Montreal Gazette

You're going where? To do what?

Fri Dec 31 2010 Page: A3 Section: News Byline: ANDY RIGA Source: The Gazette Series: LOOKING BACK AT 2010 Illustrations: Colour Photo: ST. JOSEPH'S ORATORY VIA REUTERS / Covering the canonization of Brother Andre in Rome in October allowed a one-week taste of the old country.;

I wasn't thinking about the chances of being gunned down gangland-style outside Little Italy's Madonna della Difesa church. Nor was I worried about the scary-looking security guard eyeing the mourners and gawkers (and undercover reporters trying to look their most solemn) entering the church, and shooing away suspected media types. No, as I turned the corner onto Dante St. wearing my funeral/wedding suit and an impassive look, my Italianimmigrant parents were on my mind. What would they think of me trying to slip into the funeral of alleged Mafia kingpin Nicolo Rizzuto, shot dead through a window of his home five days earlier? "You're going where?! To do what?!" I could hear them saying. The Mafia wasn't discussed within earshot of children in my home, though I distinctly remember hearing the names Vic Cotroni and Paolo Violi, the powerful bosses the Rizzuto clan is said to have stepped over in the 1970s. My law-abiding mother and father would have had our heads had my brother or I associated with anyone remotely connected

to the Mob or any other criminal. My parents left their tiny Abruzzo town and came to Montreal 50 years ago. They worked hard to make a go of it in a new country, my mother a seamstress in Chabanel St. garment factories, my father a machine operator at a bottling plant. One of their main goals was that their two sons end up with better jobs; they succeeded. I wonder if my parents, who died years ago, would have agreed with Italian-Canadians who bristle at news coverage of the Mafia in general and Rizzuto's fate in particular, arguing it's overblown and tarnishes all Italian immigrants and their descendants. They never discussed it with me, but perhaps my parents suffered from the stereotyping of Italians that I have never experienced, perhaps because I grew up in a non-Italian part of town and my name doesn't strike most people as Italian. Perhaps they would have worried about my safety. After all, the war of attrition in Montreal's underworld has claimed the lives of five Rizzuto family members and associates over 16 months in brazen attacks, not to mention a still-unsolved kidnapping.

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I figure I would have tried to change the subject. I would have turned the conversation to another story I covered this year, one my parents would surely have approved of: the canonization of Brother Andre in October in Rome, an assignment that allowed me to spend a week in the old country. I would have told them the reason I ended up with these two choice assignments: I can speak and understand Italian, an asset at a funeral conducted entirely in that language or when covering an event in the Eternal City. I would have thanked them for forcing me to go to Italian school on Saturday mornings when I was a kid, where the dialect I spoke at home was replaced by standard Italian. I hated and resisted the weekly chore but am now thankful because it left me more or less trilingual. I would have let them know that I still go to Italian school on Saturday mornings. These days, it's to drop off my daughters. They seem to like the English-at-home, French-at-weekday-school, Italian-on-Saturdays routine. They're picking up Italian despite the fact that they never had grandparents with whom to practise it. And they're looking forward to a much-discussed family trip to Italy one day. Of course, if they ever try to attend a Mob funeral, they'll be in big trouble. ariga@montrealgazette.com

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