Sudbury
SUDBURY’S POPULATION: 166,004
STATISTICS FOR THE PORTUGUESE IN SUDBURY:
| AS MOTHER TONGUE | AS MOST SPOKEN | KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE | BORN IN PORTUGAL | ETHNIC ORIGIN |
| 20 0.01% of population | 10 0.001% | 40 0.02% of population | 30 0.02% of population | 85 0.05% of population |
RESILIENCE AND AMBITION OF A LONG-GONE COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION IN A CITY WITH VERY FEW PORTUGUESE
Translated article written by Paulo Pereira for Luso-Ontario Magazine, 2008
Audio Version:
In issue number 2 (March of 1993) of a newsletter that the Portuguese Club of Sudbury published monthly, Francisco Martins – who was the first president – recounts an interview he conducted with the Portuguese pioneer of this city, Marcelino Zenha: “He was one of the first (according to Mr. Zenha himself, he was the first or the second because he arrived with Mr. Pacifico Pinho) […] and was one of the first Portuguese to arrive in Canada. […] …Mr. Zenha: I was 35 years old when I arrived in Canada in May of 1954 […] I saw in the newspaper that they needed upholstery workers in Sudbury for a new workshop, and I spoke of such to Pacifico Pinho. […] We packed our bags and there we were on our way to Sudbury. Once here, we went to the boss’ workshop, who was German, he hired us, paid me $3.75 an hour and I was so happy […] . Meanwhile the upholstery workshop was sold, I took advantage and bought it, and just like that, I started working for myself. As I was alone and my English was poor, I had many difficulties […]. I lived in a rented room that included a bed and a table, and many weeks the money was not enough to pay the rent, since I had to pay the workshop’s mortgage.”
Fifty years later, the history of the Portuguese community of Sudbury gained new and interesting contours and left marks that still live vividly in the memories of each Portuguese who resides or once lived in this city. Maria Pereira, Manuel Pereira, and Maria Clara Beites are part of this beautiful story. They were kind enough to share it with us.
Manuel Pereira arrived in Sudbury in 1972. “There were few Portuguese here… I came to join my father. I don’t know exactly how many, but there were very few. There was no club, no bar, nothing. People would gather at my father’s house, who lived in Québec, then in Elliot Lake, and then moved here to Sudbury and always worked in the rubber industry. I started working in rubber in 1973 and I’m still there. The Portuguese here work mostly in construction”, he began.
His wife, Maria Pereira, arrived in 1977 while Maria Clara Beites did so in 1974. “It was difficult to adapt,” Maria Pereira, the last president of the late Portuguese Club, began telling us. “I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t know anyone who was Portuguese. Here you need to speak English, it’s not like in Toronto. When my husband arrived here, there were about ten Portuguese couples. His father was one of the first to come to Canada, at that time there were three or four families. There was no community. Then when I came, after five years, we got to know other families. I had lived here for a year and a half when the club was formed. That’s when people started to get together, there were already about 60 or 70 families. Now, there are more Portuguese from northern Portugal but at one point we had people from all over Portugal, including the islands. But we always had more people from the North. There are currently about 25 or 30 families here, about 90 to 100 people,” she said.
“The founder of the club was Francisco Martins who now lives in Toronto”, Maria Clara Beites interjected. “Carlos Jorge, Félix Lopes, José Ferreira, Alberto Teixeira, and Ezequiel Mealha were the founders. A group of men went door to door asking people’s opinions. Everyone signed, there was a meeting, we held elections and created a Board of Directors in 1978. The first party was in June, but it had all started in April. People joined, everyone was happy. The first party was very beautiful…full house. We held two parties that year,” she recalled.
The conversation was now lively with our interviewees recalling a longing past. “We had a rancho and a soccer team from the second year of the club’s existence”, Maria Pereira shot. “We ran a few theatre plays, we had a choir. There was a time when we had three folklore groups. We represented Minho, Santa Marta de Portuzelo. The music was recorded and our first instructor was Fernanda Matos.”
Both Maria Pereira and Maria Clara Beites were part of the rancho. “It performed in Sault Ste. Marie, Elliot Lake, Toronto, and Parry Sound. We traveled a lot. The group dissolved before the club closed its doors permanently. It ended because of lack of interest”, recalls Maria Clara.
“The Club was strong for 20 years, until the late 1990s. We still had parties until 2003 but they were not well attended”, Maria Pereira recalled. “The Portuguese began to move out of Sudbury but we didn’t hold events only for the Portuguese but also for the Canadians, but even them couldn’t help us survive. We had many members who were Canadian. We rented halls to hold our parties, we didn’t have our own headquarters. We even had a Portuguese school. The Portuguese school started in the second or third year of the club. We had two teachers who came from Portugal and taught here. We had a lot of students. It was on Saturday mornings. People began to lose their interest”, she lamented and then completed: “When members of the Board had enough, there wasn’t anyone available to take over, and it was inevitable that things were going to end sooner or later. The Board was always composed of mostly the same people. We held parties in our Portuguese way, and it was the people who were involved who prepared everything, and it was tiring. We had four parties a year: the Anniversary in April, Mother’s Day party, often Father’s Day, Portugal Day when we raised the flag at City Hall and where the rancho performed along with the folklore group from Elliot Lake. We had an arts exhibition here that lasted three days. That was a great event for our community. If the Portuguese were more interested, we could have done other beautiful things. Now we don’t have enough people, we don’t have a chance. I was president for 12 years. The club closed in 2005. We published a weekly newsletter since 1978 and sent it to the members. It was like the community newspaper. It ended in the mid-nineties. Here in our Portuguese community we had some Portuguese businesses and they sponsored it. We don’t have Portuguese restaurants here, but we have big companies that have Portuguese owners. There is no bakery, no restaurant. We have a Portuguese who has a Café but the Portuguese do not go there, only Canadians”. Maria Pereira exhaled a nostalgic snuffle.
Silence!
“I feel sad to see it end, but we are so very few, we are nobodies,” Maria Beites sighed. “We had two or three picnics every summer, organized excursions with the school kids. Our youth will not forget their language or roots as long as we are alive but everything will eventually end. Most youth speak Portuguese, they are proud to be Portuguese”, Maria proudly stated.
Manuel Pereira joined the Board in 1988, became vice-president and then president but always helped the club even when he was not a director. “I always helped when I wasn’t on the Board, especially when my wife was president,” he recalled. Maria Pereira was the last president after 12 consecutive years in office but had previously been part of the folklore group as a dancer and instructor. Maria Clara Beites – who was also dancer and instructor of the group – has always supported Maria Pereira, first as secretary and culinary director, and then as vice-president until the extinction of the Portuguese Club of Sudbury.
Fifty years after Marcelino Zenha’s arrival in Sudbury, the future of the Portuguese community in this city threatens to mirror the times when he arrived here…
| With files from Luso-Ontario Magazine, 2008 |
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