Emanuel Melo torontonian azorean writer

For over twenty years I helped my mother display her presépio and each year she would tell me that it would be her last until finally it was.

However you celebrate the season, I wish you a Feliz Natal and a Merry Christmas filled with peace and joy to you and those you love.

Por mais de vinte anos ajudava a minha mãe a fazer o seu presépio e em cada ano ela dizia-me que sem dúvida seria o seu último Natal até que finalmente chegou o dia previsto.

Seja como for a maneira que celebra a quadra natalícia, desejo-vos um Feliz Natal repleto de paz e alegria.

Berta Pereira Duarte de Melo July 28, 1933-March 17, 2025

My father, Antonio Cabral de Melo at Mary Lake, June 17, 1990

“Tell me about your father.”

So writes Anthony de Sa at the end of More than a King, his Substack essay about his complicated relationship with his father. In a stripped bare confessional of the heart wounded, seeking healing, de Sa shares his father’s flaws as well as his redeeming virtues with his readers and invites them to share their own stories with him.

I admire his honesty, his resolve to see his father, not through revisionist nostalgia, but through the shadows and light which reveals a full human being.

It’s a coincidence that, like de Sa, I also wrote about my father on a November day. My text was inspired by reading José Luís Peixoto’s “Morreste-me”, his own love letter to his father.

Perhaps it’s the commemoration of All Souls’ month that conjures up the memories of our dead fathers and a need to reclaim them through our writing; to restore justice to their name, their goodness even while acknowleding their flaws.

I share my text written in both Portuguese and English, in memory of my father’s journey from the Azores to North America and to the life he made possible for me because of his emmigration.

I thank Anthony de Sa and José Luís Peixoto for their writing on a difficult theme.

I hope many sons and daughters will find some threads of their own family truths and perhaps a path forward to healing their own wounded hearts.

What I should have told my father before he died: A Reflection on loss and redemption: a leaving (Azores) and an arrival (Canada)

My father, now that you are gone forever, I feel your absence; now that you have left us for more time than I thought possible, I miss you.

While you were alive, I was never able to understand you.  I hid myself from you and you were never able to find me after the day you emigrated when I was still a mere child. On that day, you disappeared from my life and, being little, I didn’t understand the reason why; all I knew is that you had left me alone with my mother: you had abandoned me. How was I, a child, to understand why you had to emigrate?  There were reasons which only the adults knew and could understand.  My mother told me, after I woke up without you by my side, that you had gone and, my world of childhood crumbled in disillusion. You didn’t tell me goodbye, you simply vanished.

And when you returned, after a long absence of three years, I was older; no longer the six year old boy you left behind; I was now nine years old.  I had not seen you for so long that you appeared like a stranger returning from a faraway place, and instead of welcoming you back, I kept my distance.  A few months later, you brought me and my mother to Canada. But only six weeks after arriving in our new country, my mother received a letter to inform her that my grandmother was very ill and needed her daughter. Very quickly plans were made for me and my mother to return to São Miguel. I was heartbroken.  I had spent three years without a father and now I was being taken away from you again.  I know that you cried inconsolably watching us leave but in my mind it felt like abandonment all over again. By the time my mother and I returned to Canada three months later, it felt like it was too late for you and for me, and I just couldn’t forgive you for the perceived betrayal of letting me go for a second time. I rejected you and could not look into your fatherly eyes.

It was only when I turned sixteen that I was able to make some peace with you. Still, during all the time that I grew up and became a man, I never understood that you were right there by my side; that you had returned after your three year absence.  I imagined it as if you had never returned at all because the child in me had never forgiven your absence: the child that I was believed that he had lost his father forever. It is only now, five years after your death; five year without your presence, that I start to see the truth about what happened on that fateful day when you left.  I believed that you didn’t love me because you hadn’t even said goodbye.  But I had never known your side of the story.

Recently, I asked my mother to explain what happened on the day you left.  She told me how you embraced me and cried over me, while I still slept.  You didn’t want to let go of me, on that morning that changed my life forever.  Yet I thought that you had abandoned me by choice.  If only I had seen your tears and felt the warmth of your tight embrace, perhaps then I could have understood and forgiven your leaving; but it wasn’t so, and you paid a heavy price for that act of emigration.  You lost your son who did not understand how you could have just disappeared from his life.

Now that you aren’t with us, I want to tell you that I miss you, that I now see that you had never really abandoned me; that you loved me.  I kept myself emotionally distant from you because I never got over that experience of you leaving me without showing me your sorrow in having to go away.  The child inside of me believed that he had lost his father, but like a good father, you remained by my side, watching me in silence, resigned to pay the price for a crime which you had not committed: the crime of abandoning your son.

I want to thank you for all that you did for me.  Had you not come to Canada, how different my life would have been back there on our island of São Miguel.  You brought me to a land where I was able to have a life full of comfort and opportunities and all of it because of your sacrifice. Forgive me for not recognizing what you did for me while you were with us; forgive me my foolish impression that you had stopped loving me.  I now see that you never abandoned me but, sadly, I distanced myself emotionally from you for most of my life based on a misunderstanding.

Your illness, however, brought me to you in ways that nothing else had before. When you got sick with cancer, it was me who you wanted to take you to all those tedious doctor’s appointments, each one bringing less and less hope that you would survive. I sat with you for countless hours in Princess Margaret Hospital, waiting in silence; you never complained or showed fear about your future. You sat there reading your Portuguese newspapers as if everything was normal.

When the therapy stopped working and there was no further hope of your recovery, in those last months when you lay on the sofa, unable to walk, I came to see you often. I sat with you and you smiled warmly and it brought me comfort. You became like a helpless child and I helped you get dressed, I held a urinal container in my hand while you held on to me so that you would not fall; when you no longer had the strength to get up, I wheeled you into the bedroom.  You were always quiet and never complained.

Once, in the middle of the night, my mother called for help while I slept in the next room.  You had soiled yourself and she needed help in cleaning you.  We undressed you together in silence.  I removed your grey undershirt, soaked at the back.  I looked down on your naked body, helplessly flat on the bed, unable to move.  It killed me to see you so vulnerable.  I watched my mother try to make you comfortable but your face betrayed a pain you would not speak so that she would not worry about you.

I hated having to do your chores. It should have been you taking care of your recycling and garbage night.  I didn’t want to shovel your driveway or your front steps, I didn’t want to do your grocery shopping; I didn’t want to plan my life around your dying.  I was angry at having to watch you die.  The hurt was infinitesimal.  It was tied up with my feeling for you all my life; our silences, our differences.  I didn’t even know who I was to you.  Do you love me?  I remember thinking as I looked at your fading body. And all the doubts of my childhood came back to haunt me, confusing my adult mind once again.

You then took for the worst during Holy Week and we prepared for your imminent dying.  The doctor gave me the brochure to read so that I’d know the stages of death.  But you did not die that quickly.  On Good Friday you became conscious again and lucid of mind.  You called everyone to come and say goodbye.  On Easter Sunday, I held you from behind while the homecare worker washed you.  When she left, I was alone with you for a few moments.  You asked me to bring you the statue of O Senhor Santo Cristo from the dresser.  You held it in your hands and you kissed the Suffering Christ; and I heard you whisper your remarkable prayer: Dai-me a Vossa Graça. (Give me your grace).  This was your only prayer in your time of need.  And I still remember it today as a testament to your deep and simple faith. This was to be your last day at home.

The next day, I had to accompany you by ambulance to Grace Hospital where you were to die a few weeks later.  We went alone; you and I, in that ambulance passing the streets you would never walk or see again.  My knees were shaken as they wheeled the stretcher into the room where you would spend your last days.  For the remaining weeks that you lingered, I came every morning on my way to work to feed you.  Sometimes you were aware of me.  Once you gave me a big happy smile.  On the last days, you kept your eyes closed while I fed you porridge. I don’t think you felt pain.  You were resigned with your death the way that you were resigned to your life’s joys and disappointments; the joy of having two granddaughter’s that my brother gave you; the disappointment that I didn’t.

When we received the late night call to say that the time had come, we rushed to be with you. I watched your breathing become shallower and shallower until you took your last breath.  It felt unreal to watch you, the man who was my father, die as simply and quietly as you had lived your life:  without fuss.

It’s been five years since that day you died.  I am still trying to recover from the loss of you.  I had lived my life with the belief, false as it was that you didn’t really love me. The impressionable young boy that I was misunderstood your leaving.  But as much as I may have reserved my judgment on your love for me and my love for you, in the end, I think we lived that love, not through words but through the quiet actions and silences of a lifetime, especially those of your last years.

In my mind, I now return to that fateful morning when you left the island.  I close my eyes and think of you again.  I am six years old and you haven’t left.  Now I can smile.

O que eu devia ter dito ao meu pai antes de ele morrer

Pai, agora que aqui já não estás, sinto a tua ausência; agora que já te foste embora, sinto a tua falta.

Enquanto eras vivo, nunca te compreendi.  Escondi-me de ti e nunca mais me encontraste a partir do dia em que emigraste, quando eu era apenas uma criança de seis anos.  Um dia, desapareceste e eu não entendi a razão; apenas sabia que me tinhas deixado sozinho com a minha mãe. Tinhas-me abandonado.

Como podia eu compreender que tinhas de emigrar por motivos que só os adultos sabiam?  A minha mãe disse-me, depois de eu acordar sem ti ao meu lado, que te tinhas ido embora, e o meu mundo de criança desfez-se em desilusão.  Não me disseste adeus, apenas desapareceste.

E quando regressastes, três anos depois da tua ausência, eu já não tinha seis mas nove anos, e em vez de te abraçar de novo, nunca te perdoei a traição da tua partida clandestina.

E quando me trouxeste para o Canadá, rejeitei-te, e nem olhava para os teus olhos de pai amoroso.  Fiquei homem e durante esse tempo todo nunca cheguei a compreender que o meu pai estava ali, perto de mim, que tinhas voltado. Era como se deveras nunca tivestes regressado.  A criança que eu era nunca perdoou a tua ausência.  A criança que eu era perdeu o seu pai para sempre.

É só agora, depois de teres morrido, depois de cinco anos sem a tua presença que começo a compreender a verdade.  Pensava que nunca tinhas gostado de mim, por isso me deixaste.  Mas não sabia a tua história.

Foram as palavras da minha mãe que me fizeram compreender.  Contou-me como me abraçaste e choraste naquela manhã em que eu dormia e tu me dizias adeus e não me querias deixar, naquela manhã que mudou a minha vida para sempre, quando pensei que me tinhas deixado por abandono e não por necessidade.

Se, pelo menos, tivesse visto as tuas lágrimas, se tivesse sentido os teus abraços, talvez tivesse perdoado a tua partida.  Mas não foi assim e pagaste o preço desta emigração.  Perdeste o teu filho que não sabia, que não percebia como foi que tu pudeste ausentar-te de mim.

E agora que já não estás conosco, quero dizer que sinto a tua falta, que soube tarde demais que não me tinhas abandonado, que me amavas.  Perdoa o teu filho que ficou sempre criança, como no dia em que partiste e pensava que me  tinhas abandonado.

Tinha um pai como muitos não têm e não compreendia.  Agora, agora já é tarde, mas quero dizer-te:

Obrigado por tudo o que fizeste por mim.  Se não tivesses vindo para o Canadá, como teria sido a minha vida na nossa ilha de São Miguel? Trouxeste-me para um país onde pude ter uma vida cheia de conforto e oportunidade, e tudo por causa do teu sacrifício.

Desculpa-me nunca ter apreciado o que fizeste. Desculpa-me a minha impressão de que não me amavas. A criança que eu era pensou que perdeu o seu pai, mas como bom pai, estiveste sempre ao meu lado, vigiando-me em silêncio, resignado a pagar por um crime que não cometeste, o crime de abandonar o seu filho.

E o seu filho, sempre à espera do pai que se fora embora, agora é que vê que voltaste, mas só agora, depois de tantos anos, é que reconhece que não me tinhas abandonado.

Pai, agora que já não estás entre nós, penso em ti e sinto a tua falta.  Afinal de contas não foste tu que me abandonaste, fui eu que te abandonei.

Fecho os meus olhos de novo e penso em ti, tenho ainda seis anos e não partiste para o estrangeiro. Agora posso sorrir.

Inspirado pela leitura do livro Morreste-me de José Luís Peixoto

Also posted in Filamentos (artes e letras)

As hortênsias no fim de verão continuam com a sua beleza na Ponta da Madrugada, São Miguel, Açores.

Hydrangea at the end of summer, still beautiful.

Photos taken on a pleasant day in October, 2012.

Joel Neto’s Jénifer, ou a Princesa da França, As ilhas (realmente) desconhecidas translated into English by Diniz Borges and Katharine F. Baker, as Jénifer, or a French Princess, The (Truly) Unknown Islands,” published by Letras Lavadas, has been nominated for the 44^th annual Northern California Book Awards 2025. It’s the first book of fiction by an Azorean writer to be nominated for this prize. The reading of this book inspired me to write the following text:

An Uncomfortable Truth of a (Truly) Unknown Paradise

If I hear one more person tell me how delighted they are to be going to the Azores on holiday I’ll, proverbially, scream!  In the last few years, the discovery of the magical beauty of the Azorean islands, now unshrouded of its mythical aura through thousands of posts on Instagram, Facebook and Travel blogs, has stirred a desire in the average tourist, Portuguese descendant or not, to make a trip, minimally, to São Miguel, the largest of the archipelago’s nine islands of the Azores. An outcome of this influx of tourism has been an increased demand for accommodation, in its traditional form of hotels and small pensions, and as of recent times, through the offering of Airbnbs not only in the city of Ponta Delgada but even in small towns and villages.

I should be thrilled that after spending my youth trying to convince my Canadian friends that the Azores was a real place, everyone now looks at me with a sort of envy – how lucky is Emanuel for having roots there! But back in the 1970s and 1980s, even those in cosmopolitan Toronto had not heard much about these “exotic” islands, lost somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I should be happy to finally have the saudade I felt for most of my life for my home of origin validated and celebrated by the countless social media posts and “likes” that affirm the beautiful landscapes of Furnas, Sete Cidades, and other places of interest throughout these beloved islands.

But the truth is that the mystery and novelty of coming from such a treasured part of the planet, special as it may be, no longer allows me to remain in a perpetual state of mythical saudade for a geographical home. It did, for a long time, but I worked out my feelings of ambivalence over my family’s immigration to Canada and in later life, through many visits to São Miguel over the last twenty years to both my home town of Ponta Delgada as well as my father’s village of Achada in Nordeste. The familiarity of spending time with both the land and the family members who still live on the island shed away the fantasy of longing for the home of my childhood.

All this preamble is to demonstrate that I most assuredly would not be open to write a reflection on the theme of poverty or of any of the other social ills many who live on the islands face, if I was still under the spell of saudade. The danger of this state of mind and heart is that it sees the world through a rose-tinted glass. It’s like the curation of the best Instagram posts to promote a world that, beautiful as it shows, is also plagued by serious social challenges. The pretty photos on “Insta” divert our attention – first generation immigrants and luso descendants alike – and make us feel good and proud to belong to these islands, even if the Portuguese language is no longer part of everyone’s heritage.

It is with this personal current state of awareness that I was receptive to reading Joel Neto’s novella, Jénifer, or a French Princess: The (Truly) Unknown Islands, translated by Diniz Borges and Katharine F. Baker from the Portuguese, Jénifer, ou a Princesa da Franca: As Ilhas (Realmente) Desconhecidas.

The author inserts himself in the story, reporting documentary-style, to reveal a side of Azorean island life few wish to acknowledge: the persistent presence of poverty in all its disturbing and uncomfortable truth set against a backdrop of breathtaking geographical beauty.

In his raw yet compassionate look at lives ruined or unsustainable due to economic want, resulting in systemic and generational poverty, Joel Neto follows the life of Jénifer Armelim, a young girl of almost eleven, who sits on the stone wall across from her housing project, rather than go to school. Jénifer dreams of being a French Princess. She was told by an aunt that she had genealogical connections with the French, based on her surname; but I think this is her way of imagining a way out, of getting up from the wall that keeps her nowhere. Jénifer also wants to be a unicorn when she grows up or an astronaut or a whaler. In other words, she’s dreaming big of a way out of her confined life of poverty on a small island.

The French Princess ideal could be a substitute for the American Dream so many Azoreans have followed for generations. It’s a looking forward to a place that will bring opportunity, wealth, status, a place in the world. If nothing else, a new car and a house to call one’s own.

Certainly, when the wave of Azorean immigrants came in the thousands to the USA and Canada in the 1960s or earlier, as did my family, they hoped for a better life and for the majority, thankfully, they found it. But the conditions and opportunities for those willing to work any job were to be found in North America, and moving up the economic ladder was a real reward, whether you were educated or not.

In fact, education from a people whose highest academic achievement was mostly the quarta classe was not pursued well into the future generations of immigrant children. Our parents focused on work and saving and buying a home. My father worked in construction, on a tobacco farm, and at Neilson’s Chocolate factory until his retirement. My mother went to work in clothing and toy factories, as did my paternal grandmother and my two aunts on my father’s side.

The immigrant children either attended school or dropped out, usually to work. It made sense to these early immigrant families fleeing the clutches of poverty or close to it, to pursue economic success. If you could make a living off the trades, then why waste time getting a university or college education? One of the faults of the statistical findings in Ontario over the years is the persistent belief that the Portuguese did not participate in higher education. Perhaps many did not, but the alternative was still a productive membership in society, through work.  In my close family circle of first cousins, all of them completed some form of higher education. In my case, I dropped out of high school near the beginning of grade nine. Like Jénifer, I learned to skip school from grade 6 until I formally abandoned school.  The reasons in my case had to do with my mal-adaption to coming to Canada and it wasn’t until my late teenage years that I found a way back into formal education. But at sixteen, I told my parents that I did not want to stay in school so the only other option my father allowed me to pursue was work. And work I did. My first job was on an assembly line and later I worked for Eaton’s, a major department store in Toronto. I learned the value of money and saving up, all before I was formally educated with a high school upgrade, a college diploma in Accounting, and ultimately a university degree.  I mention this because if my parents could not force me to pursue education while I was in my early teens, they guided me to the next best thing, and luckily, the education followed.

However, most of the western world, Canada and the USA included, is now very different from 60 years ago and the opportunities for new Azorean immigrants of today are more challenging that in the past.

I have a young cousin who left her family in São Miguel with the dream of making her life in Canada because there are limited opportunities for her back in the Azores. But she will face the problem of an exorbitant rental market in Toronto and, without any work experience and only a High School diploma, I wonder how soon the dream will become a sour reality. For her sake, I hope she makes it. I have known her most of her life, seen her every time I have gone back to visit family in Achada, a small village in Nordeste, where my father’s family comes from and where some still reside. It is very strange to meet her on my own turf in the city of Toronto. Seeing her for the first time here, I was reminded of my own immigration to Canada.

I was nine years old then, when I came to Toronto with my parents in 1968. We were the last of our immediate family to leave Ponta Delgada, the city where I was born.  My father’s family, his parents, and his two sisters with their children had already left. On my mother’s side, her brother went to Fall River, Massachusetts, USA. My father first went to stay with family in New Bedford before going to Toronto to be with his parents and sisters, saving enough money to later bring my mother and me.

Our family left the Azores for a better life and, I am glad to report, that they did find it. Through hard work and persistence, they provided for their children and gave them the opportunity for a life better than they would ever had, had they stayed on the island.

None of us was poor before immigration but we were not rich either. However, growing up in the Azores, I knew that poverty existed, albeit on the fringes of my modest yet comfortable life in the city of Ponta Delgada. My mother used to volunteer once a week with a charitable organization to hand out milk and bread to children who lived in the neighbourhood of the Bairros Novos, so close to where we lived on Caminho da Levada. I knew of it but I was sheltered from it, and certainly did not visit it as a child.

Yet, poverty was all around me, I realize now, but it wasn’t spoken about. It was acknowledged, at least by my maternal grandmother who would take in a poor neighbour and offer her a free lunch, or give away a pair of shoes received in a container from relatives in New Bedford or somewhere in California.  My mother remembered that once in a while a shipment of clothes and other items would arrive from the land of abundance, and everything was gratefully received and shared.

If we were not officially poor, why did we leave? Why did so many relatives on my father’s side leave their lives in Achada for lives in New Bedford, Massachusetts or Toronto in Canada? On my mother’s side, to Fall River, Massachusetts, Sacramento, California, and even Bermuda.

In my parents’ case, my father had owed more money than he could ever repay and the only solution to be solvent was to emigrate. He managed to pay off all of his debt before saving enough money to buy a house here in Toronto. Back home, my father had a grocery store. He gave credit to everyone, I suspect because many could not pay. But their inability to pay resulted in his insolvency.

I know that money problems had been very much on my father’s mind when he dared write a letter to António de Oliveira Salazar , believing that Portugal’s president of the Estado Novo would miraculously come to the rescue of those citizens in need. I don’t blame my father for his naiveté because when I was growing up, I had learned in school that we could, and should, trust our leader as a benign father figure who cares for his children.

My father had left his home in the countryside as a young boy of fourteen and came to work in the city, Ponta Delgada. That was his opportunity for economic change.  His parents owned some land, vineyards and had their own house, a house that now would be the dream of a thousand tourists who would love to have a view by the ocean but which my eldest cousin, who inherited it, holds on to it as part of our family heritage. It’s where I stay when I visit Achada and soak up the views of the Atlantic Ocean below, grateful to my family for having roots in this part of the world.

My maternal grandfather had been a successful serralheiro. As a blacksmith he did well until that business began to disappear with the replacement of the car. His son, heir to the business, made bad investment choices, so my uncle and his family left for Fall River, USA.

I don’t know what would my life had been like had my parents not immigrated to Canada. But I think I can safely say that all the opportunities afforded me in Canada, would not have been matched by the social conditions of the time back in the Azores.

I’m in touch with young relatives who still live on the island and they tell me of the struggles and challenges they face; lack of job opportunities and the high cost of buying a house are some of the reasons they might even dream of leaving. But if they leave now, where can they go with assurance of a better economic life during such an unstable time, everywhere?

For several years, my mother helped out a young family in São Miguel who live in Feteiras with money which she and a group of her elderly friends send every month. This family simply can’t make ends meet. The husband is unemployed, has a work disability that went uncompensated for, the children have multiple health issues, and their own families are not in a position to help them financially.  But the funds my mother and her friends provided are not sustainable as a means to keep this young family solvent.

Doesn’t the local government care? I don’t know the answer to this question. I do hear a lot about local politicians celebrating the old immigrants, those who have made it across the pond, and now send money or whatever else immigrants do to repay their old country in gratitude for their success. But relying on gifts and the generosity of those people bound by feelings of nostalgia and saudade is an unsustainable and false way of meeting the needs of a people. It’s a band aid solution that keeps the poor entrenched in their poverty in the guise of well-intended charity.

My family was shocked years ago when we began to hear through the newspapers that there was a drug problem on the island. And watching the Netflix fictionalized series, Rabo de Peixe (Turn on the Tide), which tells the famous story of how drugs one day appeared on the island, and ruined a generation, was unbelievable to see. It was so strange for us to think of São Miguel as a place where the infiltration of drugs could be a reality. Young boys stealing old earthenware pots and bedroom Redomas with statues of Saints from their neighbours to sell to antique dealers in the city to support a drug habit. A  documentary of the real events of 2001 will be available soon on Netflix.

A recent book by Rúben Pacheco Correia, Rabo de Peixe: Toda a verdade, tries to restore dignity to the people of Rabo de Peixe who have lived with the stigma of this sad situation for so many years.

Yet, we also knew the trouble of drugs here in Toronto. Many families had at least one offspring addicted to something. But there was vergonha in everyone’s mind and out of shame, no one was willing to admit to, or face head on, issues of drug addiction and family violence in all its ugly permutations.

That things were going from bad to worse was unthinkable to those of us now living so far away from the Azores. Not that Canada was or is free of its own ugly truths about poverty, drug addiction, and family violence. I remember the shock I once felt while visiting Vancouver, turning the corner of a street and seeing a multitude of the unwanted of society on the other side. I simply turned back and walked again on the pretty, safe streets of the city.

And I suppose that’s what is done everywhere: a turning of our backs, a quick refresh of the Instagram page will keep assuring us that our lives are good, that there is only beauty in the world; that it’s better to see that beauty and walk away from what is also the ugly, disturbing, and wretched other side of all the tourism slogans, be them to champion the small Azorean islands or the big cities of the world.

There are now food banks near my upscale neighbourhood and I see huge line ups of people, many who no longer fit the stereotype of the down and out. Since the pandemic, many have lost their jobs and haven’t regained them. They, too, need to eat, but the price of food in Toronto keeps going higher, as does everything else. Are there any Portuguese people in those lines? I don’t know. What we do focus on is mostly on those things that will build us up as an ethnic group: the success of mobility into the suburbs, economic stability, a mortgage free home, money in the bank.  The truth is that Azorean immigrants brought with them a strong work ethic, and for the most part contributed to the building of cities like Toronto. There is no reason not to feel proud of “us” as a group.  But there will always be those who remain disadvantaged for all kinds of reasons.

Poverty and homelessness are not unique to one place but have become a shared global phenomenon. But it’s always particularly shocking when it occurs close to home. It’s when we start to pay attention even if we don’t do anything about it.

It pains me to look at the uncomfortable truth that many people who live in the Azores, our little bit of paradise, as one of my cousins refers to our home in São Miguel, struggle to make ends meet while all this beauty around them is being celebrated by the government and the tourist. I have no solutions to offer. What I have tried to do here is provide a snapshot of my family’s journey of immigration with economic necessity as a motivating fact for leaving to new lands. Sixty years later, my cousins’ children are doing fine. All this built on the foundation of our parents’ and their decision to leave the Azores, a place we still continue to look back to, never really breaking away from it.

Jénifer, the young girl in Joel Neto’s narrative, represents so many of those who, like her, wish for the title of Princess of France; or some other mythical, hopeful title that stands for security, shelter, food, the good life. I hope that all the Jénifers who live constrained by poverty find their France in these unknown islands.

The Portuguese version is an excellent read.

A good review written by Aníbal C. Pires.

The title of Julie Costa Langley’s semi-bilingual (Portuguese) children’s book, What Is Saudade? captured my attention for many reasons but at first only because of the beautiful wistful cover of a young girl resting her arms on a car window looking out with a dreaming far-off look in her eyes. The car is taking her on a ride along a country road on the green island of Terceira filled with hydrangea, where the story of discovery takes place. The cover illustration it a fitting symbol for the journey young Rosie takes from her home in the United States for a visit to her  family’s ancestral home in the Azores.

At the start, Rosie only knows about the Azores through her parents’ stories of missing the home of their own childhoods. She is curious about her mother’s tears after a long-distance telephone call with her mother, Rosie’s Avózinha. “It’s just saudade,” explains her Mãe when Rosie asks for the meaning of saudade.

At this point, saudade is not something Rosie can feel, having never experienced it.

Many have tried to define the meaning of saudade; everything from “something only the Portuguese feel” to some form of longing for a past that never actually existed to other in-between definitions.

Julie Costa Langley’s book does not attempt to give a cerebral definition or explanation of saudade but rather relies on the storytelling to show the reader what saudade is really like. Something which Rosie only comes to understand and “feel” through experience by the end of the trip when she is returning home. By then she is looking out of the window of an airplane and the expression on her face, the tear coming out of her eye, shows us that she now knows what it is.

I love how the story closes, and for the sake of letting you, the reader, discover it for yourself, I will just say that it moved me in my own connections with saudade.

The text, a tale of travel and discovery of the island’s beauty while in search of family, connection, and a sense of a home away from home, comes to life with beautiful illustrations by Mai S. Kemble. She really captured the look and feel of the Açores I know.

The illustrations of island scenes are particularly evocative and given that her work was inspired by photographs and research only, she got it spot on.

Although written in simple direct language for the sake of a child’s understanding, I hope this book will resonate with anyone who has an Azorean background and with those who are interested in exploring a bit of the Azorean islands, especially Terceira, where the story takes place.

What is Saudade? is available at: https://solo.to/julielangley

Memória: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers, edited by Fernanda Viveiros and published in 2013 was an important debut collection that introduced, perhaps for the first time in English, Canadian writers of Portuguese origin or descent to the literary scene.

This new collection, featuring nonfiction, short stories, and poetry, also edited by Viveiros and published by her small Vancouver-based press, Arquipélago Press, brings back some familiar voices from Memória, but I was glad to see the introduction of new writers to what is becoming a growing body of literary work marking the presence of the Portuguese in Canada. Thanks to her efforts to bring together these various literary voices, we have the opportunity to get to know more writers of Canadian Portuguese heritage in Here & Elsewhere: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers, releasing this month.

It was a pleasure for me to open this anthology and discover the writers whose work graces its pages and bring a wide range of experiences and perspectives of what it means to be people of “here” and “elsewhere.”

“Inheritance,” Kelly Pedro’s short story of a father addressing his small daughter is a tender and moving epistolary-style writing that unfolds in an economy of words to reveal so much of his past and the legacy of that past that he wishes to pass on to his daughter with the hope that even though leaving the painful past behind, she could survive life on her own.

“Senhor Silva’s Last Ride” by Robert Piva Fielding, tells the story of an old man revisiting his past on a flight to his island of birth, revealing themes of disconnection, alienation, and eventual heartbreak. This story’s ending made me gasp for air with its powerful truth of a dying generation of immigrants replaced by the modern tourists who visit the islands but without roots tying them to memory and love.

José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço’s short story “I Will Always Love You, But Can I Pleaser Have My Stuff Back?” is a reminder that just because you have a Portuguese name or background, your literary efforts don’t necessarily have to have a Portuguese theme running through it to be included in this anthology. It’s just good writing.

“Pico,” by Richard Simas is another story on the ubiquitous theme of trying to make sense of what it means for newer generations of Portuguese living in the diaspora searching for connection with their ancient roots, in this case, Azorean. The final sentence of this short story reveals the painful longing for a connection with the ancient volcanic world that is now fragile and tenuous.

Irene Marques is a prolific writer, of both prose and poetry, already showcased in the Memória anthology.  This time, she graces the pages of this new anthology with “Letters from the War: The Natural Bust of the Portuguese.” Written in the epistolary style, lyrical and textured with the usual trademark of Irene’s exquisite writing.

Humberto da Silva’s piece, “Variations on a Drowning,” about a tragic mining accident and the telling of truth or a version of truth one can only bear in memory, is told in a tightrope walk of humour intertwined with seriousness that leaves the reader in both smiles and tears. It was good to read Humberto again after his contribution in the Memória anthology.

Esmeralda Cabral is a captivating memoirist and storyteller, exploring her Azorean roots with candor and insight both in her short stories and in her recent memoir about her family’s trip to Portugal.  For this new collection, her contribution is titled “Daughter of Lagoa.”  It’s a delightful telling of her visits back to São Miguel, the island of her birth—and mine also—and I enjoyed her observations on the meaning of language and local accents as a fundamental part of one’s identity; as something not to lose over time living in Canada, but consciously practicing it and passing it on to her children.

A new voice to the anthology is Sonia Nicholson, whose “Good Citizen” walks us through the tense bureaucratic nightmare of trying to obtain Portuguese citizenship from Canada. Told through a weaving tale of adventure and hope, Sonia tells an entertaining yet profoundly real experience that I have heard before from others who can confirm the veracity of this first-generation Portuguese Canadian in search of a cartão de cidadão as a way to reaffirm their belonging to the ancestral world of Portugal.

The last entry in Here & Elsewhere is fittingly paulo da costa’s essay, “Beyond Bullfights and Ice Hockey: An Architecture of Multicultural Identity.” It’s always a deep pleasure to read paulo da costa, both his fiction as well as his essays on identity and culture. His philosophical ponderings can be appreciated by anyone who has thought about who they are and what is their place in the world. His invitation and suggestion that those of us who have more than one identity embrace all of the self and be at one whether in Portuguese or in the Canadian lives we of these double identity try to make sense of.

Finally, I must say a few words about my own writing which is included in this company of writers. I am grateful to see in print, “Tia Catarina,” a retelling of a true moment and event in time that inspired me to elevate it into a memory in honour of my partner’s beloved Aunt, now forever anthologized in Here & Elsewhere.

I will end by mentioning the presence of the poets in this collection but I will leave it to others to do their own reflections on the powerful words of Sonja Pinto and Paul Serralheiro. Their poems entice the reader to enter imagined worlds best savoured through their own reading. For me, poetry is such a personal thing and I am not equipped to write about it, so I’ll leave it here.

I hope you will read this anthology. There’s something here for everyone to appreciate and discover: those of us who came from the old world to those of the newest generations, like my nieces and nephews who have grown up mostly Canadian but who need, and hopefully will want to, get to know the heritage of their families. It’s also a window to those who are not of Portuguese heritage but who are curious enough to get to know us through stories and words that reveal who we are.

Also posted in Filamentos (artes e letras)

Available in Toronto at Saudade.

When I read Descobri que era Europeia: Impressões duma viagem à América ­- Natália Correia’s trip to America in 1950 – it was with the knowledge that I would be collaborating with Katharine F. Baker on our English translation of Correia’s engaging account of her experience of discovering North America and the people she met, both famous and ordinary.  Natália, one of Portugal’s most significant writers of the twentieth century, gives us a vivid account of life set in a very specific time and place with astute observations and commentary, in a mix of diary and journalistic styles that is a thoroughly enjoyable read. She takes us along on her discovery of the world she encounters, which in turn leads her to reflect on her own identity through the encounter she had with the identity of the “other.”

There is something immediate and modern about her writing that is very much of our time, too. I suspect that if Natália Correia were writing today, her travel account to the United States would have been documented through her Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

In America, I Discovered I Was European reads like a delightful series of social documentary and travel snippets posted on various social media platforms. If the technology existed back in the 1950s, we would have followed Correia’s journey of observation, gossip and impressions of an America we can experience through her vivid writing. Katharine and I tried to be as faithful as possible to the original Portuguese text, but also conscious of certain terms, expressions and attitudes which reveal Natália as a person of her time, that might be challenging for a reader of today to accept beyond a social-historical context. With a translator’s skill, Baker acknowledges current sensibilities especially around racism and gender in rendering Correia’s travelogue to a modern reader.

It was a pleasure to work on this translation with Katharine F. Baker, and I thank her profoundly for trusting me to collaborate with her on this journey of bringing Natalia’s In America, I Discovered I Was European to English readers.

Also posted in Filamentos (artes e letras)

Available in June 2025 through the Tagus Press arm of the University of Massachusetts Press. You can also obtain the book through Indigo and  Amazon.

Today I felt like revisiting a short piece of writing I did in 2004 and published by my friend Lise Watson, founder and editor of the magazine ‘Twas (Toronto World Arts Scene), in Volume 8, issue One January/February 2004. I am grateful to her for encouraging me to write this reflection. As I read it again, I am caught up in the memory of that time, 21 years ago, and I resist the temptation to edit and revise this raw, but written from the heart, text. So, here it is:

My father, who is retired from full-time employment, has the fun job of delivering one of several weekly Portuguese newspapers to many of the Portuguese businesses in Toronto. Unfortunately, he was not able to work for a period of six weeks this past summer after a major operation. So, my brother and I, in the interest of helping our dad keep his job, volunteered to do the weekly delivery of the “Nove Ilhas,” a name alluding to the Nine Islands which make up the Azores archipelago. We both took a day off work from our administrative jobs at the University of Toronto each week to enter the fascinating world of newspaper delivery guys!

Our mentor and guide for our first time out on the route was our mother, who normally helps my father with the delivery each week.  She organizes the contact list, the number of newspapers for each drop off and, generally, tells my father where to go.  Now, she’s the one sitting in the back seat, teaching her sons the tricks of the trade.  But she’s more concerned about how my brother and I will behave.  “No goofing off….don’t embarrass me…All these people know your father….remember that you are representing him.” My brother, who is 28 and married with children, looks at me in disbelief.  This is the thanks we get for trying to help?  Where is the gratitude? Mom proves to be a tyrant boss:  she criticizes us when we ask to stop for a break.  “Your father is twice your age and never needs a break.  You are malandros, lazy.”  Later, we ask “Can we stop for a lunch break?”  Again, we get a cold response to this request.  Apparently, my parents never take a break and work straight through the 6 to 7 hours it takes them to cover the entire route.  Luckily, today happens to be my 45^th birthday, so mom takes pity and treats us to lunch at the wonderful Bairrada Churrasqueira on College near Dufferin.  We deliver the newspaper there anyway, so it becomes a good strategic stop.  The back patio is buzzing with a heavy lunch crowd, mostly speaking Portuguese and enjoying authentic regional dishes.  The patio has a stunning large brick oven with a roasting pig on the spit.  The place smells of Portugal.

The route is long and there are many stops close to each other.  My brother and I are constantly taking our seatbelts off and putting them back on.  It’s a natural reflex.  However, our  mother, the reigning monarch in the back seat overseeing her minions, laughs at us. “I don’t understand you boys… your father never leaves his seatbelt on when on delivery… not when he has to get out of the car every few minutes… this is a waste of time…”  My brother and I shake our heads incredulously. “What if we get a ticket?” we innocently ask.  “You won’t get a ticket” she assures us, “you’re on delivery!”  We make a mental note not to invite her back the following week.  She will have to wait at home to hear our weekly report on how it went.

I found the sheer volume of Portuguese owned businesses extraordinary, everything from banks, doctors, bakeries,  cafés, butchers, grocery stores, pharmacies, travel agencies, and, of course, ubiquitously, restaurants.  Most are located in the official “Little Portugal,” bordered by College, south to Dundas, and by Bathurst west to Lansdowne.  However, many businesses are still found in the original Portuguese settlement at Kensington Market, known forever as “Agusta” by the Portuguese, who like other immigrant groups found a welcoming space in this area.  You will also find Portuguese restaurants and bakeries spread out throughout other pockets of the city, some as far north as Eglinton and Keele.  All these establishments have a special place or box where the newspapers are left and picked up very quickly by news-hungry patrons.  One of them is an old man who would be waiting for us religiously at the same time and place every week.  Before I could get out of the car, there he would be with hands outstretched asking for two copies of the newspaper.  He must be too busy in his old age to wait for me to exit the car and drop my stack of paper at the café in front of him.

I took delight in hearing people speak Portuguese in their everyday environment.  With each delivery I would hear a different sound of Portuguese; perhaps the  heavy and mumbled closed vowels of the  Azorean accent at the local bar/café; or the  easier to understand (because more articulated) continental Portuguese at one of the bakeries or grocery stores; or, of course, the melodic Brazilian accent at the billiard hall further down the street.   Believe it or not, it is not unusual to find men already hanging out at local bars before lunch, to watch all the latest soccer games via satellite and to have the mandatory pick me up beer. I go inside each place to leave my bundle of papers.  At each stop I am usually greeted with a polite “Bom Dia.”  I like this act of civility, a last rite from the old country.  In some places, the owner or store clerk will ask me how my father is doing.  They always send him their cumprimentos (best wishes), and remark that we are such terrific sons for filling in for him like this.  The family, after all, is sacrosanct to the Portuguese.  All these people who frequent the bars and cafés, the bakeries and grocery stores, eagerly await the weekly papers as the source of news for the abundant upcoming social events, held at numerous social clubs and local parish churches. So, they are happy to see me and my stack of newspapers arrive on time.

I also enjoyed the sound of music!  If you want to get a sense of what the Portuguese listen to, pop your head into a bar/bakery, bookstore, or just walk along Dundas and Ossignton area.  You will catch a note of fado as sung by Amália Rodrigues, known as the “Queen of Fado” and revered all over Portugal as a national icon; but, more likely, you will hear the fresh young voice and interpreter of fado, Mariza.  Her youth, beauty, and hip videos have attracted a new generation of listeners. It might prove even more difficult to hear the sad and haunting music of Madredeus, the most internationally known Portuguese group of the late ‘90s.  Their sound, with the luminous yet melancholic voice of Teresa Salgueiro, to the accompaniment of traditional Portuguese guitar, the cello and the accordion is a mixture of fado roots and other traditional styles. Sadder sounding than the fado, the music does not please the sensibilities of many of the older Portuguese immigrants who, like my mother, prefer to hear ‘musica alegre,’ popularly known as Pimba.  Pimba is happy and bubbly sounding and borrows from traditional folklore musical styles but adds modern guitars and drum beats. You can hear this sound everywhere but it does not represent the more interesting side of Portuguese music.  Compare it to listening to Britney Spears versus Annie Lennox!  Finally, at Cabo Verde restaurant south of Dundas on Ossington you will hear the sound of Cesaria Evora and also other less known African/Portuguese roots music.

Needless to say, I have not focused on the tedious details of life as a newspaper delivery guy, of what it’s like to go early morning to pick up thousands of newspapers from the printers, load them in the car, organize the paper route, get in and out of the car every few minutes, organize the paper route, get your hands covered in black ink, dodge the heavy traffic of the day, avoid getting ticketed, and so on.  But what I wanted to leave you with is the memory of my weekly journey into the heart of Portuguese community life, a fitting participation on my part, during the year in which we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the official arrival of the Portuguese to Canada.  Thanks, dad, for this memorable opportunity! And, oh, yeah, mom, too.

trust the bluer skies: Meditations on Fatherhood by paulo da costa

It had been a while since I last saw you and I was eager to see you again, this time on a cold February night at Casa do Alentejo in Toronto where you came to spend an evening with a group of Portuguese readers interested in hearing what you had to say about your new book, trust the bluer skies: meditations on fatherhood.

It was worth staying up late, me who likes to go to bed early in winter, not just to connect with you for a few moments in the physical world, but to come away with your book, your latest words to savour and digest in the silence and stillness of my home, where I spent time with you again, through the pages you gifted Koah, your beloved four year old son; and so generously shared this intimate father and son epistle with your readers, querido paulo.

It felt intrusive at first, like coming upon a letter meant for someone else, revealing intimate details and a revelation of the soul meant only for the eyes of the beloved, and yet, as I read on, I was drawn in to learning about your five month journey to Portugal’s Vale de Cambra, where you gave your little son the richest gift of all: your time, your instruction as a father, your family back home, your landscape of mountains and farms and the beauty of a Portugal you had spent time in your youth before settling in Victoria, Canada.

You took your family; your wife and little daughter are there, too, powerfully present but silent, so that we, as readers, won’t be distracted by the relationship you have with Koah.  How lucky he is, your son, to have this memoir you have written for him. I hope that when he’s older he will come to appreciate the value of the experiences you have given him when he was a little boy.

I can’t tell you how many times, as I kept on reading about your tenderness for Koah, I wished my own father had left me something as profoundly beautiful as your written account of a visit to the past, to discover a rich paternal heritage in the hills of Portugal so that your son could bring it back with him to Canada for his future.

A journey into Portuguese culture, at times amusing, especially the chapter on futebol, questioning that national sacred symbol of identity for most men and boys, when Koah simply just wants to kick a ball around and have fun. The chapter on the relationship with farm animals is heartbreaking to me because I share your values, dear paulo, and so I understood the struggle to make peace with dear family members who continue to live with an old-fashioned treatment and understanding of animals.

You offer Koah alternative thinking and options on everything from the environment, social media, food, culture, and what it means to be a Portuguese Canadian.

Your journey ended five months later with a return trip to Canada, your home. But the question of where is your home remains there for the next time you take Koah back to Portugal, another home.

Readers can look forward to a good read in your trust the bluer skies; they will be able to question their own values and their own ideas about gender stereotypes, identity, belonging and fatherhood; for this alone, I give you a grande obrigado, a big thank you, for letting us inside your world of father and son.

Devin Meireles is a young Portuguese-Canadian writer whose two self-published books celebrate his love of family, The Portuguese Immigrant: Atlantic Heritage Story, and his love of the place his family comes from. Finding Madeira is his latest book. You can find information on both through his blog, lusoloonie.

Devin’s contribution to the Portuguese Canadian diaspora dialogue is to be applauded. It warms my heart to know that the history of Portuguese immigrants to Canada continues to be written  and that the stories of individual families become part of the collective narrative of the luso experience.

By writing about his grandparents in The Portuguese Immigrant, Devin gives his family the greatest honour I can think of: perpetuating them through the written word; by writing about Madeira, he honours his place of family origin.

My interest here is not to provide a review of Devin’s writing but rather to celebrate him for his efforts in sharing his personal family history with everyone who cares about where they come from. I hope he will inspire a new generation of Portuguese-Canadians to write their own family stories while discovering and claiming their heritage of both family and geographical place.