By Osvalda Franklin – Dryden, Ont.
My family and I came to Canada from Italy in April 1950. This began a time of discoveries for me – some pleasant and some not so much.
For the first four months after our arrival, we lived with my mother’s uncle on his farm in Manitoba. While there, my brother and I were chased by a bunch of wild horses. I still don’t know why they stopped chasing us once we reached the woods.
With spring came the swarms of mosquitoes. We didn’t have those in the Italian Alps. I was highly allergic to them and my body was not a pretty sight with all the scratching and swelling.
Once August arrived, we moved into town because my brother and I had to go to school. This was the beginning of a year of surprises for me.
Santa Claus? Who is that?
The first one arrived with the coming of October. I started hearing the kids at school asking each other what costumes they would be wearing for Halloween. “What are you planning to wear for Halloween?” they inquired.
“What is Halloween?” I asked.
Once it was explained, I thought, “I’d like to get dressed up and go out with my friends and come home with a bag full of goodies!” I don’t remember what I wore that year, but I remember my brother dressed up as a girl. In Italy we celebrated All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2. We’d never heard of Halloween.
Soon December had arrived and I started hearing about a person called Santa Claus. Who was he and what did he have to do with Christmas? Christmas as far as I knew was a day to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
I remember, back in Italy, walking to church for Midnight Mass on a crisp and starry night and my mother pointing out the big dipper and explaining that this was the chariot in which the boy Jesus and his angels travelled to deliver gifts to the kids on earth.
Sure enough, when we got back home, there were gifts for us by the fireplace. “What next?” I wondered.
From your Valentine
January came and went without anything unusual happening, except for the snow and the cold. Lo and behold, February arrived and I started noticing heart-shaped boxes being hung on some classroom doors. Each box had a slit in it as if you could put a letter in there.
I was told that Feb. 14th was St. Valentine’s Day. We were celebrating in memory of a priest named Valentine who had been beheaded because he was a Christian. It was said while he was in jail, he had cured the jail keeper’s daughter of a disease and before he went to his death he had sent her a letter which he signed, ”From your Valentine.”
It was exciting to buy a book of valentines and cut them out and place them in the different mailboxes. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of valentines that I received that February in 1951.
Easter came as no surprise to me. There were coloured eggs and chocolate eggs for all to enjoy. There were pictures of chicks hatching out of the eggs, which I knew represented new life which in fact was the meaning of Easter and Christ’s resurrection.
But what did an egg-carrying bunny have to do with Easter? No one could explain, and needless to say, I never believed in the Easter Bunny, but my kids did.
In all the years that have gone by since then, I have not been chased by wild horses even once. I still don’t like mosquitoes, but I have done my share as a primary schoolteacher in promoting these Canadian traditions. They are fun, and I believe that we all need a bit of fantasy in our lives!
