MENDING A RELATIONSHIP: ‘It’s hard to get 18 months of barbed wire out of your gut’

Instead, he said the reality of being a political prisoner in his own country and having his family experience the stigma was the cloud hanging over his head.

“It’s hard to get 18 months of barbed wire out of your gut,” Peters told CFJC Today how her late grandfather described it. “He was picked up… in front of his wife and son, who was almost three, and taken away. They didn’t know what happened to him. For a long time, my grandmother thought he had passed away before they were able to get word.”

While his parents immigrated from Italy in the early 1910s, Bruno and his brother Attilio were born in Vancouver before the Girardi family moved back to Italy in 1922.

Because of civil unrest in Europe in 1930, Bruno and Attilio – age 17 and 14 respectively – were granted a special Emergency Exit document and moved back to Vancouver.

Bruno planted roots in Vancouver at the tail end of the 1930s. In 1936, he married his wife Emma, and founded L’Eco italo-canadese – an Italian-language newspaper – before turning it over to his assistant in 1938. His first son, Attilio, was born in 1937.

An issue of L’Eco italo-canadese (Government of Canada).

Bruno was part of a group called Circolo Giulio Giordani, which he claimed had political objectives.

As unrest continued prior to WWII unfolding, Peters said Circolo Giulio Giordani wrote the federal government in 1939 asking if they should disband.

“The federal wrote back and said they do a lot of benevolence and a lot for the children, and to please continue,” Peters said. “At a time of war, or potential war, the rules change.”

As Italy aligned with Nazi Germany during WWII nearly a year later, Bruno and Attilio Girardi were picked up – as Peters called it due to neither brother receiving formal charges – and held in a cell at the base of Burrard Street in Vancouver. They were part of the second wave sent up to the Kananaskis internment camp.

‘The affiliation… the contribution to the newspaper and being part of groups, that’s what the issues were,’

Bruno told Peters it was odd to be loaded onto a truck and going through the canyon before arriving at Kananaskis. The German internees were already at the camp when Bruno and his brother arrived. He and Attilio shared a cabin of 12 with 10 German-Canadians.

The internees wore jeans with a red stripe down the side and a jean jacket with a large red dot on the back, making it easy for them to be caught if they attempted to escape.

Despite being labelled as enemy aliens, the Italian- and German-Canadians attempted to keep the morale up. They sang songs, played sports and were served food from some of the best chefs in Vancouver.

“The Italians would play against the Germans (in soccer). If the Italians won, they’d have Italian food for dinner. If the Germans won, they’d have German food. He said, ‘We rarely had German food,’” Peters laughed.

Bruno was released from internment in December 1941, 18 months after his arrest. Attilio had been released a month earlier.

For Bruno, it was recommended he report monthly to the RCMP and be detained again if he was in any way disloyal to Canada.

“The affiliation… the contribution to the newspaper and being part of groups, that’s what the issues were,” Peters said. “When his case was heard in Ontario, that would have been November 1941, they had asked the internees to write to their families to ask for letters of reference from their friends and people they knew. My grandfather said, ‘No, that means we’ve done something wrong.’”

“He had [L’Eco italo-canadese]. He took articles written in the Province and Vancouver Sun and translated them to Italian, and he believes he was picked up for printing Italian propaganda.”

The federal government had initial interest in Bruno – like all internees – to fight for Canada in WWII. However, he was deemed not required to enlist for political reasons.

Bruno went on to work various jobs such as an accountant, a butcher, a grocer, and a radio host. He continued to be a leader in the Italian community in Vancouver, including being the first Canadian-born president of the Sons of Italy, before his death in 1995. Attilio passed away two years later in 1997.

‘He was always a proud Canadian’

Once she heard about the upcoming apology from the federal government, Peters said she wanted to write a thank you letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

If Bruno was still alive, Peters said the apology would mean a lot to him and his family.

“[My grandfather] said the true tragedy was the women and children who were left,” Peters said. “They had to deal with the stigma and shame of being enemy aliens. My grandmother, who was born in Vancouver and lived there her whole life, was denied medical attention at [Vancouver General Hospital] because she was the wife of an internee. You had that prejudice. I really believe that’s one of the reasons why the Italian community didn’t talk a lot about this.

“He never had a malicious thought. For him, he was always a proud Canadian. I know he would appreciate the apology.”

by Aaron Schulze

MENDING A RELATIONSHIP: ‘It’s hard to get 18 months of barbed wire out of your gut’

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