Sporting Multiculturalism: Toronto’s Postwar European Immigrants, Gender, Diaspora, and the Grassroots Making of Canadian Diversity by Stephen Fielding B.A. (Hons), University of Winnipeg, 2005 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of History Stephen Fielding, 2018 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. Supervisory Committee Sporting Multiculturalism: Toronto’s Postwar European Immigrants, Gender, Diaspora, and the Grassroots Making of Canadian Diversity by Stephen Fielding B.A. (Hons), University of Winnipeg, 2005 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2008 Supervisory Committee Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross, (Department of History) Supervisor Dr. Lynne Marks, (Department of History) Departmental Member Dr. Eric Sager, (Department of History) Departmental Member Dr. Avigail Eisenberg, (Department of Political Science) Outside Member ii Abstract This dissertation offers an alternative lens to understand Canada’s gradual embrace of multiculturalism. Scholars have typically “worked back” from Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous 1971 declaration to unearth the origins of multicultural legislation, focusing on departmental policies, intense lobbying by ethnic organizations, and changing attitudes during the sixties’ container of “third force” (of neither English nor French origin) activism. This story of Canadian multiculturalism is told from the grassroots level of immigrant leisure, where a pluralistic envisioning of English Canada was foreshadowed, renegotiated, and acted out “from below.” It argues that the thousands of European immigrant men who played and watched sports on Toronto’s sport periphery were agents of change. They created a competitive model of popular multiculturalism that emphasized cultural distinctiveness during a period of rapid social and political transformation and national self-reflection. By the 1980s, the first- generation immigrants and community leaders moved this model of competitive pluralism into transnational spheres and interacted with other diasporic projects when they sent their Canadian-born children on “homeland trips” to Europe to discover their roots in the context of sport tournaments. At the same time, popular multiculturalism moved into the mainstream when the City of Toronto appropriated soccer fandom as the example for its own rebranding as a metropolis of urban harmony and conviviality. This dissertation also studies how and why one immigrant community played an outsized role in the grassroots organization of diversity. Italians were the first to establish a profitable model out of ethnic sport, and the estimated 250,000 people who celebrated unscripted on the streets of Toronto after Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory, it is argued, produced a watershed moment in the history of Canadian multiculturalism. The World Cup party inaugurated new modes of citizen participation in the public sphere, produced the narrative with which Italians formed a collective memory of their post-migration experience, and prompted mainstream political and commercial interests to represent themselves to the public in the symbols and language of multiculturalism as sport. This dissertation also shows how the movement of a male-driven, competitive pluralism to the centre, sometimes accompanied by outbursts of rough masculinities, revealed the paradoxical problem that in the new vision of inclusivity, cultural distinctiveness had to be identified, maintained, and sometimes defended to survive. iii Table of Contents Title Page ......................................................................................................................................... i Supervisory Committee ................................................................................................................. ii Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I Unsettled Scores: Immigrant Men and the Making of Popular Multiculturalism on Toronto’s Sport Periphery ................................................... 29 II At Play in the Fields of Diaspora: The Children of Immigrants and Homeland Trips to Europe, 1982-2000 ....................................................... 104 III Spontaneity and Civility: Italian Toronto’s 1982 World Cup Victory Party, Collective Memory, and Joining the Canadian Mainstream through Soccer Fandom ..................................................................................... 165 IV Appropriate Fandom: Popular Multiculturalism, Civic Branding, and Italian Toronto after the 1982 World Cup .................................................. 243 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 301 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 309 Appendix 1: Participant Consent Form ...................................................................................... 331 Appendix 2: UVic Office of Research Services. Human Research Ethics Board Approval ......... 333 iv List of Tables Table 1: NSL First Division, 1941 .................................................................................................. 35 Table 2: NSL Premier Division, 1958 ............................................................................................ 35 Table 3: European Touring Teams in Toronto by Period and Geographic Origin ........................ 37 Table 4: Centro Scuola Azzurri, 1987 ......................................................................................... 115 Table 5: Canadian Macedonian All-Stars, 1986 ......................................................................... 129 Table 6: First Portuguese Canadian Club, 2000 ......................................................................... 152 v List of Figures Figure 1: 1982 World Cup Street Scene on St. Clair West ............................................................. 1 Figure 2: Toronto Italia Striker closes in on opposing keeper c. 1958 ......................................... 38 Figure 3: Bruno Bertolin greeted by fans c. 1958 ........................................................................ 45 Figure 4: Newcomer men congregate outside the Portuguese Bookstore c. 1968 .................... 46 Figure 5: Children march with flags before Toronto Croatia FC takes the field c. 1976 ............. 79 Figure 6: Centro Scuola’s u-14 boys’ team celebrates winning I Giocchi della Gioventù ......... 119 Figure 7: The Canadian Macedonian Hockey League All-Stars, 1986 ........................................ 128 Figure 8: The First Portuguese Canadian club Team, 2000 ....................................................... 150 Figure 9: York Jets Soccer Team, 1993 ....................................................................................... 160 Figure 10: Multiple generations of Italian men dance the tarantella, 1982 ............................. 166 Figure 11: Children celebrate Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory ................................................... 178 Figure 12: Italian man plays accordion ...................................................................................... 190 Figure 13: Brazilian Italian Friendship Society Poster, 1994 ...................................................... 259 vi Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross, for his guidance, motivation, immense knowledge, and patience. His exceptional gift of “tidy thinking” turned our meetings into islands of clarity during the long and fatiguing Ph.D. research and writing process. I am particularly grateful for his listening ear and willingness to support a different approach to migration and ethnic history. Although no supervisory relationship is “normal,” ours has the unconventional distinction that his partner, Ilana, a midwife, successfully delivered my first child. This supplemental service was not written into the original Ph.D. acceptance letter. Dr. Stanger-Ross’ personal advice of “Survive and Enjoy” also became a new life maxim as I entered and embraced fatherhood. My earnest appreciation also extends to the other members of my thesis committee: Dr. Lynne Marks, Dr. Eric Sager, Dr. Avigail Eisenberg, and Dr. Roberto Perin. Their expertise and critical challenges helped me to identify, strengthen, and in some cases reconsider the key contributions of this project. Other scholars who provided