Chance Conversation: Shoebox

Research Associate Dept: Cancian was a student taking an intensive language course in Italy when she visited her father's family in the northern town of Spilimbergo more than 20 years ago, according to Montreal Gazette. "The words, tuo per sempre yours forever immediately struck me," recalls Cancian, now an historian and research associate at Concordia University. "I realized that my grandparents too had been in love, and that they too had been separated by migration and, like millions of others, had turned to letter writing to remain emotionally connected despite the physical distance." Ask Sonia Cancian what inspired her research into Italian postwar immigration and she can't help thinking about her grandmother and a simple white shoebox. A chance conversation about the past sent her grandmother scurrying to the bedroom to retrieve the box, crammed with letters her young husband had sent home during the months he had worked in France in the late 1920s. As reported in the news.
@t intensive language course, montreal gazette