“His Fig Tree Came in the Mail”: Growing an Italian Garden in Toronto

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Cristina Pietropaolo

Abstract

Last summer, my mother telephoned to ask me if I would like any of the vegetables she and my father grew in their Toronto backyard garden. A few hours later, returning to Ottawa from a weekend visit to our parents, my sister arrived, bearing plastic shopping bags full of garden vegetables from our parents' backyard. I used them in my cooking for the next week. As I cooked, I thought about the legacy of not only recipes, but of the backyard vegetables themselves, and what a vital part of my family’s life they are.


In the summer of 2012, I decided to interview members of my family to find out more about their relationships with their backyard gardens. I spoke to a great aunt and uncle, and to my mother about her parents' gardening, because I wanted to know mainly about that generation of Italians and what gardening meant to them.

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Research Essays, Notes, & Queries