Family Environmental History

May 31, 2022 By: Tina Ihas

Like many people in North America, I am a Heinz 57. Both of my grandmothers were first-generation Canadians. My paternal Grandmother’s parents immigrated from Italy to Trail when they were teens. My Bisnonno (great Grandfather) and Bisnonna (great Grandmother) came to Canada with their large families and went on to have eight children of their own. Those eight children had more than 20 children, of which my Dad was one. Many of my Dad’s cousins remained in the area, working at Cominco and raising their families. When I was a child, it seemed as if everyone was Italian and everyone’s Dad worked “up the hill”; this has changed in the last decades as Cominco became Teck, and much of its workforce was laid off, and contractors hired in their place.

My Bisnonna and Bisnonno are from the Tuscana region in Italy, in the Province of Lucca. In Italy, a region is similar to our province (Tuscana – BC), and a province is similar to our region (Lucca – Kootenay Boundary). I believe they were both from the capital of the province, the city of Lucca, but I am not 100% sure. I have visited Lucca and like to think they were, but my instincts tell me that they were from the province and most likely lived in different places from one another. As far as my Nonna knew, they didn’t know each other until they came to Canada, specifically to Trail. They married in Trail and then moved to the town of Fife, a small settlement above the village of Christina Lake. They operated a boarding house where all but the youngest one of their children was born. Then, with the decline of rail traffic and the mine at Fife closing, they moved down the hill in the 1930s to the village of Christina Lake. My Bisnonno built a log home for himself and my Bisnonna and homes for several of their children on nearby land. My grandparents lived across the street, and when my Nonna went into early labour, her sister brought her across to their parents’ house in a wheelbarrow, and my Dad was born! He was a September baby not expected until the end of October. They kept him in a drawer by the wood stove and fed him with a dropper until he was strong enough to breastfeed. When I was growing up, my Nonna lived in her parents’ house, and most of the homes that my Bisnonno had built for his children had been sold to people outside of the family or turned into summer homes by my Dad’s cousins. My first cousin lives in the house now, having purchased it from the estate when my Nonna died in 1995.

My maternal Grandmother was also a first-generation Canadian but lived a very different life than my Nonna. Her parents arrived in Canada in 1907 from England shortly after they married. My Great-Grandmother’s family was wealthy, and, to the best of my knowledge, all remained in England. My Great-Grandfather was determined to provide for her in the way she was accustomed. However, he found he could not do so in his chosen profession as a psychologist, although he was well known for his work as one of the founding members of the British Psychological Society (bps.org.uk; wikipedia.org). He decided that he wanted his children to be born in Canada and felt that he could make a life for his family here. My Great-Grandmother was, by all accounts, not thrilled with the idea. He travelled by train across the country upon arrival, leaving his young wife with friends in Montreal. When he reached the place he felt was perfect for growing his chosen crops, he found the largest, grandest house and purchased it for his bride, making the Armstrong Valley their new home. My Gran always said that her Mum did not even know how to boil water when she moved to Armstrong. I can remember thinking about that as a child, from a child’s perspective, and not understanding how she could not figure out how to fill the kettle, put it on the stove, and turn on the element. I now realize that at the turn of the 20th century, boiling water was a much more complicated procedure involving many steps and a fair share of manual labour. Once they were settled in Arnstong, my Great-Grandfather began to grow the crop that he was convinced would be the way of the future—soybeans! I loved hearing my Gran talk about her childhood self being mortified that her father was growing something so strange that no one else in the valley was growing.

I know much less about both of my Grandfathers, but I do know that they were both very much Canadian, as their parents were all born in North America. My paternal Grandfather’s roots were in Denmark, but he was a third-generation Canadian to the best of my knowledge. My maternal Grandfather’s roots were Scottish. He was born in Victoria, as was his father before him. My Mum claims that she is a 5th generation Canadian on her Dad’s side.

All of my Italian family was very industrious with producing fresh food and making something out of nothing. My Nonna had the smallest amount of garbage each week, not because she was good at recycling but because she just used everything. Having grown up in an environment where they often had to make due, it was a practice she continued to do until her death. In contrast, my Gran grew up not wanting for much but was educated (she was a teacher) and thoughtful about her environment and the planet. She and my Grandad had a lovely big house on a double lot in Burnaby, where they experimented with grafting fruit trees onto one another. I can remember her teaching me about recycling in the early 1980s! They were very progressive. Both my Nonna and my maternal grandparents had amazing vegetable gardens. My Nonna’s was huge and fed her and our entire family all year long; my other grandparents’ was large and always bursting at the seams with my Grandad’s experiments in horticulture.

In writing this, I realize that I have taken lessons from both sides of my family tree and combined them into a comprehensive understanding of the value of making due even when you do not have to, of growing food and eating healthy, unprocessed foods, of caring for and nurturing what nature has provided for us. In addition, each taught me, in their way and without intending to, the importance of recycling, water conservation and sound horticultural practices and that sometimes less is more.

Bibliography

The British Psychological Society. “Founders, Fellows, Presidents, and Members.” Accessed May 30, 2022, https://www.bps.org.uk/about-us/history-psychology/founders-fellows-presidents-members

Wikipedia. “Frant Noel Hales.” Accessed May 30, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Noel_Hales