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My Maternal Immigrants

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My initial response to the word “culture” was to think about it in terms of where my ancestors came from, and how I honour and celebrate it in my own life. I don’t, not really. My paternal grandparents were immigrants from northern Italy, but I didn’t grow up with stereotypical Italian influences like a large, loud, animated dinner table, or a rec room decorated with the Italian flag and statues of the Colosseum and Michelangelo’s David. Nor did the Scottish kilt wearing and haggis eating traditions of my maternal great-grandparents play a part in my upbringing. The cultures that both sides of the family created once in Canada are what has influenced me, or in some cases, marked me as a rebel.
My ancestors arrived in Canada in the late 1800s

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