L’Italia Nuova

Published: 3774 ST. Denis St, Montreal

L’Italia nuova began publication in 1937 as the revamped version of L’Italia. Owned and edited by Giulio Romano, the newspaper continued in its predecessors’ footpaths and included dedicated sections in English (The English Page) and French (L’Italie Nouvelle) that focused on brief news items about international politics and culture imbued with fascist propaganda; in particular, reporters provided updates from the war front and on the domestic affairs in Italy.

The newer version of L’Italia consisted of much larger single issues, boasting an average of fourteen pages that touched on a variety of aspects of contemporary life in the Italian community and beyond.

The mission of this multilingual paper was to indoctrinate Italian readers to fascist ideology, which was summed up by the motto ‘A newspaper in every Italian home’ that accompanied the title of the periodical.

L’Italia nuova had an ambitious agenda and proclaimed itself not only to be ‘the organ of the Italian community of Canada’ but also ‘the greatest and most authoritative newspaper in the British Empire devoted exclusively to the interest and the education of the Italian speaking people of Montreal and Canada from Coast to Coast.’ As such it covered several aspects of communitarian life and tried to cater to the interests of a most varied public.

L’Italia nuova was a rather articulated newspaper divided into regular thematic sections: political news was discussed on the first page where Romano’s editorials tackled the most relevant topics for public debate on the international stage, especially the Italian parliamentary activities and war front manoeuvres, while the rest of the newspaper maintained the flavour and appearance of older ethnic newspapers and gave space to adverts from local Italian Canadian businesses and news from the largest Italian community of Canada in the section Vita italiana a Montreal (Italian Life in Montreal).

The activities of the local lodges and benevolent Italian Canadian clubs had their own dedicated page and so did the youth, who could read fables and moralizing stories with a fascist twist in the section Per i più piccoli (For the younger ones). The presence of a page entirely devoted to the youth is symptomatic of how a fascist indoctrination strategy was embraced by the editorial team whose aim was to instill in Italian Canadian children and their families a strong sentiment of belonging to the motherland and teach the staples of fascist para-military doctrine such as loyalty and camaraderie.

Similarly, the newspaper occasionally dedicated a page-long rubric to the description of the best practices in the management of household affairs and provided housewives with tips on how to properly run their homes. The section Fra le pareti domestiche (Between the domestic walls) was yet another strategic part of the periodical, aiming to highlight and celebrate the role of the Italian massaie (housewives) as the cornerstone of the fascist family.

Finally, advertisements of Italian products (such as Toscani cigars) were meant to support the regime in its autarchic economic project, while local and Italian literary authors were published both to elicit patriotic sentiments (e.g., Liborio Lattoni’s poems) and offer in instalments some entertaining mainstream books widely published and read back in Italy, e.g., Carolina Invernizio’s romantic novels.

• Montréal
  Quebec, Canada
  

  Latitude: 45.50008 Longitude: -73.59918