in [her] mind forever.\" They pulled her out of classMM15565; F16170.3 6Five of the subjects, all female, said that they had thoughtof teaching as a career while growing up. None became a teacher.97\"just to talk.\" They also requested teachers not to put so muchpressure on her because she was \"not a regular kid\" but wasworking in the evenings as well, and therefore could not alwayscomplete homework. One youth from a Lisbon private schooladmired his public school teachers for their approachability andthe interest they took in him. In \"only my second year inCanada\" his \"artistic abilities\" in literature received \"a lot ofsupport\" from one English teacher who helped him develop thatinterest. One adolescent continued to look for fair andsensitive teachers who could provide a safe learning\"environment\" and continued to feel \"learning was a bit easierwhen a student felt good being in that class.\" He clearlypreferred those teachers that had used a simple approach, and\"took time to explain certain concepts.\" He resented those whoemployed methodologies that \"always\" seemed to have a \"piecemissing. \"37Informal interviews with two teachers who taught in East-Endand south Vancouver secondary schools in the mid-1960s, resultedonly in one teacher's observation that Portuguese kids,generally-speaking, did \"well\" or \"very well\" in school. Oneteacher could not recall any particular \"social problems orlanguage difficulties\" among the Portuguese who were in Vancouverclasses during this study period. While \"there may have been7F15356; F16177; M15468. M16370: this theme of caution arosevariously in this particular interview. Of course, this subjectdid not mention that had he continued in an Azorean school he mighthave encountered less safety and teacher explanation at the handsof some of his teachers.98family problems\", this teacher \"never saw that in the classroom,\"and recalled, these \"kids fit into both of their worlds.\" Manyhad been \"in the system since grade one ... they were Canadiankids, not like foreigners.\" The other teacher added otherminority students were more visible in multicultural classrooms;in fact, the \"Portuguese\" this teacher recalled best were twoBrazilian youths who had been good students. 38IIISome Portuguese parents took a keen interest in maintainingtheir children's fluency in Portuguese as well as theirfamiliarity with Portuguese culture, a position researchers haverecommended for immigrant children, including the Portuguese. 39Some parents placed their children in the Portuguese Saturdayschool\" -- while others even sent their children back toPortugal to attend school there for a few years. 41 Thesupplementary school was started in 1968 by Mario Cipriano; itreceived \"three qualified teachers\" from Portugal in 1971 and38July, 1992; August, 1992.39See Wallace Lambert \"Persistent Issues in Bilingualism,\" TheDevelopment of Second Language Proficiency. Birjit Harley et. al.eds. The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990), 218.\"Again, the Portuguese are not unique for setting up SaturdaySchools. There is a much larger Chinese school operating on thesame premises on Saturdays. For examples of Croatian andLithuanian Saturday schools in Toronto, see Robert F. Harney, ed.,Polyphony: Toronto's People 6 1 (Toronto: MHSO, Spring/Summer1984), 59, 105.0Conversation, F16377, 29 September 1992. Pinto, 8.99enrolled 100 students the next year. 42 It was officiallyrecognized by the Portuguese government in 1979 to the grade fourlevel, which meant students \"could enter grade five in Portugal\"if they returned to the homeland. This had been a motive of somePortuguese parents, particularly in the past. 43 Students weretaught Portuguese language, history, and culture and olderstudents were also taught Portuguese geography. Certificates ofPortuguese Studies were issued through the Portuguese Consulatein Vancouver which also provided all texts as offertas, gifts.During this period, only two of these subjects were enrolledin this Portuguese language school. One woman said she wasn't\"even familiar with it at the time.\" The man who sought\"fairness\" and more explanation from Canadian teachers, attendedfor \"two or three years\", but wasn't impressed by it. He \"didwell in it\", but added, \"all they did was, you would read thepassage, memorize the words and regurgitate it ... that wasn'tlearning ... I didn't find it very useful.\"\"The Saturday school changed over time. Whatever theparental motive in the past, the current Director thought thatthe probability of \"return\" to the homeland had greatlydiminished over time. The Portuguese Church in Vancouver was\"involved\" with the school until the mid-1980s at which point42Anderson and Higgs, 138-9.°Information on this school was provided by a Director of theSaturday School centered at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary. Tapedinterview, 27 January 1992. Also F16377, 29 Sept. 1992.44M15367; F15570; M16370.100some wished to separate education from the church. With time,Continental, rather than Azorean children were more likely to befound in their classes.\" The school continued to provide basicinstruction in Portuguese language and culture. In Vancouver, asin Toronto, some of its language teachers no doubt served as\"sympathetic\" \"anchor points\" who worked to build \"bridges ofunderstanding\" between Portuguese children and their parents.\"Portuguese have raised families in Canada for over threedecades, but men and women from this group continue to be foundat the bottom of occupational mobility tables. 47 One Torontopriest thought the Portuguese had not taken full advantage of theOntario educational system.\" As late as 1986, even a shortPortuguese publication levelled the following statement atemigrant Portuguese parents who \"do not project themselves\" intothe \"life\" of host countries, becauseThey come from such low horizons that, when theyhave been able to amass a sum of money, they believe\"The Director said much the same thing in different words: \"Iam not sure I have even one [Azorean] student in my class.\"\"Prates, speech, p. 50. Interview with Director.17The Portuguese exhibited the lowest occupational status forall three census years, 1971, 1981, and 1986 (except for males in1986) while Greeks held the second-lowest status. See Neil Guppyand H. Lautard, \"The Vertical Mosaic Revisited: OccupationalDifferentials Among Canadian Ethnic Groups,\" 189-208, Peter Li,ed., Race and Ethnic Relations (Toronto: Oxford University Press,1990), 202.48He pointed out that there were Chinese, Spanish, and Italiandoctors in that community, and remarked, \"we should have by now anumber of lawyers and doctors.\" McLaren, 77.101that they have arrived at a final triumph of life. 49In their burning desire to purchase a home and realize this\"final triumph of life\", some parents may not have been presentto attend to other non-material aspects of parentalresponsibility such as overseeing their children's progress inschool. Not only was \"communication between teachers and parentsoften impeded by the language problem\",\" but there remained thevery low level of education among Portuguese immigrant parentsthemselves who probably had an average of four years of formaleducation or less if they immigrated between 1953 and 1973. 51One Vancouver father was ashamed to show a daughter how little heknew about some subject matter while another confessed, \"I forgotabout family and thought only about making money\". 52 Caughtbetween the dual labours of wage-earner and homemaker, motherscould not help.\" Finally, many parents may have absentedthemselves from a more active role in their children's educationbecause these parents simply did not take such a role in eitherthe Azores or the Continent. Perhaps many employed a \"faulty\"'Anderson and Higgs, cited in Fernando Nunes, Problems andAdjustments of the Portuguese Immigrant Family in Canada (Porto:Secretaria de Estado das Communicades Portuguesas, 1986), 16.50Nunes, 23.51Anderson and Higgs, 136.52Pinto, 7; Anderson and Higgs, 46.\"See Fernando Nunes, \"Portuguese-Canadian Women\", Jean R.Burnet, ed., Polyphony: Women and Ethnicity (Toronto: MulticulturalHistory Society of Ontario, 1986) 8 No. 1-2: 65.102frame of reference\" when they worried over being called in to aprincipal's office, 54 but subjects had a more simpleexplanation: \"there\" lawyers and doctors did not talk to the\"little people.\" Social distance was maintained between manyparents and teachers. One woman said parents in Portugal \"didn'tconfront the teacher\" if their children were punished, \"becausethe teacher had more education -- there was always that gap ofhaving more education.\" 55Some of these subjects remembered their parents had beencritical of Vancouver schools. One mother who had taught inPortugal considered her son's school \"pathetic because she wasused to that heavy-handed discipline.\" Furthermore, \"she wantedMath, English, History, lots of discipline\" and \"said it wassilly\" that her son did \"art in school\" and had a \"camera class\"though \"she didn't mind woodwork because she thought it wassomething I could use later.\" This mother's attitude alsosoftened \"because my marks were good and that's all she wasinterested about.\" Other parents, notably fathers, wereconcerned about how academic the work appeared to be, rather thanhow relevant it was. One father \"saw some of the work I wasdoing here and he was taken aback\" while another said, \"you'restill doing this?\" Another would often say, \"boy, we did this ingrade one, you guys are still doing this in grade five?\" One54Speech by Antonio Prates, Portuguese-Canadian Congress, NewCanadians and Schools (Toronto: Department of the ProvincialSecretary and Citizenship), 50.55M16075; F16170.103middle-class father, however, did not criticize beyond, \"gee,these guys don't teach anything\"; rather, his emphasis was lesson the school, and more on how much effort his sons made withinthe system. 56 Other parents were probably concerned about thefact that schools taught sex education. 57According to most subjects, their parents were virtuallyuninvolved in their schooling. One remembers that her parentswere \"not really\" involved with her schooling, though her father\"would help\" her with homework. Another adolescent used to writehis own notes if he needed to stay home; report cards were readon his own and later \"explained\" to his parents. It was throughhis own initiative that he graduated, he said. He had hoped tobe \"pushed a little\" into post-secondary education to which hehad given some thought, by his father or even \"an older brotherto look up to.\" Two Lisbon parents took a very active role inteaching their children, but these appeared to be anomalouscases. The Penticton man said his mother \"didn't have a clue\"about his schoolwork. He \"never did any homework at all. Never.And somehow I passed.\"5856M15967; F15570; F16377; F16170; M15870.57Schools taught \"bad things\" like sex education, a taboosubject in Portuguese families. \"It's at school that they learnsex education, and (according to mothers), it's there where theylearn to practice it.\" Dating was one of the \"bad\" ideas strictlydisallowed by Portuguese parents. See Coelho, et. al., 16. Thisconcern is echoed in Isabel Pinto's study of how Portuguese fathersviewed their daughter's education in Vancouver schools. Her fivesubjects, all fathers aged 35-45, emigrated in the sixties. (p. 2).They fit the biographical profile of many of my subjects.58F15668; M15971; M25168.104Interviews with six Portuguese parents in 1991, three ofwhom were parents of school children in the 1960s 59 yielded somesurprising attitudes towards Vancouver schools. There were somecriticisms especially from two parents who still had childrenenrolled in school. One had enrolled her children in a Catholicschool hearing there were \"gangs\" and too much liberdade inpublic schools. Another was very disappointed in the school'sapparent failure to warn of an offspring's chronic truancyproblem. One older subject thought students should be \"pushedmore in elementary school\" and \"schools and teachers should bemore watchful for drugs\" and criminal activities.Those parents who had sent children to Vancouver schoolsduring the sixties seemed less critical of schools. Some of theviews these older parents held in fact countered what subjectsremembered their parents had said and done, and what two studiesshow.\" One older mother concluded that public schools inCanada prepared youth not for a job, but \"for life.\" In herview, \"this is what schools here do better than Portugueseschools -- schools should prepare a person for anything that59Three parents were retired; three others in their earlyforties. Taped interviews, five in Portuguese, March, April, 1991.Antonio Filomeno Arruda, \"Portuguese-Canadian Parents viewAnglophone Public Schools\" (unpublished paper, UBC, May 1991)\"Pinto; Coelho et. al. Some change in parental perspectiveover time has probably taken place in the minds of older Portugueseparents. Anderson and Higgs suggested that over time, schools mayhave had a \"Canadianizing\" effect upon parents. p. 140. Longbefore this, of course, others had viewed schools as such a tool.James Thomas Milton Anderson, The Education of New Canadians (NewYork: R. M. McBride & Company, 1918).105arises.\" Activities such as field trips, sports, and TV programsin schools were not time-wasting according to this woman; indeed,she placed considerable emphasis upon \"art\" as \"very important ina child's development.\" One older man said he had been concernedthat a son had received insufficient learning assistance. He wasaware of an ongoing teachers' strike and appeared to sympathizewith teacher's demand for a decrease in class size. Anotherparent with a special needs grandchild had a very high regard forthe Canadian educational system and postulated that the samechild would not have received such attention from the Portuguese\"government.\" She dismissed the notion that there was too muchliberdade in schools and placed emphasis on the fact that her\"children always came home content.\"What these three parents said was not too different fromwhat a few academic critics of the 1960 Royal Commission onEducation once thought. m And those views were also more in-line with what a home-school liaison worker had observed: that bythe end of the 1970s, at least, Portuguese parents were taking avital interest in their children's education. Many had pushedtheir children toward post-secondary eduction; indeed, she said,\"it breaks my heart when parents cry when they see the kids arenot doing well\" in schoo1. 62 This source thought dropping outof school had been less of a problem among Vancouver Portuguese61See A Critical Evaluation of the Chant Commission Report onEducation, reprinted from the Vancouver Sun (Delta Chapter, PhiDelta Kappa [1960]) especially, 22, 30, 32.62lnterview, 1 September, 1992.106adolescents, at least during the late seventies, compared to whatshe had learned was the situation in Toronto. 63This chapter can only begin to examine the schooling ofPortuguese children in Vancouver. As the period of familyresidency in Vancouver lengthened, parental attitudes towardCanadian schools probably changed. For some parents the homelandwisdom of having one's children invest in the family economysurrendered ground to the wisdom of investing in their education.On the other hand, middle-class parents, some of whom hadconsiderable education in the homeland certainly knew the valueof education. Nonetheless, it appears only a few parents in thissample were active in their children's schooling. Emigrantchildren and adolescents perceived their Vancouver teachers andschools differently especially in the area of curriculum andclassroom discipline. A few made comparisons between schools\"there\" and \"here\", but one cannot ascertain how long they madesuch comparisons as children and adolescents. Whatever else theywere, schools were also places where teens could associate morefreely with peers. The level of integration into the generalschool culture could not be determined by parental strictures.Those adolescents who could, or chose to, integrate into thesocial life of the school had the most positive things to sayabout their schooling in Vancouver.63Ibid. Retention rates for British Columbia were higher thanthose in any other province. British Columbia, Report of the RoyalCommission on Education (Victoria, 1960), 48-9.Chapter 5 -- Growing up with WorkWork was an important feature in the lives of manyPortuguese children and young people before as well as aftertheir emigration to Vancouver. This chapter examines threeaspects of growing up with work: the paid and unpaid workchildren and adolescents performed; the purpose of earnings; andthe role of work in their young lives.Work dominated the lives of youths and even children frompoorer homes in Insular and Continental Portugal. Some children,along with many others they saw around, fulfilled therequirements of three, then four, and later six years ofschooling and were working from the age of ten in agriculturaland domestic, pre-industrial settings. 1 On Sao Miguel, Tiago,suddenly fatherless at the age of ten, turned down a scholarshipto board and study \"in the city\" and thus closed the door on hisdream of becoming a lawyer. No one blinked an eye over the factthat, beginning in 1970, he worked full-time in the forest sixdays a week, eight hours a day with \"five or six\" other boys hisage, \"trimming trees\" and clearing rivers. He was \"doing almost1Five had completed four years of schooling: M14862; M15565;M15367; F15773; M16075. None who discussed child labour spoke ofsettings such as sweatshops and factories, or of homes turning outpiecework -- which is not to say children did not labour in suchplaces. F16377; M15971; M15870.107108a man's work\" for which he was paid fourteen escudos, then aboutthirty cents a day, and had other tasks including daily gardeningand weekly barbering. But \"everybody else was the same\", heexplained, illustrating this with a contemporary parallel he hadwitnessed in Mexico. 2 There were \"quite a few\" otherMichaelense boys working \"full days\" as agricultural labourersfrom the age of \"ten, nine, even eight\" in return for wages orfor commodities \"like wheat or corn.\" 3Girls from the poorer homes with \"no money to buy shoes\",without ever having a \"new dress\", did sometimes play \"in thestreets\", but work is probably what they remember best. From avery young age, two sisters from a family of twelve would riseearly at five to guard the crops from the praga (\"plague\" in theform of birds) for daily wages of between ten and twenty escudos.There were other daily tasks for children. They fetched waterfrom \"so far away\", roved the hillsides scrounging sticks toreturn with a heavy load and scratched limbs: \"and wood had to bedry -- not wet, nor green -- or we would receive pancadaria [abeating].\" Diapers torn from old clothing had to be bleached byashes and boiling water. If ever they had a spare moment, therewas always ivy to gather and sell door-to-door as chicken feedand poor girls such as these were visible in the fields whenever2For a useful theoretical framework of child labour in aninternational context, as well as an intense account of details,see Roger Sawyer, Children Enslaved (London: Routledge, 1988).3M15971.109a quick harvest was needed. 4Girls from poorer families sometimes lived and worked inbetter homes as criadas (domestic servants) for which they mightbe paid a daily wage of twenty escudos in 1970. Vital as thiswas to a household, \"a lot of them didn't really care about thesalary -- they were living in a nicer house.\" Some \"old-money\"families probably maintained social distance from criadas, butthe two wealthier sisters ate with their adolescent servants andwent everywhere with them. Given the sociability in their home,one's station was sometimes forgotten and \"they would havearguments with us ... like little kids.\" At the age of twelve,one subject abandoned household and agrarian tasks and steppedinto a teacher's household as such a live-in servant. Sheperformed almost all chores in this household and supervised theteacher's children. From the age of fourteen until heremigration at sixteen, she performed limpezas (janitorial duties)in the Ponta Delgada hospital, boarding with many other girls ina large room, in the middle of which slept two vigilant nuns. 5Meanwhile, children and youth from the better homes of theisland of Sao Miguel generally went on with their schooling anddid not work outside the household. Younger children, in fact,4F15773. F16377, 29 September, 1992. Compulsory educationmerely delayed their visibility and vitality in agriculturalsettings from the age of seven to ten. See Colin Heywood,Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France: work, health and educationamong the 'classes populaires' (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1988)5F16177; F15773.110appeared to be safe from work even within their homes. One sevenyear-old boy did not work at all while a nine-year old subjectfrom a Ponta Delgada middle-class home sometimes ran errands orfetched the odd item for her mother, and made her own bed. Inthe case of older children and adolescents, however, parents whocould easily afford to forgo their labour perceived that certainwork had utility. They believed that work, and learning to likework, was an important part of an older child's, and especially,an adolescent's informal education. This was something thatPortuguese and other parents generally continued to believe inCanada -- and which was not too different from what other NorthAmericans had thought at an earlier time. 6 Consequently, thetwo sisters were \"always made to do our work\" by the mother, workwhich helped fashion housekeeping skills: some cooking, cleaning,and being \"responsible for our rooms.\" 7Those from Lisbon middle-class families said little aboutwork. What one did say, however, was that there were some Lisbonchildren whose labour, \"maybe to deliver milk\", for example, wasneeded by their families. This subject recognized the vital role6M16370; F16170; F16377; also M15565.^According to J.J.Kelso, \"'Boys should learn to work and love to work'.\" John Bullen,\"Children of the Industrial Age: Children, Work and Welfare in LateNineteenth-Century Ontario\" (unpublished Ph.D dissertation:University of Ottawa, 1989), 362. In the early decades of thiscentury, there arose a notion among middle-class Americans thatwhile children should not \"labour\" for wages, household chores were\"good work.\" Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: thechanging social value of children (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,1985).7See Sutherland, \"'We always had work to do.'\"111of their work in \"the provinces\" where \"they were just oldenough\" and \"strong enough\" at \"ten or eleven\" to work.According to this source, children from agricultural families hada basic knowledge of reading and writing, \"and that was enough,and really, for that kind of life, that was enough.\" 8 Liketheir Michaelense cohorts, many rural Continental childrenentered the world of work after fulfilling the minimaleducational requirements. They too performed agricultural tasksor had chores in and about the household. In one household that\"never even had a donkey\", but which was considered \"middle,average\" for the area, a father brought in \"the family income\"while the mother took care of the household as well as chickens,rabbits, pigs, sheep and goats. Had a ten-year old boy notemigrated \"that would have been my job.... At the age of twelve,I likely would have been out in the pasture with the goats andthe sheep, that's what most kids did.\" Younger children weredefinitely present out on the fields also, but \"not likely bythemselves\", though this subject's own father had been forced outinto the pasture before grade four. 9 He considered his work ascarrying water, or gathering, as a \"help\" to his mother and8Emphasis in narrative. M15870.9This man's father had attended school inconsistently andunable to keep up with schoolwork would be \"beaten by the teacher.\"He had pleaded with his own father, \"'either you send me to theschool every day ... or send me out with the goats.'\" He had beensent out with the goats. The significance of this is that thissubject's father later vowed to him, \"there's one thing I'm goingto do and this is give you an education.\" M15565.112father and insists he did \"not labour\". Another rural ladirrigated \"by hand, by pail\" with his mother\" out of areservoir with treacherous banks which meant two had to performthe dangerous task. By the time he emigrated at the age oftwelve, he had been out of school for two and a half years andwas kept busy milking, picking olives, and generally working \"onthe farms mainly with my grandfather.\" His work indoors seemedto consist of assisting his father in his \"little business\",making doors and windows. This was hardly sweated labour and he\"was only helping\" with the woodcutting while remaining \"careful\"in the presence of machinery. The family was far from wealthybut there was always time for play and he remembers operating themachines to \"make my own go-carts.\" In contrast, a more middle-class daughter, also from the rural Continental, remembers morechores. She irrigated a vegetable garden \"a fair distance fromthe town\" early in the morning before going to school. And thenthere was household work:I did everything in the house. I did everythingin the house. I raised my brother and I'm onlyfive years older than he is. I washed his diapers.I dressed him, I fed him -- ever since I can remember.\"II\"According to him, Continental women performed agriculturaltasks. See Brettell, Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait, 25. ThoughMichaelense women's labour was vital during harvests, Azorean womenwere generally \"exempted from the heavy labour of the fields.\"Rogers, 123-4. Also F15773; F16377, 29 September 1992.11M15870; M15565; M15367; F15570.113For some Portuguese children and young people, work was animportant feature of their growing up years in Vancouver. Mostwent to school and performed some type of work outside schoolhours. Some contributed earnings or their labour to the familyeconomy while others undertook work voluntarily and in theinterest of securing personal spending money. Two who emigratedfrom less humble backgrounds as children said they did little, ifany work as adolescents, either in or out of their home. In heradult years, one of these subjects felt \"lost\" when her motherdied, as it had been her mother who had always done \"everything\"in the house. 12In Vancouver, Portuguese parents, like other parents in thecity, generally expected their children, especially girls, wouldhelp around the house. 13 The number and nature of the tasksaccorded their children appeared to be sexually-differentiated.Younger sisters enjoyed less freedom from work than youngerbrothers in households. In one family with older girls, thebrothers \"only did their rooms.\" In another household with ayounger brother and sister, the brother did less work: \"[mybrother) had to make his bed just like we made our bed.\" He12M16370; F15356. In comparison, the Toronto girl only workedin the house, her parents making it known they were teaching herhousewife skills. F97072, \"The Importance of My Childhood andAdolescence on my Adult Character.\"13In Vancouver, children between the 1920s and 1960s ranerrands, gathered firewood and worked in gardens. In both working-and middle-class families, there was a sexual division of labour.Child-minding, and work involving the preparation of food wereimportant constituents of many girls' household work. SeeSutherland, \"'We always had work to do,'\" 110-112.114would sometimes \"dry the dishes\", but otherwise, \"had to lookafter himself\" and \"clean up his room.\" The mother worked onSaturdays and left the cooking up to her eldest daughter, thenaged fourteen. She \"would teach me\" and it was \"something Iliked to do.\" She remembers her \"first big meal\" was \"roastchicken ... with stuffing and potatoes.\" One daughter supervisedher younger brother and cooked the evening meals because herparents were absent in the evening. Tasks appeared to be sharedmore equitably in another family: \"we all did everything ... theyard work whatever ... I always recall seeing my mother and myfather doing the same things.\" This subject later thoughtperhaps her mother did a little more of the household work, whileher younger brother \"never did very much ... he was the baby ofthe family. I had more responsibility than he did.\" In atleast three families, girls looked after a younger brother orsister to some extent; in all three, the mother was workingoutside the house. In one unique case, however, a boy was leftwithout his mother when she returned to Portugal because ofillness in the family. This became an extended leave and hiswords says it best: \"guess who does all the housework?\"Some subjects who had not worked outside the home inPortugal as adolescents did so here. The two sisters who hadnever worked outside the home in Portugal were suddenly facedwith prolonged labour almost immediately upon arrival as theentire family buckled down to fulfill an economic \"mission\" of14F16170; F15570; F16400; F16377; M15367.115saving their business. The younger sister performed janitorialwork at the age of thirteen, \"my second day of being here.\"According to her, \"we all started to work from the age of ten up\"while her parents worked sixteen-hour days. With memories of abeautiful home and criadas no doubt still fresh on her mind, hermother took a dishwashing job (already arranged before herarrival) and supplemented this with a second job -- alsojanitorial work. Two months after their arrival, the two sisterswere assisting in the cleaning of \"five\" restaurants even beforegoing to school. Over the long term, their daily scheduleincluded school and supper after which the family performedjanitorial services split between several locations. Allowanceswere made for school as the younger sister wrote: \"whenever oneof us had an exam, someone else would go to work for us.\" Herein Vancouver, one twelve year-old son seemed a willing companionfor his father when they went to \"repair stoves and do electricalwiring\" after school. On weekends, they would \"wire houses andbasements.\" Of his summer jobs he said, \"everything waselectrical\" though he had \"never liked electrical\" and excelledin \"mechanics\" in schoo1. 5For the boy who likely would have become a \"shepherd\", workin Vancouver only assumed other forms. Here, his first job as aten year-old must have been somewhat bewildering considering thenew urban context. He guided a blind man about the West Endwhile the man sold baskets and belts door-to-door. He made \"a15Diary, F16377; M15870.116dollar a day, but that was good enough for my parents.\" At theage of eleven, he used to get up at four on summer mornings fivedays a week to catch a bus along with others to Langley where hepicked strawberries \"for the whole day.\" This time he earned\"three or four dollars a day, but to mom and dad, that would be alot of money.\" At the age of fourteen, his father secured him \"amost dreadful job\" at a car-wash where the father worked tosupplement another job. This job paid a dollar an hour andconsisted of,eight hours a day ...mist blowing, there's tons of wind ....It was so noisy, they put cotton in my ears, but that didn'thelp. When I came home, I couldn't hear anything. 16Others under fifteen who went to school embraced part-timework for more personal reasons and were allowed to keep all, orsome of their earnings, for their own purposes. In his firstyear in Canada, a Lisbon subject prepared real estateadvertisements for a Portuguese real estate agent. He consideredthis a \"great\" job for it paid \"twenty dollars a month\" which washis to keep and \"kept me from doing my homework.\" Between theages of fourteen to sixteen, he spent \"three or four hours\" of aSaturday assisting his father who made a little extra income in asecond job. Of the wages he might have earned in this case, hesaid, \"I don't think he [father] passed it all onto me.\" Whatearnings he did receive were all spent on himself on items suchas clothes, records, and a record player. A daughter from a more16M15565.117middle-class Michaelense home began to work Saturdays and Sundaysat fourteen and \"full time in the summer holidays.\" She too wasallowed to keep a portion of her earnings, her tips, \"to buythings.\"\"Work became more important to adolescents in their mid-teens. At fifteen and sixteen respectively, Tiago and the criadahad each been out of school and working from the age of ten tosupport a poor family on Sao Miguel. In Vancouver, it was full-time work that they entered, and not school, but this wasgenerally a new, and more pleasant, form of labour. For Tiago,who \"didn't know English, didn't have an education\", and yet felthe had to support a mother, janitorial work was \"the only thing\"he could do \"because it's night time and you don't have to speakwith nobody.\" Compared to work in the forest, where you could besoaked \"as soon as you step out of the door\" at daybreak, thisindoor work was \"a beautiful job.\" For the sixteen-year old whoemigrated alone without parents, the first job scouring numerousencrusted cooking utensils left her with broken nails and tears.After two weeks, however, she secured work in the laundry of alarge hotel, a job she enjoyed. In the company of other workers,older women, she also learned much about important matters. 18At least five adolescents worked in restaurants after theirmid-teens while enrolled in school. At sixteen, the daughter whohad \"raised\" her brother, began to work in a restaurant \"full-17M15468; F16170.181416075. F15773: see chapter six.118time, five days a week till two in the morning.\" She attendedschool the next day which meant that lunch hours and sparemoments at school were spent alone in the auditorium withhomework, a scenario similar to the one the younger Michaelensesister faced. At sixteen, one boy began to work where his motherdid: she washed dishes full-time on weekdays while he took overon weekends. At seventeen, he initiated the formation of a bandwhich was soon contracted for some Portuguese weddings, feasts,dances, and other functions to play a variety of music:\"Portuguese the most\", \"English next\" as well as Italian,Spanish, Central American and Brazilian. This \"paid more thandishwashing\", and launched a career. 19A few older teens performed more physical waged labourduring their summer vacations. 20 The boy who had pickedstrawberries entered construction at eighteen when his uncle \"gotme into the union.\" One youth also worked in a restaurant for ayear \"in grade eleven, twelve\", and then worked out on therailroad near Abbotsford \"where my father was.\" After grade 11,the academic's son and a \"Canadian\" friend took a summer job onthe Pacific Great Eastern Railway, 72 miles out of Prince George19For restaurant work: F15570; M15367; M15971; F15668; F16170;M15367.20In comparison, the Penticton seventeen year-old did littlehousework and did not work in his first year. In the next, he tookup diswashing and restaurant work in the next to avoid orchardwork. The Kitimat girl took summer jobs with the municipalitywhile others worked for higher wages at Alcan. The older Torontomale and his 60-year old mother soon left a brother's home, took uptheir own flat and both entered their first factory jobs. M25168;F36500; M96179.119\"in a little place in the middle of nowhere called Angus Mack.\"Here two \"slight-built\" boys encountered backbreaking work:Of course, there you would have to do a hell'uva lot of work... laying railroad ties ... doing all sorts of things thatI thought I'd never have to do in my life and I thought I'ddie the first day.He had to stay \"until [the] first paycheck\", unable to manage the\"physical workload\" without the assistance of \"other Portuguese\"men there who took an interest in helping him: \"actually, that'show I survived.\" This summer job offered important growing-upexperiences for this \"very clean-living kid.\" He not only\"learned how to swear\", for example, but recalled that it\"changed [his] life\" at \"sixteen.\" 21IIIMost teens worked under the understanding that money earnedwas, as one woman put it, \"not mine to keep.\" The subject whohad picked strawberries did not begin to keep a portion of hisearnings until his late teens. This \"used to really make me mad... I'd hand him [father] the cash and he'd say, here's ten centsfor tomorrow.\" That was \"bus fare.\" His parents never chargedhim for \"room and board\" but received his \"whole pay cheque.\" Asmuch as he had resented this, he \"couldn't turn against myparents. That's one thing you don't do in our culture ... I justaccepted it.\" Meanwhile, his friends \"had money, they could doVM15971; M15468.120things\", and they \"earned money which was theirs to keep.H 22 Ateighteen he approached his father to ask if he could have a bankaccount, but \"my dad wasn't the kind of person who would listen-- he was the kind of person who would hit first and talk later,and he says, don't even think about it.\" Eventually the youthspoke to his uncle and this combined with the fact that \"I wouldbug him and bug him and bug him\" netted him his first bankaccount. 23Others felt differently about contributing earnings to thefamily economy. The Vancouver-born girl gave music lessons atsixteen. She remembers she felt \"good, I felt really good\" aboutgiving the money to her parents who \"took care of it.\" With her,however, whenever she \"needed anything, they would give me themoney\", something lacking in the former case. She liked the\"philosophy in our house that whatever we had was ours ... all[were] going to benefit .... I felt I was contributing to thehome.\" Another youth gave his restaurant and railroad earningsto his parents \"to pay the mortgage or whatever.\" And asked whathe did with his earned money, a third said,I gave it to my dad. No questions. No arguments.It was expected, you knew that was the thing to do.Priority is family. If you ever got a job, the moneygoes to your dad -- stand up and give it to him ... it's22The \"Friday\" or \"Saturday penny\" was seen by most Britishchildren as \"their right\" in the \"new childhood.\" See Humphries,A Century of Childhood, 30. In Canada, of course, weekly allowancewas something many children also looked forward to. In Vancouver,\"many\" working-class families in the post-war period allowedchildren to keep \"some or all of their earnings.\" Sutherland, \"'Wealways had work to do,'\" 130.121tradition, before anything you have to help the family. Ididn't mind. I didn't mind.Like the Vancouver-born girl, and a few others, he too felt therewere compensations for having given up financial autonomy: \"yousee, Dad had a car ... I asked him to use the car, softly,carefully ... I got some of that money back.\" One daughter whowanted to work for personal spending money said, \"Dad gave us anultimatum ... you either give us, give me your paycheck and keepyour tips, or you keep everything for yourself, but one day whenyou're older, you're on your own.\" She said she was willing tocomply because \"it was a better deal\" and the \"money he [later]gave\" in the form of a wedding, she would never have saved. She\"would have blown it all.\" Neither she, nor others mentionedthat many other Canadian parents were expected to pay for atleast a portion of a daughter's wedding whether or not she hadcontributed earnings. The daughter who began to work inrestaurants \"full-time\" as well as going to school was neverasked for her earnings, but \"it was understood\" that her earningswere not hers to dispose of. Sometimes she used her money topurchase \"groceries for the house\" on a \"voluntary\" basis, butotherwise, her checks \"went right into the bank.\" She had about$10,000 in the bank in her late teens, but as she explained, \"youdon't have all this money and it's your money .... you've earnedit and it's in an account, your account, but you don't touch it.\"23F15570; M15565.122Later, in fact, the money was spent on her wedding. 24The two adolescents who never entered school in Vancouvercontributed significantly to households back in Sao Miguel. At\"sixteen, seventeen\", Tiago's \"goal\" had been to \"raise $8,000 tosend to my brother in Portugal to buy a dairy farm so he could dowell in life.\" He maintained two full-time jobs enabling hisbrother to purchase a dairy farm. Throughout her adolescence,the other consistently forwarded almost her entire paycheck alongwith used clothing and other commodities to her impoverishedfamily on that mid-oceanic island. 25At the same time, a few adolescents did not have to turnover earnings to parents at all, but the possible skew of thissample must be borne in mind. At least two teenage girls wereallowed to keep tips. At fifteen, the pharmacist's son workedhalf-days on Saturdays and Sundays \"bagging\" popcorn and\"cleaning up\" at a drive-in cinema. His earnings were his tospend -- \"and I got allowance\", he says.^The son who had workednear Prince George, and later in a large department store, alsoworked in a sawmill \"chipper.\" This was \"very hard work\" whichsometimes left him unable to move. His purpose in working: topurchase a sports car his mother had refused to co-sign for -- acar that \"was quite popular with the girls.\" His sister workedfirst as a busgirl at sixteen and later cleaned banks which she24F16400; M15971; M15367; F16170.^Emphasis in narrative,F15570.25M16075; F15773.123didn't enjoy, all for personal money. \"Everything I made wasmine to keep\", and hers to spend in any way she wished. Heradult perspective was that this was, in fact, a \"shame\" becauseshe couldn't manage money at the time which is almost exactlywhat another woman had said. 26Most adolescents in this sample seemed willing to complywith traditional expectations regarding their earnings. EightPortuguese households in Vancouver felt the burden of emigrationdebt, mortgage and other payments somewhat, sometimessignificantly, lightened by their contributions. 27 Two subjectsalso sent considerable remittances to households in Portugal. Ifothers did not actually contribute earnings, their labour wasprobably important, and in the case of the two sisters probablyvital to their family's material wealth. 28 Undeniably, mostprobably saw at least part of their investment in the familyreturned to them in some form. One subject, however, disregardedthe fact that parents were paying for his food, shelter andclothing. He remained frustrated that they denied him anyportion of his earnings throughout most of his adolescence. Inview of the fact that some Portuguese and many \"Canadian\" cohortsuE mphasis in narrative, M15967; M15468; F15668. The Pentictonyouth was older than any of the Vancouver subjects when he beganwork. He used his earnings to purchase a 1956 Ford -- in his highschool, \"there w[ere] only two kids with cars, I was one of them\";he \"never saved a cent, blew all the money on food, on going out... again, I was very average Canadian.\" M25168.27M15565; M15971; M15367; F16170; F16400; F15570; F15773;M16075.28M15870; F16177/16377.124seemed to have more money of their own to spend, and moreopportunity within which to spend it, one may wonder just howstraight another youth stood when he gave his earnings to hisfather.This sample is very small and probably under-representsthose who came to Vancouver from poorer homes in Portugal in thistime period and either did not go to school, or dropped outwithout graduating. Nonetheless, it seems many Portugueseparents as well as their children, still regarded investment inthe family economy as having \"survival value\" just as it had inthe homeland. A few adolescents devoted considerable time andenergy to domestic chores which may have made it possible for twoparents to work outside the home. Within households, boysgenerally did less, sometimes far less, work than their sisters,at least two of whom found this frustrating.Some families who demanded the wages from their children'slabour in Canada probably could have foregone those amounts. Twosubjects both perceived that their parents were particularlyconcerned that their children developed good work habits. Oneremembered his parents \"often mentioned how in Canada, a lot ofthe people don't mind living on welfare.\" 29 This was somethingthey, like other non-Portuguese parents, clearly didn't want fortheir sons. Eyeing the canadiano's welfare lines, parents suchas his probably continued to perceive work had intrinsic merit,29M15971; M15565.125in other words, it was \"good work.\" For them, strawberry fieldswere probably at least as important as classrooms in a son'seducation.Chapter 6 -- \"Friends, Courtship and Free Time\"Nowhere was the diversity in Portuguese adolescentexperience in Vancouver more apparent than in the areas of theirfriendship formation, courtship, and free time activity. Thatdiversity ranged between two anchor points. Clustered about onepoint were those adolescents whose social freedom was closelyregulated by parents. In some cases, the juxtaposition ofparental and personal desires led to frustration. At the othermooring were those few who enjoyed much more freedom fromparental strictures relative to others. This was, in part,because what they were allowed to do \"here\" was not too differentfrom what they had been allowed to do \"there.\"In Portugal, children and adolescents from poorer homes haddifferent expectations than those from more affluent homes whenit came to friends, courtship, and leisure time. Those fromhumble backgrounds grew up with toys and games they made ratherthan bought. They found free time increasingly restricted toSundays as they grew past the age of ten and entered the world ofwork. And they found themselves increasingly segregated bygender as well as class as they left childhood. One Michaelenseobserved, \"girls when they're ten years old, they graduate and gohome. They crochet and things like that -- they didn't go work126127on the farms.\" He added, \"how could you have a girlfriend there?You might dream of one.\" According to him, if a boy \"chased agirl\" at a festa, she would \"go running to her dad\" for they werenever far from family. What this man alleged was probably trueof girls from poorer homes such as those in the criada's village,where she said most remained inaccessible to boys. Not only werepoorer boys and girls preoccupied by work when they left school,but as older youth interested in courtship, they were governed bystrict protocol. She described a visit made by her sister'sboyfriend:My mother said, 'half an hour only -- I'll not give youmore than half an hour'. She went into the room andmy mother then opened the curtains wide for all thepassersby to see that she [the daughter] wasn't doinganything. And then my sister went over the half-hour.My mother began to slam the doors ... 1However romantic, most relationships remained platonic. Thecriada also had a boyfriend before emigrating, but she made itvery clear \"it was for fun ... everyone had a boyfriend. I alsowanted one. For fun.\" Sex was the furthest thing from thecriada's mind; in fact, according to her, as well as anotherwoman, it wasn't on their mind at all. The latter was almostthirteen before she emigrated from the Continent. Besidesattending a segregated school, she was generally kept in thecompany of her mother and \"older women\". She said, \"at that age,the way I was raised, you don't even know there is a difference\",1M16075. Emphasis in original, F15773. Her sister was, infact, present during part of this interview.128while the criada claimed variously that \"a man could have done itto us and our belly could have gotten bigger and we would havesaid, oh Jesus, what is it?\" According to these two sisters,there was \"no opportunity\" for sexual encounters and virtually nosexual knowledge among peers. In short, there was silence.Sexuality never became a topic of discussion among hergirlfriends. There was no hope of being told anything byparents; indeed, at the time of menarche, the younger sisterthought she was dying and approached her mother -- \"my mothersaid nothing.\" 2 At sixteen, she knew nothing of sexualintercourse, much less of its possible consequence. She nowthought, \"we were raised -- oh, I don't know -- we were raisedlike bichos (beasts):At that time, a guy could have got us pregnant and wewould know nothing about it. We didn't know nothing.How can I say it? We lived in the dark, that's it. Wecould marry like that and not know what was happening.... maybe the man knew but the girls didn't.Only once did she and her sister hear of a teenage pregnancy --\"in the city, in Ponta Delgada\", where a distraught girl, scornedby her family, had thrown herself into the sea: \"in the city, shewould be no good for anything, so what [wa]s the use of life?\" 3Four years later, that was certainly not the experience ofthe two middle-class sisters. Unfettered by work, both sisters2F15570; F15773. Isabel Pinto cites a similar incident inVancouver. \"Growing Up Portuguese in Canadian Schools.\"3F15773.129had participated in a seemingly-idyllic youth culture centredabout the desegregated (in 1973) liceu by day. In the evening,they congregated about the . ardim. Both were enjoying theprivileges of their class within the new and freer social contextwrought through political revolution; neither were ready for thestrictures that awaited them in Vancouver when they emigrated in1977. With its cafes in the four corners, the treed gardenoverlooking the sea was the social centre for young and old, even\"babies and mothers.\" Depending upon \"whether it was summer orschool\", teens would be out in mixed company under this limitedscrutiny until \"ten o'clock, eleven o'clock\", walking andconversing in groups in and about its perimeter. They seemedinextricable from a closely-knit group of \"twelve to fifteen\"adolescents, some \"five boys\" and \"five or six girls\" swam inmixed company in the ocean. During summer vacation, they stayedat each other's houses. The younger sister, however, alsoassociated with children and youths from \"poorer\" homes. Theolder sister had a boyfriend with whom she would spend some timealone if they chose, perhaps to \"have a coffee\" and she was evenwalked to and from school. Even so, as her younger sister whowas \"boy-crazy \" 4 attested: \"you have a boyfriend. You neverdo anything with them.\" The older sister, however, rememberedhearing of teenage pregnancies even in \"smaller towns\" after the1974 Revolution. Though \"guys talked to girls through thewindows\", there were still \"a lot of sixteen, seventeen year-olds4F16377, Diary.130who were getting pregnant and getting married ... about [19]76\",something that \"was not as much of a problem with those who weregoing to school.\" More frequently, her circle of friends choseto remain together as a group: the \"schools would have dances\" orthe young men would organize dances \"upstairs in the cafes\" where\"all kinds of kids ... from ages nine to sixteen\" would attend. 5Those from more middle-class Continental homes also hadconsiderable social freedom and were also found in mixed companyeven in the late sixties. The Lisbon girl who emigrated attwelve remembers she was \"seldom bored\" and playing outdoors \"anawful lot\", playing with boys and girls, climbing hills andexploring construction sites. Both sexes were also foundtogether in her brother's group of friends, though after the ageof \"nine, ten\" he \"took more of a romantic interest\" in them.They played monopoly and other board games together and he says,\"we wouldn't have thought of doing without girls at that time.\"One subject remembers that Lisbon neighbourhoods had their owngangs -- \"not like now [here] with knives\", though there were\"sticks, rocks, and fistfights.\" There were \"a couple of girls\"in his neighbourhood gang, the sisters of some of the boys andthey \"sort of became like boys.\" Gangs excluded some like \"gays\"5F16377; F16177.61115468; F15668.^The Penticton youth maintained a secretromantic relationship for \"three or four years\" in his small townin Portugal during the mid-to late sixties: \"the kind you see inthe movies, the kind of romance that was beautiful, very naive.\"He would knock on her window at night, and they used to \"meetsecretly -- Portugal was very backwards in those days.\" M25168.131and those who were known to drink and take drugs as drugs were\"already\" available \"at that time\". As pre-teens, they plottedand executed raids on fruit trees, and made war, but they alsospied in groups upon soldiers who had picked up theirgirlfriends, criadas, from the houses and took them to the parkwhere they could be alone. At twelve, he knew about sex, a topicwhich was discussed among friends; as he says, \"women's partswere discussed all the time.\" 7One important feature of growing up within these particularaffluent families was that these parents had the desire and meansto travel and take lengthier family vacations. In Vancouver,their use of family and leisure time may have differed from howother Portuguese parents spent time free from work. 8 TheMichaelense sisters enjoyed island excursions with relatives onrented buses, for example. The sea was accessible and \"a verypleasant constant\" for one Lisbon family who would spend amonth's vacation south of Lisbon and more time at a relative'swinery in the port wine region. The Penticton youth enjoyed anannual month-long vacation in the seaside town of Nazare.Another Lisbon subject remembers spending time on hisgrandfather's farm where there was \"wide open space\" where one\"just ran\", as well as renting a summer cottage elsewhere withhis mother. A third Lisbon family made numerous, spontaneous7M15870.8Alpalhao and da Rosa suggested that Portuguese working-classparents had to be more \"creative\" in their use of leisure time. pp.185-7.132weekend and longer trips about the countryside. The sonreminisced about a church-sponsored summer camp among the oldconvents of forested and hilly Cintra: \"oh, what a beautifulplace ... oh beautiful times.\" 9IA few of these Portuguese children and youth integratedsuccessfully into the wider youth culture of Vancouver. Thepharmacist's son said,By the time I hit high school, I was a full-fledged Canadianchild. I don't think you could tell me apart from any childwho was raised in this country.Citing various influences upon him, not the least of which wereparents that didn't restrict his activities, he said he became\"just like a Canadian kid.\" He \"watched a lot of television\" and\"imitated probably some of the characters.\" His \"teachers wereall anglo\" and he was influenced by \"a lot of Chinese children, alot of Italians, and a lot of Canadian-born kids.\" Like someothers from more middle-class homes in Portugal, his activitiesreveal he \"became just like them.^He entered into teenagerituals that for one reason or another may have been closed evento canadianos; in fact, he may have become what some other9M15468; M15971; M25168.\"Though an older youth, the Penticton male encountered littleresistance from his mother and step-father. He went to school,hung around with the boys, [went] to parties\" and got into the\"whole Canadian scene.... I integrated completely into the system.\"M25168.133\"Canadian\" youth would not have been allowed by their parents tobecome.^He \"dated ... played in the band ... shoplifted, notbecause I needed it ... liked cars, cars with wide tires ... tookguitar lessons .... camped.\" He was in the \"in-group\": \"we werethe jocks, and the rest of the time we were the guys everyonewanted to hang around with, but some of them weren't cool enoughto hang around with us.\" He \"drank a lot, not hard liquor, but alot of beer.\" He wore his hair \"long\" and wore \"ripped jeans\",and \"was a rebel .... against any system.\" He \"started hangingaround night clubs in grade 11 ... bars and nightclubs because wewere too young to get in and we shouldn't be there.\" He had \"twoor three\" Portuguese friends:I wasn't trying to avoid them. I wore my hair long ... Theywent to church. That was a bad thing in the Portuguesecommunity -- I was a bad kid because I didn't go to church.I wasn't a bad kid.\"Others were also aware they were \"being looked at\" by someof the Portuguese community. 12 Another Lisbon subject pointedout he was \"more on the hippie side\" and he had \"glasses withgold tint -- the nice-looking girls at school liked that.\" Likethe former subject, his choice of friends was eclectic: one wasPortuguese, another \"British\" with \"very long hair ... not anover-achiever in school.\" Yet another friend was of ethnically-M15967.12The Kitimat girl could not recall a single Portuguese girlwho had a more liberal upbringing than she did; she was aware thatsome parents probably spoke disapprovingly of her.134mixed ancestry \"who was very intelligent.\" His taste inactivities was also eclectic: he read \"Kafka\", listened to \"PinkFloyd\" and \"Simon and Garfunkel\" and was \"into meditation.\"\"Two adolescent girls seem to have experienced fewer parentalstrictures than others -- girls or boys. The Vancouver-bornadolescent was \"really kept busy\" with \"music lessons once aweek, dance lessons ... performances, sports ... games afterschool\"; furthermore, she felt she had been \"really encouraged tohave social activities\", by her parents. Another girl who hadenjoyed mixed company in Lisbon didn't become one of the \"mostpopular kids\" but she was a \"happy\" teen \"in the middle\" of theteenage pack. She \"like[d] to go to beach parties, to dances andstuff like that with the boys, but I wasn't too radical.\" Shewas \"active\", had \"no time\" to read for pleasure as two othersubjects did. She \"pushed\" herself into school sports, which ofcourse, she was allowed to partake in by parents. She playedtennis after school, \"went for ice cream\" or walked around theschool \"to see if there were boys around.\" Her \"best friend\" was\"definitely Canadian ... blonde, blue-eyes.\"^Here, like a fewothers, she qualified \"Canadian\" immediately with, \"there are noCanadian-Canadians -- except the natives.\" She immersed herselfin the wider youth culture determined \"to have fun\" and remembersthinking: \"It was great to be alive. It was fun. I enjoyed workin school. I liked high-school years. I liked everything thatteenage-hood stood for.\" Like other youths, she also remembers\"1415468.135she felt \"a little bit different. I know I did. I was animmigrant.\" People didn't treat her differently, she \"just feltdifferent.\"The other women told a far different story. Here, theyounger of the two Michaelense sisters lost \"everything.\" Shehad \"nothing in common with the kids\" that were going to school,and she lost her \"self-confidence\", a sentiment that resonated inother narratives. She plummeted on the \"social ladder.\" Here,the two sisters discovered they were \"allowed to go to weddingsand Portuguese festas\" but were not allowed out after school.And of course, there was work. For the older sister, returningto Sao Miguel remained her \"main goal for six or seven years.\"The two sisters wrote continually throughout their adolescence totheir group of friends who would often \"all write in the sameletter.\" The younger sister's diary indicates that whatdetermined whether she had a \"good\" or \"bad\" day was dependent\"upon who[m] I got a letter from, or if I got a letter. If Ididn't get a letter, in my diary, it's all bad days, or if I gota letter, then life was great.\" For another teen, there were\"not really\" any Canadian friends. This girl had \"two Portuguese... one Italian\" girlfriends and \"didn't associate too much withanybody\". With a mother working evenings and a father up north,she used to invite another Portuguese girl over and together theywould \"watch TV or play jacks, or eat Portuguese olives andloaves of bread.\" She did not sneak off: she had a youngerbrother to look after -- and there were \"phones\" with which her136mother could check upon her from afar. She said she had \"nocurfew\" simply because she was \"not allowed to go out.\" Shereturned home immediately after school or work, and was \"notallowed to go to the cinema ... proms ... school dances.\"How many others were torn between parental and peerexpectations -- \"an impossible predicament\" especially fordaughters 15 -- is unknown, but at least two girls and one boyclearly developed and maintained a public sphere they kept hiddenfrom parents. By grade eight, language was no longer a problemfor one Michaelense daughter and she was \"totally mixed in withthe kids\" by which she meant, the non-Portuguese kids at school.She remembers, for example that she was afraid of \"nothing\" whilegrowing up. Her \"only difficulty\" was that she wasn't allowed\"to go out to parties\", \"wasn't allowed to have a boy over at myhouse\" or couldn't go to another friend's house \"if mom knewthere were boys there.\" It was \"so frustrating\" and \"hardunderstanding\" when her brother, her junior, not only got a bike,something the two sisters never got, but was \"allowed to do thosethings\" and she cried extensively over her parents' edict:\"you're a girl, you're not allowed to do those things.\" Shearrived at a very practical and simple solution: she \"justwouldn't tell\" her parents if boys were going to be at a party;wouldn't tell them for three years she had a boyfriend. Throughpersistence, she cracked the \"in group\" at school. No other14F16377; F15570.15lnterview with community worker, September, 1992.137Portuguese girl she can remember \"was more integrated than me.\"Other Portuguese girls had jeans, \"but were they Hash jeans ...the in thing then?\" She had them, but she added, \"God knows howmuch I had to go through to get these jeans that cost $30 -- butI would nag and nag until I got them.\" And however much anothergirl dressed like and integrated into the \"Mods\" youth culture,she also returned home after school because \"my parents were verystrict about those things.\" She too adopted different strategiesof getting around parental strictures. Given the \"choice\" ofattending Portuguese social functions with her parents orremaining at home, she chose the latter, and \"on occasion\"allowed someone over. She had a summertime ten o'clock curfew,but would sometimes \"sneak out\" of the house -- and was \"verygood at it too.\" 16Most adolescent boys did not enjoy the level of freedomextended those from middle-class homes in Portugal -- or the twoCanadian-born girls. The youth who had contributed all earningsto his father from the age of ten \"wasn't allowed to party withmy friends when I wanted to -- that's quite Portuguese.\" Hisparents wouldn't \"let [him] out of the house\" and they treatedhim \"like a European girl\" until around his sixteenth birthday.The exception to going out was that he was allowed to go out inthe evening was when he went to school dances. He thought thiswas because dancing had been \"a lot of fun\" for his father in hisown youth in Portugal. He admitted if such controls had not been16F16170; F15356.138present, he \"would have gone out too much.\" He took up swimmingand skating as a strategy to get away from the house -- and tosocialize with girls: \"that was probably one of the reasons Ienjoyed skating most.\" Like one other subject, at least, he alsointensified his socializing within the school day. He skippedclasses and went to the pub, for example. By his late teens, he\"had a lot of friends\", had \"a lot of fun\" and was \"doing a lotof things, mostly legal.\" It is small wonder he thought his highschool years were \"probably the best years of my life.\" 17At least four Vancouver subjects did not integrate much withCanadian culture for personal reasons. One community worker saidPortuguese and other immigrant families experienced \"doublevision\" a phenomenon wherein present circumstances are put intothe perspective of those of the homeland. 18 Some of thesesubjects probably tried to reconcile the two cultures withinwhich they had grown. Three subjects made it clear theyabstained from some kinds of contact with other youth by choice.The youth who looked for \"fairness\" in a teacher repeated indifferent ways he did not discriminate between \"Portuguese\" and\"Canadian\" friends. He had been an \"adventurous\" child in hissmall village. In Canada, what he was most \"particular\" about inhis friends was their \"character.\" He \"had some resistance\" to\"being forced or being molded to fit a certain type of image\"such as \"wearing those funny pants they wore in the seventies\"17M15565.MConversation, July; interview, September, 1992.139and sporting longer hair. He disliked compromising his owntastes in order to get into \"that little group that you want tobelong to\", the group that \"always seemed to be doing the rightstuff, the fun stuff.\" He did not go out much and furthermore,saw \"no need\" to stay out late. The \"majority\" of those withwhom he associated \"really never had those tendencies to go outand party, or drink beer, or things like that\" and they wouldn'thave been out late either. 19Age at emigration may have been a factor in how much onefought to maintain a sense of self-identity forged elsewhere.The \"barrier of language\" made at least one rural Michaelenseteen \"real shy.\" He narrowed his social circle to those he could\"communicate\" with: \"over here, I just closed down to just acertain amount of people.\" He had two good friends, bothPortuguese, one of these a cousin. He used to go out toPortuguese dances as well as a \"couple of high school dances\" andwent to dances and swimming organized by the youth group in thePortuguese church in the early seventies. According to him, he\"wasn't the best kid, but I wasn't the worst.\" He never tried\"pot\" as a teen but \"got drunk a couple of times\" on weekends asan older teen. Another who emigrated just before his teens\"wasn't really looking for friendship ... I had my own ideas ...I didn't need friends.\" He \"never had a friend, per se ... a lotof people I knew, but no friend -- not what I would haveconsidered in Portugal as friends.\" He continued to miss theWM16370.140conversations \"about anything\" he had once known. \"Discipline\"made \"a lot of sense\" to this youth and he devoted five years ofhis youth to the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets until he faced anultimatum: cutting his hair in order to receive his badges, ordropping out -- \"so I quit.\" Not until he was \"eighteen,nineteen\", did he have a \"couple\" of friends, \"Portuguese guys\",with whom he \"enjoyed\" driving around and going to the discos.One dominant theme in his narrative was his disapproval of theuse of drugs and alcohol by Canadian teens who would have beenexcluded from his Lisbon gang; as he said, \"I think that wasreally what put me aside.\" He saw his brothers \"doing it ... tome they looked like bums ... like nobodies.\" It remained a \"verybig struggle\" to understand why Canadian youth would want to takea \"case of beer to the park\" instead of going to his home for adrink which he would have been allowed. Yet those whom hecriticized did not ostracize him for this hardline attitude. Heremained in their company while \"they popped a joint around\", buthe wasn't ever afraid to tell them \"you guys are a bunch ofidiots.\" Here in Vancouver, he explained, \"my mind was so faraway from all of that experimentation that it wasn't funny -- Imean, I was more like a priest. I felt like a priest.\" Onlyonce did he relent: he tried marijuana, just before a Math test,and later he confronted his friends to ridicule their use of thedrug. His narrative often came back to this point:I was Portuguese and I happened to live here ... but mymentality was still there ... I liked what happened to me inPortugal.... The whole experience in Portugal made sense ...141the whole Canadian thing didn't make sense -- kids weretreated like kids -- they were always trying to run awayfrom the adults. In Portugal, it was different, kids werealways trying to be adults.•. trying to be with adults --it was a complete opposite. 2°Some encountered prejudice, either directly, or vicariously.Silence on this issue could mean a reluctance to discusschildhood unhappiness and \"'miseries.in 21 On the other hand,many may have felt themselves less excluded than those of otherethnic backgrounds. 22 The younger sister fought hard tomaintain her Portuguese values in what she termed this \"prisonfor girls.\" She \"could have\" had Canadian friends if she \"hadwanted to\" but she \"didn't because it was all very cliquey here.It was all in how you dressed, and what kinds of things you didand I didn't want to bother getting into that.\" What she didn'tlike was \"the way people talked about one another.\" Hernarrative, like that of some others, revealed a certainsensitivity, if not affinity, for different cultures. Sherecalled one instance she had found repugnant. When a black girlwon the beauty pageant, an Italian boy had said, \"'oh God, I'dnever kiss a black girl'.\" Her reaction to this was to say tothe boy,20M15971; M15870.21Barman, \"Historical Ethnography of Childhood\", 18.22Bee Dione Brand and Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, Rivers HaveSources, Trees Have Roots: Speaking of Racism (Toronto: Cross-Cultural Communication Centre, 1986), 61, 62, passim.as well as Montero, The Immigrants, 187-8, passim.142Well, you're Italian, you eat a lot of garlic and you eatonions -- why do you think anybody would want to kiss you?What's the big difference ... it doesn't matter whatcolour you are ...Once she \"punched\" a male who had commented on \"Chinese and EastIndians and immigrants in general and how they should be shot.\"Being outspoken didn't win her any friends; as she says, \"peopledidn't like me because I didn't bend, I was not too flexible ...I didn't bend to make a friend.\" Three other subjects spoke ofexperiencing prejudice more directly. One man's earliest \"badexperiences\" were of \"when I first came here.\" Being called a'pork chop'\" or hearing others call \"this guy a wop, a chink\"caused him to reflect:Right there, I started thinking deeply ... it shouldn'treally be like that .... you and I are both from the world... if you come from the far east and if your character wasa character that I could appreciate -- I mean, if you're anice guy, I couldn't care where you come from. 23This subject \"had a good time\" when his family visited otherPortuguese families who \"had other teenagers too.\" He wasallowed to go to both high school and Portuguese dances, \"feltcomfortable at both\" but the Portuguese ones made him feel \"morelike being back home.\" He saw others \"doing drugs\", consideredhimself a \"risktaker\" and had \"wanted to experience thesethings.\" In the end, he had been \"scared of the consequences\"and had \"listened\" to his parents. His friends were Filipino,Chinese, Italian, and Croatian and they would go to each other's23F16377; M15367; M15971; M25168.143\"ethnic dances.\" He had an affinity for particular friends:Being from Europe, I sort of leaned toward people whohad the same background as I did ... I spent the timewith friends I felt comfortable with and we had thesame backgrounds.He probably gravitated to friends with whom he shared similarexperiences rather than to those who were \"European.“ 24One's interests or hobby could also dictate how much onesocialized with others. The girl whose mother had pushed thefamily into emigration considered herself a very independentthinker whose parents often indulged her desires at home. Sheconsidered herself part of the \"Mods\" in her school, as opposedto the \"Greasers\" and the \"Occupationals.\" This subject alsodiscovered through \"comments from people\" that \"didn't have to dowith my culture so much\", that she was different. Personalpreference dictated that she \"became a human sponge\", readSartre, made and wore avante-garde clothing, and chose jazz overrock music. Similarly, another subject who had a keen interestin music began lessons in Vancouver at fourteen, \"two months\"after his arrival. He played soccer informally, and listened tothe \"top 40\", but \"rarely\" stayed at school or participated inextra-curricular because he \"wanted to come home and practice myinstruments.\"3There may have been other adolescents, besides Tiago and the24M15367.25F16400; F15356; F15668; M15367.144criada, who had adult worries and responsibilities. Like otherswho worked as much or more than they socialized in order toassist the family, these two not only performed adult roles, butaccepted adult responsibilities well before the receiving societywas prepared to confer majority status upon them.In addition to their own sense of identity andresponsibility to family, as well as personal preference, itseemed that the geographical location of homes and schools was afactor in friendship formation. Participation in this morespatially-diffused \"Portuguese\" community involved a greatereffort and many could become invisible to its members if theychose. Some, who emigrated from a context where all socialactivities occurred within much smaller geographic settings,could feel isolated because the Portuguese they knew could onlybe reached by public transit. In Vancouver, one subject had torely upon public transit which, in his case, mitigated againstmaintaining close friendships. According to the Vancouver-bornwoman, one of the biggest factors she faced trying to makefriends in her junior years of high school was that the peopleshe went to school with \"came from all over the Lower Mainland.\"The Lisbon girl had non-Portuguese friends \"because in ourneighbourhood, there were no Portuguese kids ... the children Iwent to school with were Canadian.\" In high school, she made afriend that was Portuguese. The adolescent who read Kafka said,\"my friends became the fellows I walked [to school] with ... ofIrish, German, Hungarian and Dutch ancestry.\" It was not145academic achievement that bound them together, not commoninterests, he said, but \"probably the walk to school and backmore than anything else.\" The male who was quite restricted byhis father might have found solace in the company of otherPortuguese youth, but \"there weren't too many Portuguese kids tohang around with or I would have.\" In Penticton, one youth whofound it \"humiliating\" to \"see Portuguese families on theweekend\", found a Portuguese friend, someone he \"really liked,but because he was in Oliver, I only saw him occasionally.\" 26One neighbourhood was intensely multi-ethnic. What theoutgoing Vancouver-born girl had to say about who her friendswere may have had its roots deep in that fact: \"all my friendswere Italian, so we all had that in common, we all knew weweren't Canadian.\" Though she never had a Portuguese friend,There was always the feeling that I'm not Canadian,but then I'm not Portuguese either. I don't fit inwith the people who are Portuguese -- with any of thekids I knew that were Portuguese, but then I knew Iwasn't hot-dogs-and-beans Canadian.There was \"only one family in [her] neighbourhood that weren'tfirst generation\": the family \"next-door\" who were \"hot-dogs-and-beans-Canadians\" with \"no sense of their heritage.\" 27IIIClearly some Portuguese-Canadian youth, girls but especially26M15971; F16400; M15668; M15468; M15565; M25168.VF16400.146boys, dated according to what were probably accepted Canadianconventions. Those that did, however, probably escaped theboundary of homogeneous \"community\" others insist on seeing. 28A teen who emigrated as a fourteen year-old in 1962 dated non-Portuguese girls in his late teens. He also found a \"rebellious\"Portuguese girl to date. In one Lisbon family, an older brotherwas \"popular\" with girls. In a second, the son \"dated a lot\"between grades nine and twelve; indeed, he claims, \"between mybreakups, I dated everyone in sight.\" One girl turned out to bePortuguese: \"she didn't look Portuguese -- Portuguese girls, Ithink, looked different at that time and they didn't go out veryoften, and this one did.\" He thought her ethnicity might havehad something to do with shortening their romance:I don't think I really cared for her as much when I foundout she was Portuguese. I don't know why. Maybe becausepeople were starting to say the only reason I was going outwith her was because she was Portuguese. I wanted to provethem wrong. She was a great girl. She still is. 29A third son from Lisbon thought he was \"fairly popular\" with thegirls: \"the girls I liked certainly liked me.\" He dated \"onegirl at a time.\" The Penticton youth started dating Canadiangirls \"right away.\" Hot summers on Okanagan beaches reminded himof home and he recalls his first summer \"was a lot of fun.\" Hemade \"more friends, new people\" and \"we used to chase girls allover the place\"; however, he added,MSee Coelho et. al., for example.291414862; M15870; M15967: he later married a Portuguese woman.147Then came the problem of language and I became veryintroverted ... a lot of crying inside. Everytime Iwent out with someone, I'd end up not talking too much. Ibecame very introverted. mOther men spoke less about who and how they dated. One saidhe was \"caught in this way of life back then\" and \"you couldn'treally date.\" When he did date later, he took out Portuguese andnot \"Canadian\" women and dates were \"escorted.\" He pointed out,\"remember, you're dealing with Portuguese parents. They werevery strict.\" Yet, even so, the protocol was not entirelytransplanted: \"there\" the man stood \"outside the window\" while\"here\",You could talk with her at home in the living room and themother and father would walk in every five minutes ...at least here we'd be allowed to go into the house!He remembers \"it took me a lot of time to be bad.\" He had agirlfriend in grade twelve but there was \"no telling her [hismother] that I was with a girl -- I was too young for that.\"Others like the youth who resisted long hair and bell-bottomsnever dated. He held a \"concept of dating\" which was \"not likeother people's.\" A date, to him, had non-sexual characteristicswhich consisted of \"seeing a movie\" and \"having popcorn.\"Another said he had found \"Portuguese girls here want to datesome guy who speaks English.\" He \"never dated a girl\", butengaged in \"one night\" stands. Another said he was a \"prettyquiet guy\" with the girls but didn't say much else. The youth30M15468; M25168.148from a restrictive family said he \"enjoyed the mixed company\" but\"never had a steady girlfriend\" until he met his wife. He\"didn't go out really looking for a girlfriend 'cause I knew Iwasn't allowed out, so there you go.\" 31Some of these girls dated, though none seem to have \"datedeveryone in sight.\" The Vancouver-born girl had a boyfriend atfourteen and was \"devastated\" when he moved away which \"ruined mywhole next year of high school.\" She then \"went out withfriends\" until a \"serious relationship\" developed later in highschool. The Lisbon girl said she didn't remember going out withboys much, though she added, she thought \"it was just me\" andbesides, she \"had girlfriends then.\" The independent girl who\"just knew\" that she \"could not bring a lot of people over to thehouse\" emphasized that she \"wasn't really that in-tune with theboys\" in her school. She had \"rejected them all\" for \"ninety-nine percent of them were male chauvinist\" and \"also veryunappealing.\" Yet, she was \"always attracted to a moresophisticated man\" and \"had a particular fascination for astudent radical\" who \"wasn't popular\" and who, in fact, was\"considered quite nerdish.\" Although she didn't date much, shesays, \"as far as losing my virginity, I mapped that out reallywell ... I went through my whole list, my own personal list andthen I had a relationship ... for two weeks\" with a man who\"seemed to have all the qualifications.\" Here in Vancouver, theadolescent who emigrated without parents soon met someone who31M16170; M16075; M15367; M15971; M15565.149asked her for a date and sought consent from her relatives. Sheremembered her great apprehension when she entered her date's carand realized she was so completely alone with a man -- for thefirst time in her life. 32Other girls' experiences parallel what is written in theliterature. 33 In Vancouver, the two adolescent sisters \"weren'tallowed to date.\" The younger one \"didn't date until I wastwenty-one\", though it seemed now that this was, in part, out ofpreference. A childhood dream of wanting to get \"married atseventeen just like my mother\" and having \"twelve kids\", changedin Vancouver and by the time she was in her late teens she nolonger wanted to get married. Here, the older sister noted thatthe \"comradery\" and \"friendship\" between the sexes was gone andboys who \"talked to you were interested in you in a differentway.\" She said her father's attempts at their sexual segregation\"definitely\" intensified in Canada: \"over here, he became very,very strict ... we didn't go out on our own, we didn't go outwith our friends.\" \"All of a sudden\" the sisters were attendingPortuguese dances with parents and \"my dad would have to keep aneye on us all the time\" and \"we basically stayed around my mom.\"Another woman said that as far as parental fears of exogamy went,her father \"wanted to get me to Portugal before that became anissue. \"3432F15356; F16400; F15773.MSee Coelho et. al., for example.34F15570; F16177; F16377.150Portuguese families hailed from different classes inPortugal with the result that children grew up under varyingparental and social strictures \"there\" as well as \"here.\" AsIsabel Pinto discovered, some parental strictures, especiallythose regarding a daughter's social freedom, long-fashioned inthe homeland, seemed to die hard in Vancouver. 35 It now appearsthat they may have sometimes intensified. Furthermore, childrengrew up with their own preference and personality, an ephemeral,unquantifiable, and unpredictable combination. Some seemed toprefer at least some elements of the Portuguese youth culturethey remembered as opposed to the one they saw \"here.\"For one adolescent, \"family was everything.\" A diary whichshe maintained for years became a surrogate confidant because shehad few friends due to a complex combination of work, familystricture and personal choice. Even within the school day wherethey were beyond parental eyes, she and a few others, say therewere not many friends. Yet her older sister remembers adifferent adolescent emphasis: work became \"the least of ourproblems ... friends were very important. I would say, at thattime, more important than family.\" 36 One wonders, of course,how many among this first generation of Portuguese in Vancouver,and Canada, rejected its youth culture by choice, and how manyothers were subsumed by traditional values promulgated by family.35\"Growing up Portuguese in Canadian Schools\".36716177; F16377.Chapter 7 -- Spirituality and Adolescent Religious Beliefs\"A bola! a bola! Primeiro e a igrela! a ictreia!\"\"Soccer! soccer! First is church! Church!\" 1According to Leo Pap, Catholicism was so \"deeply-embedded inPortuguese cultural tradition\" that the act of joining New WorldProtestant denominations might be viewed by other Portuguese as\"in itself a major step of 'denationalization.\"' 2 For well overtwo centuries, however, the Portuguese Church had been subjectedto the ebb and flow of anticlericalism. The First PortugueseRepublic, 1910-26, had abolished religious education in schools,seized all church property and had even \"forbidden\" priests andnuns from wearing \"clerical garb.° This was something reversedby Salazar in the Concordat of 1940. 4 The Church was sufferingyet another ebbing; as the younger Michaelense sister put it:This translation does not fully capture the criticism oneolder Michaelense woman intended. Sao Miguel, Meu Diario, 1977.2Leo Pap, The Portuguese-Americans, 182.3Caroline Brettell, Men Who Migrate; Women Who Wait, 58-9.One nineteenth-century observer of Sao Miguel remarked that \"many,especially the young men, are avowed free-thinkers andunbelievers\". See Lyman, 1882, 214.4Brettell, We Have Already Cried, 35. Salazar had abandonedstudy for the priesthood. See Luiz Teixeira, Profile of Salazar: Material for the History of his Life and Times (Lisbon: SPN Books,[1938]).151152\"Portugal did one fast turn-around after the Revolution.\" 5In the late 1970s, evidence of Portuguese Catholicism wasstill to be seen and heard in the north of Portugal and on theAzores, the traditional strongholds of the Church. A pilgrimageon foot to Fatima clutching a rosary remained the quintessentialreligious expression on the Continent. 6 On Sao Miguel, theChurch paraded its own greatly revered image, the Senhor SantoCristo dos Milagres (the Holy Christ of Miracles), whichattracted thousands of emigrant Michaelense back to the island.Villages and towns still continued to have processions, 7 andsome older Michaelense women still trailed the images \"praying ontheir knees\" seeking favours, or honouring promises. Youngchildren continued to join in this public veneration dressed as\"angels\" while \"quite a few\" older students from the liceu \"whowished ... went with black capes.\" 8Within the private sphere, Catholicism, if not thePortuguese sense of fatalism, still pervaded many homes. Thephrase, se Deus quizero (\"if God wills it\"), sometimesaccompanied by a pause, a nod, or even a sigh, was common ineveryday speech. Religious images such as the portrait of theSagrado Coracao de Jesus (the Sacred Heart of Jesus), with a5F16377.6See the pictorial guide, Severo Rossi and Aventino deOliveira, Fatima (Fatima: Consolata Missions' Publications, 1981)7Arruda, Meu Diario, 1977.8F16177.153highly visible and radiant heart, hung in homes around which afamily might gather to say the terco (rosary). The obedience ofthe child Jesus to Joseph and Mary was played up -- that hereprimanded his parents when they discovered him preaching in thetemple was conveniently overlooked. 9Other religious rituals helped reinforce the solidarity ofthe family. Rosaries were well-thumbed out of daily use, for whoamong the Portuguese did not know the message communicated to thelittle shepherds -- that the regular and widespread saying of theterco would halt the spread of world communism? One certainly___7_did not have to travel to Portugal to hear that Catholicexpression, \"the family that prays together, stays together.\" Arosary, a medallion, a photograph of one of the members of theHoly Family, or of a saint, might be blessed by the priest andfind its way into the pocket or luggage of a beloved familymember embarking for Canada. Later in Canada, many parents wouldmiss the festas, the procissaos, the almost incessant sound ofchurch bells in the air not to mention the richly-adornedchurches themselves.One woman said, in a matter-of-fact way, \"we were poor, butwe had beautiful churches.\" She left the public elementaryschool after four years armed to face a future of constant workwith a base of religious knowledge shaped by the subject,\"Religion and Morals\", in the school as well as the teachingswithin the church. Like a few other adolescents in Portugal, she9Rogers, 309.154held an unwavering, and unchallenged, belief in the Church'sability to communicate to her, the \"palavra de Deus\" (the word ofGod). A subject whose mother and father didn't go to churchsaid, \"I believed. I went to catechism. I sang in the choir.\"A Lisbon youth \"believed in God quite heavily\" and though hismother \"made\" him go to Confession when he did something wrong,he says he found it quite a \"relief\": \"you said it [sins], youwould be forgiven.\" Another Lisbon subject his religiousperspective changed \"more markedly\" in Canada.\"In contrast, at least some adolescents enrolled in a liceu at approximately the same time confronted and debated Catholicteachings and practices in the mid-70s. They did so eitherdirectly in the course of instruction, or indirectly throughassociation with peers. Some of these accepted the teachings ofthe Church while others selected what seemed to make sense tothem out of those teachings. Others not only rejected thoseteachings, but also became atheists. Some young people must havewondered at the juxtaposition of the crucifix and the photographsof Salazar on their classroom walls during the 1960s, especiallywhen some of their liceu teachers, retornados to native villagesfrom Continental universities, \"became extremely anti-clerical.\"\" It was probably during such lengthy sojourns thatAzorean eyes were opened with the consequence that \"a lot of10F15773; M15565; M25168; M15971; M15967; F15570; M15870;M15468.11Rogers, 306.155teachers\", along with \"some priests\", became involved inpolitics. Students in one Michaelense liceu discussed abortiono\"once in a while\" though it was \"not too much of an issue.\" \"Twoor three\" friends in their mid-teens who had been \"brought upCatholic\" were \"rebelling against the whole thing\" anddiscussions raged over whether humans had souls or not. 12Regardless of their point of origin, subjects were ingeneral agreement that the Church \"there\" was, as a ruralContinental man said, \"a big part of one's life.\" Most saidthey \"believed\" in God in Portugal, though some added that theyhad already become sceptical of what the Church taught. One mansaid he had been \"exposed to all the instruments of the Church\"daily in his private school, yet, as a teen, what had \"tormented[his] mind\" was \"priests not getting married.\"^This issomething a few others also remember they contemplated. Thissubject also recalled that his mother could go to the church andpurchase a \"document\" permitting the family to eat meat onFriday; this was, in his words, \"a dead giveaway.\"^One otheryouth had also wondered \"what kind of religion\" exempted thosewho paid this \"tax.\" The pharmacist's son, in fact, haddeveloped a dislike of church as a boy: \"I remember church.Constantly -- church, church, church.\" 13There were other indications that the Church was losing itsgrip over the Portuguese. The results of a survey published in12F16177.13M15565; M25168; M15967; M15971.1561972, for example, showed varying levels of commitment to theMass by geographic region. Between 15 and 35 percent of allPortuguese Roman Catholics attended Sunday Mass regularly; in thenorth, over 90 percent attended; in the centre, less than 20percent; while only 5 to 10 percent attended in the south. 14And there were more personal observations. Francis Rogers, along-time observer of Portugal now thought that on the ruralContinent, by the late sixties, men outnumbered women in Massattendance as women became more politicized. 15 On Sao Miguel,one could find a magazine \"'featuring a middle-aged couple invarious erotic poses'\" in a barber shop outside of which boys andgirls walked freely without chaperons; meanwhile, \"'erotic'\"films continued to be screened though the priest made at leastone announcement regarding pornografia following communion. 16Youth spoke of the famous spot down by the sea in Ribeira Grandewhere lovers went to be alone.\" And though the days were nottoo far gone when youths roamed the island with rosaries andblack sackcloth as terceiros (pilgrims), one could obtain thebirth control pill at any pharmacy in the Azores and condoms and14\"Eighty-five percent of people questioned in 1972 declaredthemselves Catholic, and 12 percent stated they were atheists ormerely indifferent to religion\". Gallagher does not state whetheror not the Azores was included in the survey he cites. Portugal: ATwentieth-Century Interpretation, 127.15Rogers.16Arruda, Meu Diario, 29 January; 7 February, 1977.\"Ibid.157vaginal cones were also available. 18The Church and its clergy may have lost some of their gripover the people, but like Portuga1, 19 they too weretransforming. Some of the faithful took these changes harderthan others. Older women \"scandalized\" by schoolgirls in gymwear and running through the streets of Ribeira Grande approachedthe priests, only to meet an unexpected response. There, atleast one priest who no longer wore a collar \"outside church\",but \"wore jeans\", spoke out from the pulpit in support of whatyoung people were doing. Youth were not trying to \"to seduceanybody\" when they arrived in church clad in jeans and sleevelesstops and without \"those veils.\" A priest was even approached byteens for his thoughts on whether or not it was \"wrong\" to enjoy\"spin the bottle.\" Some young people could not fail to embracethose clergy who set out to \"involve\" them, whether theyorganized summer camps outside Lisbon or day excursions, sportsevents, and inter-island youth group meetings on the Azores.These were, admittedly, activities that had \"little to do withreligion ... a lot of us just went for the fun of it ... to meet18The \"Monovar-D, the most widely-used in the Azores in 1973,sold for 36 escudos\" for a one month supply. Francis Rogersrecalls meeting a married Azorean woman from California whosemother sent her the pill from the Azores because Californiandoctors, before prescribing it, insisted on regular medicalexaminations every three months! Ibid., 377. A Vancouver womantold me a similar story. August, 1992.19Three Portuguese feminist writers of Cartas Novas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), were arrested and brought to trial fortheir book which was \"'an outrage to public decency'\", but chargeswere dropped. Brettell, We Have Already Cried, 32, 117.158guys.\" Whatever other attachments they placed upon festas, manychildren and youth also anticipated church festivals as \"just anexcuse to party.\" One regarded such a feast as \"a whole week ofcelebration.\" Whether in Lisbon, the rural Continent, or SaoMiguel, there would be brass bands and firecrackers and bonfiresand even dancing -- under watchful eyes, of course. nIThe Baptismal Register for the Igreja Portuguesa da NossaSenhora de Fatima in Vancouver reveals that as early as 1960,there were thirteen Portuguese baptisms performed by thePortuguese priest. Between 1960 and 1968, baptisms wereperformed in other parishes, however, because there was noPortuguese church. It was not until around 1964 that a formal.,,\"mission\", Missao Catolica Portuguesa, was begun at Saint Paul'sCatholic Church21 at 381 East Cordova by Father Geronimo Angeli,a Scalabrinian priest. 22 This mission later moved to Our Ladyof Sorrows at 555 Slocan. Father Aquilino Magagnin supportedconcerned Portuguese in the drive to raise funds for the20F16377; F16177; M15367; M15468.21Anderson and Higgs, 145.22lnterview with Father Antonio Deangelis, one of two priestsin the Portuguese parish. 10 July 1992. Serving \"'Italianemigrants'\" since 1888, the \"'spirit\" of the order was laterexpanded to serving other emigrants integrating into \"their\" newcountries. These priests went to Canada in 1953 and Portugal in1971. Scalabriniani: Tappe Successive di Un Centario, Scalabrinians: Successive Milestones of Our Centennial (Roma:Direzione Generale Missionari Scalabriniani, 1986).159construction of the Portuguese church. Appeals for funds weresometimes placed in the local Portuguese newspaper. Money proveddifficult to raise and one priest \"chided\" the Portuguese intheir own newspaper, \"'as money enters into the house religionleaves.\" 23 The church was finally built near the intersectionof 13th Avenue and Main Street and was consecrated in 1969 24 .Scalabrinians from Brazil served as its pastors. 25Table 1.--Baptisms and Confirmations in the Registers of NossaSenhora de Fatima Portuguese Parish in Vancouver, 1960-91.Year^No. of Baptisms^No. of Confirmations1960^131961 211962 331963^291965 411966 611967^671969 461970 771971^991972 981975 1301978^[130]^ 941979 90 -1980 98 661985^39 451991 49^ 41Note: Compiled from the Baptismal and Confirmation Registers atthis church by Father Antonio Deangelis, 10 July 1992.Confirmation was first authorized in this church in 1978.230 Mensageiro, May 1968, cited in Anderson and Higgs, 150.24Anderson and Higgs, 144.25Father Antonio Deangelis.160The number of Baptisms performed in this church paralleledPortuguese immigration figures which continued to rise throughoutthe sixties. An annual peak of 130 baptisms was achieved in1975. A record number of Confirmations, 94, were performed inthis church in 1978, the first year Confirmations were authorizedin the Church. Thereafter, both the numbers of baptisms andconfirmations fell somewhat dramatically to a 1985 low of 39baptisms and 45 confirmations, a level which remained stable tothe present.This decline in numbers is attributable several factors.First, housing costs have forced a number of families to relocatefrom their eastside homes to Richmond and Surrey. 26 Second,some have been drawn to a Portuguese Baptist Church as well asother churches. At least three subjects went to churches otherthan the Portuguese church, for example; furthermore, severalsources suggested that a not inconsiderable number of Portuguesebecame Jehovah's Witnesses. Third, some families went to churchless frequently in Vancouver while others stopped altogether.Most subjects who went to church in Vancouver actuallyattended the Portuguese Catholic Church at least for a time.Some continued to attend this church despite the significantdifferences they say they found between it and those theyremembered in Portugal. The subject who described his \"concept\"of a date as a platonic event did not think his relationship withthe church ever really changed. In Vancouver, he had \"alwaysa'See Horta, 125-6.161attended the Portuguese Mass\" with his parents throughout hisadolescent years. He had maintained more traditional views onwhat practices should be allowed in the Catholic Church into hisadult years. He thought, for example, that \"only the priestshould handle that [chalice] .... you should never give it to theordinary people to share that job.\" 27 Nor did he accept others'notions of divorce. He had \"always look[ed] for consistency\",and in his view marriage was forever -- a spouse was certainlynot like a toy that did not meet expectations and that onebrought \"back to the store\" for a \"refund.\" Though he hademigrated as a child he thought priests \"there\" had \"emphasizedmore.\" They were \"more passionate\", \"more expressive\", while\"the substance\" of what was said was \"pretty much the same.\"There was no question about the existence of God for thissubject: one's intellectual \"knowledge\" left room for \"thatunknown thing.\" The older sister who emigrated in her mid-teensmaintained a strong sense of Catholicism in Vancouver. Whatchanged was that while \"there we could go to whatever Mass wewanted, we just had to walk ... here, it was a family thing to doevery Sunday\" and the family began going to church as a unit.Her father who had seldom attended in the homeland, \"always wentto church every single Sunday.\" Later during his illness, they27The Second Vatican Council, 1965, made changes in liturgicaland other practices which \"typified the Church's ability to adaptto changing circumstances.\" One provision was that \"somesacramentals ... may be administered by qualified lay persons.\"John A Hardon, S.J. The Catholic Catechism: a contemporarycatechism of the teachings of Jesus Christ (New York: Doubleday &Company, Inc., 1975), 556; 553.162\"prayed every night with my mom -- not of our own free will -- mymom would make us.\" Her brothers didn't think \"prayer was goingto help\" their father. She, however, had remained \"very muchblack and white\" about certain issues; for example, \"abortion wastotally out of the question\" as far as she had been concerned.Catholicism had guided her actions, though she had also \"cared alot about what other people would say, people in the Portuguesecommunity. 1128Others saw their adolescent spirituality transformed inVancouver regardless of the church they attended. The Vancouver-born girl had attended another church besides the Portuguese one.She was \"sure ... very much so\" that Catholicism had guided heradolescent actions, not so much because of church in particular,but because she also attended a Catholic high school: \"I wassurrounded by it [Catholicism] -- I was being taught by nuns.\"Yet she was \"always very curious about other religions\",particularly after one school assignment took her into the churchof another denomination. Like others, the questions she began toask about Catholicism focused upon divorce and priests notmarrying, issues of \"sex and marriage.\" One woman who hademigrated as a very young child and had grown up going to theChinese Catholic church. As a child, she had thought that Jesuswas \"Chinese.\" On a visit to Portugal as a teenager, she hadextolled parishioners in a church who were \"concentrating and sofocused.\" She herself had been \"quite spiritual\" while her281416370; F16377.163adolescent friends \"always seemed to be searching for something\",for the \"the ideas of Hari Krishna\", for example. She maintaineda fundamentally Catholic \"basis\", but one that \"was always opento interpretation\"; furthermore, she had a strong sense of\"fatalism\", \"that things were going to be allowed.\" 29One teen from Lisbon continued to attend the Portuguesechurch, though his adolescent world view changed \"more markedly.\"Catholicism had set a \"very strong foundation\" for his beliefs,but here, the \"teachings of the Catholic Church combined withother philosophies\" such as \"existentialism\" and \"meditation.\"The younger sister said that the priest \"here\" had merely\"explained\" the two readings, while priests \"there\" had drawnmore parallels between \"what happened in the Bible\" and howBiblical characters \"handled\" situations at that time.Considering how much her life had changed in Vancouver, thetransformation in her adolescent religious stance was hardlysurprising:In the Azores, I totally, totally believed in God. Totally.I felt I could count on the Church, on God, on the priests... when I came here, I felt abandoned by God. 30What guided her actions in Canada was not the Church, but moreher own inner sense of responsibility, and that sense of \"family\"which was heightened in Canada.A few subjects were quite disappointed by the Portuguese29F16400; F15356.30M15468; F15356; F16400; Emphasis in narrative, F16377.164church in Vancouver. It looked different. It was of relativelysimple construction and one Continental girl was struck by theoddity of a large wooden cross. But there were more importantdifferences. One youth who had believed \"quite heavily\" inPortugal said all that church-going was \"lost when we came toCanada.... the minute we came to Canada, we stopped going tochurch.\" This was hardly because he altered his fundamentalbelief in God. Rather, he remembers his father who had \"studiedchurch and theology for a long time\" in Portugal and had been in\"Christian groups\" in Portugal thought \"this church wasn't reallyPortuguese.\" The girl who had \"believed\" and had sung in thechoir on the rural Continent went \"a few times\" to the Portuguesechurch but stopped after realizing it \"was a social gathering forpeople more than anything.\" She had not thought \"there wasanything religious about it\", but had considered it a place \"tosee and be seen.\" Her other remarks, however, suggest that hercriticism may have been aimed at Catholic churches in general:the \"Portuguese\" she had seen at this church \"needed a sense ofbelonging\", needed \"to ask forgiveness for all the horriblethings they'[d] done all week.\" The notion of \"Hell, forever andever\" was one of the things she \"just couldn't understand.\" Shealso \"didn't want to be in that environment of being controlled\"and had found her \"own God\" \"more fulfilling.\" Conversely, aLisbon subject had thought \"priests here weren't so bad.\" Ifever one arrived from Portugal then there was a difference; inher opinion:165It would be fire and brimstone and a lot of emotion ... 'usimmigrants' and 'saudades' ... saudades -- bleeding heartsfor your country you left behind ... just pulling one'ssentiment and people loved it because that's what they werelooking for. I didn't like it when they came from Portugaland they made everybody cry. I thought it was pointless. 31Priests here made attempts to involve the youth. A womanwho had considered a Michaelense priest to be her \"best friend inthe whole world\" attested that priests \"here\" faced Portugueseparents who had become insulated from the changes in thehomeland. She noted that for many Portuguese youth, the \"dances\"and the \"movies\" organized by the priests in the church were the\"only social thing they [teens] were allowed to do\" by parents.Priests tried to \"get through to the parents\", but manyPortuguese parents resisted such efforts to draw youth out intosocial events. Some didn't think that churches should have beeninvolved in such a role. Sometimes youths who wanted to go tosuch functions had to make careful proposals to parents:It would have to be done on the sly, or to beput in such a way where parents wouldn't think, 'oh,they're going to be dancing together, or they're goingto be —. 32Some subjects participated in the youth group in thischurch. One subject was somewhat disappointed with the group inthe late seventies. It was \"totally a religious thing -- that'sall we talked about ... parts of the Bible and stuff like that31F15668; M15870; F15570.32F16377.166whereas in Portugal, we would get more into topics of everydaylife, things that we, as teenagers, worried about.\" Others whowho had emigrated as teens a decade earlier took a differentview. One youth was even granted fifteen minutes on local radiofor a \"youth slant\" sponsored by the Portuguese church. Heremembers one of the purposes of his portion of the program wasto publicize its youth group. He also played music by groupslike Santana over the air, \"to let other Portuguese know that itwas okay to listen to this type of music\" -- and remembersreceiving \"calls from all the Portuguese parents who couldn'tbelieve what they were hearing\"! Another subject remembers theyouth group in the Portuguese church met \"once or twice a week\"after which they might go \"swimming.\" Sometimes, the groupenjoyed soccer, volleyball, and dances with \"other youth groups\"such as the \"Italian\" one. It was \"quite fun\" and he \"met a lotof different people.\" Another felt that \"quite recently\" therehad been improvement in the youth group, that there was a priestwho \"was quite good with the young people\" and that in the lateeighties, there was a \"good turnout\" at youth group meetings.According to a current pastor, lay persons began to run the youthgroup and youth continue to be involved in the Portuguese church.The present youth group is \"bigger\" than in previous years. Massis offered in Portuguese as well as English on Sundays and achoral group of teens sings, naturally, at the English Mass. 33There were other teens for whom it seemed the Portuguese33F16177; M15468. Father Deangelis.167church in Vancouver was primarily a social institution. One mansaid that \"pretty well everybody used to go to church there ...whereas here ... half don't go.\" He went to this church, but\"wouldn't listen to what was said\", and sometimes \"halfwaythrough I would step out to talk to a friend.\" It was as anadolescent in Vancouver, he \"started questioning ... why arethere so many religions, cultures.\" Here, he said he developed atolerance of other \"religions.\" For him, as with most others,there remained important residuals of Catholic teachings. Thesewere \"always in the back of your mind\" and emerged, \"kind of cameto my mind\", whenever he \"started making out with the girls.\"Another man went to church \"every Sunday -- not because I used tobelieve in it that much\" but because \"I wanted to look at thegirls -- it was the only time I used to see the Portuguesegirls.\" He too remembers that \"here\" it was different: \"inPortugal, you have one religion\" but here there were \"so many.\"In Vancouver, he remembers questioning whether the church was a\"business\" or a \"religion\" and being \"confused\" over which Churchwas the \"right one.\" Learning that a priest had been \"chargedfor raping a kid\" and that another priest was \"married\" made himask other questions; as he said: \"I believe[d] until I came here... and I still believe in God, but that's as far as I go.\" Onewho emigrated as an adolescent felt that the teachings of theChurch hadn't shaped his ideas \"at all.\" He remembers he didn'tpay much attention to the priests' messages because he was\"looking at the girls\" and he only listened when the priest \"went168into the deeper subjects.\" He \"didn't follow\" the teachings ofthe Church \"much\" and \"didn't take them that serious[ly]\", buthad believed in God, and felt that there was \"definitely\" an\"authority.\"One son from a middle-class background whose father had beenan atheist said his father \"didn't coerce\" him \"into becominglike him.\" He arrived at precisely the same position on his own.He remembers he was \"sceptical\" and grilled Mathematics andBiology teachers for explanations. He had asked \"a lot ofquestions\" of Catechists even when he was \"very small.\" They hadbeen unable to provide \"proof\" and had \"answered with answers offaith.\" He was curious about Scientology, read brochures, \"butthey didn't answer all my questions.\" Similarly, the Pentictonyouth never went to church \"at all\" upon arriving in Canadadespite all the \"instruments\" he had been exposed to in hisprivate school. Here, he \"forgot all about it\", despite hismother's encouragement and \"church had no impact on [him] inCanada at all.\" A prime personal goal, of course, had been tointegrate with \"Canadian\" peers, and \"most of the Canadian kidsdidn't go to church.\" On the other hand, like almost all theVancouver subjects, a belief in a \"supreme\" being remainedthroughout his youth and into his adult years. 34Most of these adolescents were not only practicing Catholicsin the homeland, but many say they believed in the teachings of34M15971; M15367; M15967; M16075; M25168.169the Church. Yet even in the homeland, some in their adolescentyears were beginning to re-examine Church teachings andpractices. In Vancouver, some went to the Portuguese church, afew went to other churches including non-Catholic ones, whilesome discontinued going to church altogether. In a few cases itseemed the seeds of Roman Catholicism had been cast upon theproverbial stony ground. Yet, all but one subject, professed aresidual belief in \"God\" or a \"superior being\" throughout theirgrowing-up years in Vancouver. As another explained, religiousinstruction \"stays with you for the rest of your life.\" 35Whether they emigrated before or after the Revolution, manyspoke of the church here as being different, and they heldvarying opinions as to why that was so. Emigrating to Vancouver,not only exposed them to other Churches, but this urban,pluralistic, and more technological environment with televisionwhich many saw here for the first time, and the \"top 40\", posedchallenges that accelerated that process. In Vancouver, somefamilies no longer lived near a Portuguese church and they had tocontend with English masses at other churches which must havebeen unsatisfying, if not frustrating, to many Portugueseparents. If they went to festas, they might later go \"theirseparate ways\" until the next social occasion. 36 Meanwhile,many of their children no longer had much interest in going tothe festas held by the Vancouver Portuguese community. TheMM25168.36Anderson and Higgs, p. 74.170Vancouver-born woman was probably not alone when she admitted,such festivals were \"not a place I necessarily belonged\", but \"aplace where I observed rather than participated.\" 37 Some othersfound different words to say they had little in common with thosewhom they saw there.37F16400.ConclusionPortuguese children are the central historical actors ofthis thesis and those who pushed them into the centre of theirown lives, Portuguese parents, have remained the mutes on thisstage. It is children, with their own perspective, who havegiven parents a voice by translating into English what theythought their parents had said so long ago in Portuguese. It isbeyond the scope of this study to study parents on their ownterms. Yet before arriving at any conclusion concerning growingup with Portuguese parents in Vancouver, one must reconsiderthose parents who invigilated that process.Parents may have chosen emigration to escape poverty,compulsory military service, a Salazarist regime, or to providebetter social and educational opportunities, all with the bestinterests of their children in mind. Yet it is likely that someparents, as individuals, may have viewed emigration as a means ofsatisfying intensely personal dreams. Some may have come with amission -- and some may have come in order to rid themselves ofthe cage of the island or village. Life in Vancouver may alsohave been perceived as a permanent personal solution to theproblems in the homeland.Whatever the reason for emigrating, many of their children171172also heard parents speak of their intention to voltar (return).In three of these Vancouver families, grown children said good-bye to their parents who returned permanently to Portugal. Afourth family (outside Vancouver) also returned to Portugal, butstayed only for six months -- because a pre-teen daughter couldnot bear to remain in a country that was not hers. In themeantime, thoughts and talk of return continued even among thosePortuguese who had vastly improved the family's materialprosperity in Vancouver. In one such family where a parent hademigrated three decades ago with \"ambitions\", parents still talkof return as much as they dismiss its improbability. They say,again, according to their child,When you're an immigrant, you're a person in a lost land.When you're here, people are constantly saying that you'rePortuguese. When you go back to Portugal, you don't belongthere either because you're Canadian so you never reallyknow where you belong, and this is the thing they havealways struggled with and I remember that from way back. 1Many immigrant parents, whether Portuguese or not e ,continued to feel different in this country. Many failed tolearn English fluently. Many did not establish close non-Elsewhere, an immigrant parent may say to a child, \"Tu es queestas na America,\" literally, \"you are the one in America\". Grove,\"Six Non-Language-Related Problems\", 1977, 5. A theme of parentswanting to return runs strong in the narrative of some subjects aswell as other emigrant Portuguese men and women. I heard similarphrases growing up. Another Toronto woman was told by her parentsthey came for her sake. Her parents investigated returning severaltimes, but were still in Canada.2Robert B. Perks, \"'A Feeling of Not Belonging': InterviewingEuropean Immigrants in Bradford,\" Oral History Journal 12 2: (64-67).173Portuguese friendships. In the past, those Portuguese parentswho hoped to return probably tried to establish for themselves anequilibrium point between their Canadian bank accounts andskyrocketing living costs in the homeland. As they tarried,villages they had known emptied and their own childhood friendsbecame citizens of Canada or other countries. As they ruminatedabout a life \"there\" instead of a life \"here\", many parentscrossed a point beyond which they could not tear their childrenaway from a land that was now more their own than their parents'.Parents sacrificed personal identity for their children. 3 Onesubject who deals extensively with Insular and ContinentalPortuguese in Vancouver said there were many parents who hadfailed to integrate into the life of this city. And there was aprice: \"not establishing yourself\" in Canada was the \"worstthing\" one could do. It became the root cause of a lot of\"turmoil\".Those parents that did not establish themselves in Vancouverprobably affected some of their children who were the subjects ofthis study. Those in \"turmoil\" may have seen no reason to undulyexpose their children to practices they not only did notcomprehend, but also feared. Thus such parents probablymaintained or even intensified strictures they had considered aschild-rearing norms in the homeland -- even while those evolved3Robert Harney acknowledges that Italians, for example, whoemigrated into a new context in \"a flow of labour to capital\", alsopaid a \"cultural price\", sometimes in the form of atimia (an ethnicinferiority complex). Harney, \"Italian Immigration and theFrontiers of Western Civilization,\" esp. 3, 7-9.174to become more in-line with \"Canadian\" practices. Yet, thePortuguese family structure and practices within the householddid not go unchallenged in Vancouver. Schools, youth culture,and television, for example, introduced children, and theirparents to other philosophies and practices. As Canadianresidency lengthened, parents relaxed the reins for youngersiblings, and \"Portingles\" and English crept into the household.In some families, entire conversations continued with childrenspeaking English, and parents, some of whom never learned muchEnglish, replying mostly in Portuguese. It is not too difficultto conceive of the parental heartbreak in such cases. Thestories some Portuguese parents have to tell may be among thesaddest ones of all.As for their children who were the subjects of this study,many spent a significant portion of their growing years --sometimes almost half of their own lives -- growing up \"there\" asopposed to \"here.\" Some not only enjoyed discussing theirgrowing up years in \"Portugal\", but compared circumstances theyfaced \"here\" with those they had experienced \"there\" withoutbeing asked to. 4 Whether from Sao Miguel or the Continent, boysand girls from poorer homes emigrated with different experiencesand expectations of class and gender than their more middle-classcompatriots. Evidence of this could be found in their schooling,work, socializing, courtship, and sometimes in their hopes for4In one study of immigrants, subjects thought the pre-emigration years as that period which had \"most shaped theirlives.\" Perks, \"'A feeling of Not Belonging,' 66.175the future. In Vancouver, it appears those from more middle-class homeland backgrounds usually, but not always, enjoyed moresocial freedom than any of those from more humble ones. In fact,a few adolescents' experiences contrasted markedly from what theliterature suggests Portuguese adolescents experienced.Being Portuguese in Vancouver was probably not the mostimportant variable in the lives of some of these subjects. 5 Forsome girls, however, gender and ethnicity were a frustratingcombination, especially in the areas of parental expectationsconcerning their social freedom, or household work, for example.Yet, at least two girls were granted more social freedom thanPortuguese peers, even boys. The level of parental stricturestogether with \"personality\", perhaps an amalgam of personalpreference, ambition, and fortitude, propelled children and youthin different ways.Some subjects expressed considerable attachment and pridetowards Portuguese culture in their adult lives. In a few othercases, there were shifts in the attachment subjects felt towardthings Portuguese as interviews wore on. One subject, forexample, had grown up without Portuguese friends, had perceivedsome Portuguese functions as \"a place to learn from\", had known5In view of \"ethnic cleansing\" elsewhere, one must confinethis view to the Canadian, and other similar contexts. Threescholars of South Asians in Canada assume a similar perspective.See Norman Buchignani and Doreen M. Indra, with Ram Srivastiva,Continuous Journey: A Social History of South Asians in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., in association with theMulticulturalism Directorate, Department of the Secretary of State,1985), 206.176she \"wasn't Portuguese\" but like her Italian friends had felt shewasn't a \"hot dog and beans Canadian either.\" Just before theinterview concluded, she \"remembered\" that it was \"so important\"for other Portuguese adolescents to be \"Canadian\" that theydidn't want \"anybody to know they were Portuguese.\" She \"neverhad that sense ... I never saw being Canadian as such a wonderfulthing.\" Others still enquired about her ethnicity, whether shewas \"French\" or \"Italian\":I'm constantly explaining that I'm Portuguese and I have alot of family in Portugal -- my grandparents are there,quite a few of my aunts and uncles, cousins. And I reallyhave a desire to link with them somewhat and I am moreinterested now in the Portuguese culture than I was when Iwas growing up -- there's a part of me that is missing thatsense of culture. It was almost so much becoming Canadianthat a part of me is really lacking that, not having thatculture ... I have this need to want to connect ... learn alittle bit more about it ... it's the sense of identity, Ithink, and a sense of having been different and not havingbeen in the main[stream].The \"experience of another culture\" was important to thissubject. She \"remembered being ripped off\", feeling\"disconnected\" without an extended family, without grandparents:I don't want it to be that my sense of family starts here,starts with me, or starts with my parents. I want to have-- I want to know -- that I'm one of a long generation ofpeople.At the time of the interviews, seven of the sixteenemigrants had not taken out Canadian citizenship. Only one ofthe seventeen self-identified as a \"Canadian.\" This person saidshe would \"eventually\" take out citizenship. All of the others177self-identified as \"Portuguese\" or \"Portuguese-Canadian\",virtually the same proportion Ana Paula Horta arrived at with alarger sample of Vancouver adults. 6 Of the seven, one stillfelt no sense of historical belonging to Canada. A secondappreciated the \"best parts\" of both cultures, appreciated thebasic Canadian political and economic infrastructure but foundmany aspects of Canadian culture \"too loosey-goosey.\" A thirdhad talked a parent out of taking out citizenship. A fourth wasapplying for citizenship -- in order to gain access to the UnitedStates. Some of those who had taken out citizenship qualifiedtheir citizenship. One subject who had enjoyed considerablesocial freedom as an adolescent, had only taken out citizenshipyears after other family members had done so, and said, I'm \"aPortuguese living in Canada.\" Another was \"Portuguese-Canadianwith a strong tendency towards Portuguese.\" One said, I'm \"both... I will always, always, always be Portuguese\", while anothersaid, \"I'm from the world ... maybe I don't want to choose.\" Twosubjects now contemplated a return to Portugal, one of thesehaving developed an acute affinity for its language and culturedespite emigration at a young age.The level of endogamy among them was not surprising6F15570. Five percent of her subjects identified themselves as\"Canadian.\" They were primarily first-generation Portuguese whohad resided in Canada for more than twenty years, the \"majority\"having received formal education in Portugal. Horta, \"The Salienceof Ethnicity,\" 234.178considering that almost all subjects were first-generation. 7Six of the seventeen Vancouver subjects went on to marryPortuguese spouses. A seventh divorced from a non-Portuguesespouse had married a Portuguese person. An eighth subjectmarried a Portuguese-speaking emigrant. A ninth now contemplatedmarriage in Portugal. A tenth married a non-Portuguese spousewho became immediately immersed in the Portuguese language andPortuguese became the exclusive language in the household. Threewho had enjoyed the greatest social and dating freedom asadolescents were among these ten. Seven others comparable in ageto the first seven, had married non-Portuguese spouses one ofwhom also took a great interest in Portuguese culture.One must consider expressions of personal affinity forPortuguese culture, even a rekindling of that sentiment, in thelight of Canada's official policy of multiculturalism within abilingual framework. That policy, announced in October, 1971,offered \"legitimacy\" to ethnic activities and concerns. 8In the least, it is an artifact of Canada's intent to move awayfrom a more \"Anglo-conformist and racist past into a moreegalitarian pluralism.\" 9 One sees that pluralism expressedeverywhere in Vancouver today where one is not actively7See Jean R. Burnet with Howard Palmer, \"Coming Canadians\": AnIntroduction to a History of Canada's Peoples (Toronto: McClellandand Stewart in association with the Multiculturalism Directorate,Department of the Secretary of State, 1988), 98-9.8Burnet and Palmer, 174ff.9Ibid., 228.179discouraged from admitting or expressing one's ethnicity. ThesePortuguese subjects who grew up in Vancouver among othercultures, simply have more freedom to find a self-identity morethan ever before. Subjects who expected a more homogeneous andexclusive culture like the one they had known on the Azores orthe Continent could mistake the very multiplicity of cultures for\"no culture\" or \"a young culture.\" What one subject uttered wasnot too different from what several others said: \"The Canadians,I am sad to say that, have no culture.\"\"One subject repeated he now considers himself \"very lucky\"to have grown up with an understanding of two cultures. Anotherwho had worked at integrating into Canadian youth culture had nowenrolled a child in the Portuguese Saturday school. For thissubject, being Portuguese was \"something from way back that getspassed from generation to generation.\" Some other adults ofPortuguese descent who were not subjects of this study said theyfelt more drawn toward Portuguese culture now that they wereolder. One professional now had \"a hunger\" for Portugueseculture that she had previously straight-armed growing up inVancouver. Another professional said she had not fit in with thePortuguese she had seen growing up in Toronto. Now she wanted to\"pay back\" the Portuguese community in Vancouver.One subject who is very familiar with first- and second-10David Higgs also found that Canada \"fulfilled the materialdreams\" of some of the first generation Portuguese, but \"did notsatisfy their need for a heart-felt allegiance.\" Higgs, ThePortuguese in Canada, 16.180generation adolescents of Portuguese descent said he remembered atime when one went to a nightclub and refrained from admittingbeing Portuguese. He had even told people he was \"SouthAmerican\", \"Brazilian\" -- \"people weren't very proud to say theywere Portuguese.\" He said, \"five or ten years ago ... I thoughtthe culture, the Portuguese culture, was dying and now I see itreborn.\" In his view, the \"bickering\" between Azoreans andContinentals who used to avoid each others' dances isdiminishing. Now he saw Vancouver-born youth of Portuguesedescent who \"hardly speak Portuguese\" returning to thesefunctions. \"They don't eat the food, they go to MacDonald's andcome back [to the Portuguese dance] and that's the Portugueseway.\" Now there is a young folklore group run by people \"bornhere.\"This quest for Portuguese culture may be nothing more thanthe subjective reaction to the individualism and pluralism ofNorth American society. 11 It may also be a personal response toa social and political context that encourages, rather thandiscourages, remembering one's beginnings.\"For a discussion of whether italianita is waxing or waning,see Rudolph Vecoli, \"Italian-American Ethnicity: Twilight or Dawn,Italians in the U.S.A., A Comparative Perspective\" in Potestio andPucci, Italian Immigrant Experience, 131-56.Works CitedTaped Interviews, 1992:M15468. 18 February, 1992.M15971. 1 April, 1992.M15565. 13 March; (Informal: 9 July, August 3, 1992)M15870. 26 March, 1992.M16370. 12 March, 1992.M25168. 13 February, 1992.M96179. 19 March, 1992.M15367. 16 March, 1992.M16075. 10 March, 1992.M15971. 16 March, 1992.M14862. 14 July, 1992.F97072. 24 March, 1992.F16377. 29 January, 1992.F16177. 17 February, 1992.F15570. 9 March, 1992.F15356. 23 March, 1992.F36500. 2 March, 1992.F16500. 6 February, 1992.F15773. 3 August, 1992.F15668. 21, 26 February, 1992.F16170. 31 March; 8 July, 1992; (Informal: August and September)181182Other Sources:Vancouver School Teacher. 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Profile of Salazar: material for the history ofhis life and times. Lisbon: SPN Books, n.d. [written 1938]Teixeira, Carlos, and Gilles Levigne. The Portuguese in Canada: A Bibliography (Toronto: York University, The Institute forSpecial Research, 1992).Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past, Oral History . Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1978.Vincent, Isabel. \"Finding a Nationality That Fits.\" Globe andMail. 3 December, 1990.Weeks, Lyman H. Among the Azores. Boston: James R. Osgood andCompany, 1882.West, Elliott. Growing up with the Country: childhood on the farwestern frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1989.Williams, Jerry. And Yet They Come: Portuguese Immigration fromthe Azores to the United States. New York: Center for MigrationStudies, 1982.Zelizer, Viviana, A. Pricing the Priceless Child: the changingsocial value of children. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1985.189APPENDIX IExplanation of Study and Statement of ConsentThesis:^\"Portuguese Adolescence in Vancouver, B.C., 1960-75: an oral history\".Researcher:^Mr. Tony P. Arruda (604) 224-8724[Supervisor: Dr. Neil Sutherland (604) 822-5286]Purpose of the Study:^I understand the purpose of the study isto investigate the history of Portuguese-Canadian adolescentexperiences in Vancouver. In particular, it will try toestablish the range of these experiences, and suggest, ifpossible, how typical a particular experience may have been amongthe subjects studied.Procedures:^I have been told by the researcher that I will beinterviewed about some aspects of my youth: family life, school,work, play, spirituality, and world view. If I wish, I may sharewith him any manuscript materials (diaries, letters, journals,etc.) and photographs that I feel may assist him. I may alsowithhold any information, terminate an interview question -- orthe interview -- for personal reasons.Particulars:^I agree to volunteer my time and effort towardthis study for which I will not receive monetary payment. Iagree to one interview which may take from one and one-half tothree hours. Interviews will go no longer unless I extend itfreely and willingly or suggest meeting another time. I can askany questions I choose so that I might understand the proposedstudy and its procedures. I can refuse to participate orwithdraw from the study at any time.Consent and Confidentiality: Please initial either 'a' or 'b':a.^All audio-tapes and notes made will be keptstrictly anonymous by the researcher. I have beentold by him that he alone will hold the audio-tapes and any notes arising out of the interview.My name will not appear anywhere in the thesis,nor in any future work arising out of thisinterview. The data gathered may be used in thefuture, but only by the researcher himself andonly under identical conditions ofconfidentiality. (I may strike out and initialthis last sentence if I wish)190page 2 of 2b.^I recognize the importance of this work and wishto contribute to a greater understanding of thePortuguese in Canada. Therefore I wish to permitany audio-tape(s) of the interview to be used inthe following manner: (initial the statement(s)you give consent to)i) ^ use of my interview and name in thethesis.ii)^ anonymous use of the interview in futureworks of this kind.iii)^ use of my name and interview in futureworks of this kind.iv)^ use of name, interview tapes andtranscript as part of any library, orOral History Collection, eitherexisting, or created in the future, forthe purposes of other researchers.v) ^(specify any restriction)Written Consent: I understand UBC Policy requires my writtenconsent if I am to be interviewed by the researcher. Thisconsent form has been explained to me fully. I have received myown signed copy.^Itherefore, do hereby consent to volunteer as a subject in thehistorical project named above.(Date) ^(Signed)(Print Name)(Telephone)(Address)191APPENDIX II\"PORTUGUESE ADOLESCENCE IN VANCOUVER, B.C. 1960-80:an oral history\"Subjects wanted for study: Were you a Portuguese-Canadian youthliving in Vancouver at some point between 1960 and 1980? I am agraduate student at the University of British Columbia interestedin the Childhood and Adolescent History and am looking forPortuguese-Canadian subjects for interviews. The research, whencompleted, may yield an important perspective and provide auseful comparison for other non-Portuguese adolescent histories.Particulars:^1.^subjects should have been 12-19 years of ageduring this period.2. subjects may have been immigrants, orCanadian-born of Portuguese descent. (bothare wanted).3. subjects may have only 1 Portuguese parent.4. I am especially interested in interviewingany children or youths who came to Vancouverbefore 1960.5. Voluntary basis.Contact: Please call Tony at 224-8724 for more details.192APPENDIX III - Recruitment (Portuguese)\"ADOLESCENTES PORTUGUESES KM VANCOUVER, B.C., 1960-80:TESTEMUNHOS\"- Era adolescente (Luso-Canadiano/a) residindo em Vancouver entre 1960 e 1980? Sou um estudante graduado na Universidade da Columbia Britanicainteressado no estudo da Historia da Infancia e Adolescencia epretendo contactar Luso-Canadianos. A investigacao, quandoterminada, fornecera uma importante perspectiva e servira de basea outros estudos sobre adolescentes.Informacao Detalhada:1. As pessoas que procuro para entrevistar deveriam tertido entre os 12 e 19 anos de idade no periodo de1960-80;2. Deveriam ser imigrantes ou descendentes portuguesesnascidos no Canada (ambos sao necessarios;3. Os pais dos entrevistados nao necessitam ser ambosportugueses basta que um deles o seja;4. Estou especialmente interessado em entrevistarpessoas que tenham vindo para Vancouver antes de1960 quando criancas ou adolescentes;5. As informacoes prestadas serao tratadas com o maximode confidencialidade.Para mais informacoes, e favor contactar o Sr. Tony Arruda, telefone: 224-8724. APPENDIX IVInterview QuestionsThese interviews are not highly-structured. I plan to ask 7general questions. Subsequent questions, or others in thesubset, may be asked to clarify or seek expansion of the generalquestion, or redirect a \"tranquil\" interviewee.Biographical data: a) place of birth and nationality; b) size ofvillage, town, city; c) details of land ownership/tenure;d) details of migration: age, date, itinerary and intendeddestination, other relatives in Canada; e) education andemployment history; f) did you write letters to friends inPortugal? g) did you maintain a diary/journal?Broad Ouestions and subset alternatives:1. What was like for you in the Azores/Portugal?a) Describe your village/town/neighbourhoodb) How well off were you? What did your father/mother do?c) Describe your house (property)d) What was life like for you in the Azores (or Portugal)?e) Did you work? Describe your school (schooling) (teacher)f) Did you socialize/play -- tell me about that.g) Did you go to church -- recall an incident.h) What did you think of yourself then as a child (youth)?i) What about the opposite sex?j) What were some of your dreams/fears for the future at thattime -- do you remember them changing?k) Describe what you did on festas? Christmas? Easter?2. Explain how you came to emigrate to Canada (Vancouver)a) Why did you leave -- explain your thoughts about that.b) Did the existence of the draft affect this decision?c) Tell me about your arrival in Canada (Vancouver)d) What were some of your impressions upon arrival?3. What was it like for you in Canadian schools?a) In general, can you recall how you felt you were193194being treated at that time by school/teachers/peers?b) What did you expect about Canadian schools? What surprisedyou about Canadian schools?c) What did your parents say about Canadian schools?d) What activities did you participate in?e) What stands out as a positive experience (negative one)?f) How did you spend your lunch and after-school hours?g) Did you go to Saturday school (Portuguese) (other?)3. Did you work as a youth?a) Describe the paid work you did (hours, pay, duties)b) What did you do with the money?c) What work did you do that was unpaid?d) How did your father feel about work you did?e) How did your mother feel about work you did?f) Were there different jobs (paid/unpaid) for boys/girls?g) Did you encounter prejudice/sexism at the work site?h) Were there other Portuguese at the site? Explain.4. Describe your friendships.a) Did you maintain contact with any friends in Portugal?b) What activities did you share with Portuguese friends?c)^11^11^ 11^11^11^11^non-Portuguese \" ?c) Who did you associate with more -- P or C? Why?d) What problems did you have as a youth that you wouldcare to share with me?e) Did you date? When? Who -- P or C? When did you firstbring home a date to introduce to your parents (explain)5. What do you remember about the quality of your family life inyour youth?a) What changes occurred to that quality in Canada?b) Who was the boss in the house? Explain. Has it changed?c) Were there different expectations for children?d) When did your parent(s) get a job? car? TV? telephone?e) What were some traditions in your house? (your feelings?)f) What stories did your parent(s) tell? Recall one.g) What foods did you eat? Was there a change? Explain.h) Whom did your family want/expect you to marry?i) Was money sent to the homeland? How often?j) What language was/is spoken in the home? What was/is thequality of English spoken by parent(s)k) Did you have a curfew? other restrictions?6. Did you go to church?a) What were the differences/similarities betweenC/P churches? their teachings? their importance?195b) How important was the church to you in Portugal? In Cda?c) Did your relationship with the church change?d) Did spirituality guide/have no effect on your actions?7. What do you remember was your adolescent philosophy of life inthe Azores? In Canada?a) What important changes in such outlook were there?Can you remember why, when, or how, these changes occurred?b) What important changes in world view do you rememberoccurred only after your youth?c) Self-Identify: Portuguese/Portuguese-Cdn/Cdn? Explain."@en ; edm:hasType "Thesis/Dissertation"@en ; vivo:dateIssued "1992-11"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0055658"@en ; dcterms:language "eng"@en ; ns0:degreeDiscipline "Social and Educational Studies"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:rights "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en ; ns0:scholarLevel "Graduate"@en ; dcterms:title "Growing up in Portuguese-Canadian families: an oral history of adolescence in Vancouver, 1962-1980"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; ns0:identifierURI "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1922"@en .