A First Communion Procession in the streets of Toronto, June 1966

St. Mary’s church in Toronto welcomed the wave of Portuguese immigrants who came, mostly from the Azores, in the 1950s and 1960s.

Catholicism was an integral part of daily life for the families who held on to their traditions and gifted them to their children as a significant part of their personal identity and heritage.

The ceremony of a First Communion is a rite of passage in a young person’s religious life. The celebration which took place in June of 1966, sixty years ago, included a procession through the streets of Toronto in the vicinity of the old and venerable church originally established by Irish immigrants.

It was common at the time for Catholics to participate in religious processions of this kind, but what makes this one so significant to me is that is shows how quickly the Portuguese integrated themselves into the rituals and celebrations of their new country while paying homage to the traditions they brought from the homeland.

My father, Antonio Cabral de Melo, took these photographs that historically show the early professions of religious faith of the Portuguese Community in Toronto as they walked the city streets and claimed them for their own, celebrating their Portugueseness and, in a way, asserting their place in the country of acolhimento.

The Procession most likely making their way back to St. Mary’s from the Sir Isaac Brock Bridge at the bottom of Bathurst Street, near Front Street