Obituary
Professor Angelo Principe died on March 16, 2026, at St. Michael’s Hospital in his 96th year. He passed peacefully with his daughters, Cornelia and Concetta, by his side. He will be missed by his family, friends, paesani, and by the many members of the Italian community who are as socially engaged as he was.
A celebration of life will be announced at a later date.
Concetta: The story that keeps coming to mind since my father’s death is a story that exemplifies where he had come from, the time and place, the politics he was raised with. When my father was small, he asked his father for a black shirt. “What do you want with a black shirt?” his father asked, knowing full well it was meant to honour Mussolini, whom he was extremely critical of. “There’s a school assembly tomorrow, and the teacher told us to wear one”. His father took my father’s white shirt, put it in the oven, and then gave the soot-covered thing back to him. “Tell them,” he said, “this is as black as we can afford.”
My father came to Canada from Delianuova, a tiny town in Reggio, Calabria, in the late 50s or early 60s (we can’t remember!), at a time when there were few prospects in Italy. He had a strong mind and the ambition to become an intellectual. That he accomplished in spades.
He arrived without a word of English. In fact, when he arrived in Halifax, he thought all the stores, from shoes to furniture stores, were selling salt, which he thought was strange. The Italian word for “salt” is “sale”. He didn’t know. And on the train ride from Halifax to Toronto, he was served spaghetti, which, horror of horrors, came straight out of a can!
Once in Toronto, his first order of business, apart from finding employment anywhere he could, which included selling bread and planning and running Italian weddings, was to learn English. At the same time as working to provide, he got a high school diploma, followed shortly by a BA, which he passed with solid As. Some decades later, he earned his Master’s and then his PhD in Italian-Canadian history from the University of Toronto. He taught Italian cinema at universities in Toronto and published articles on Italian Canadian history and culture, as well as several books, including the one he is most known for, “The Darkest Side of the Fascist Years: The Italian Canadian Press 1920 to 1942”.
It is no wonder my father's academic interests focused on the fascist and anti-fascist presses in Canada; he was continuing his father's legacy in his own terms. This legacy is what he has instilled in us as vitally important: be politically astute, be ethical, have integrity, care for your community—all of the values by which he lived his long and bountiful life. We loved him for what he could bequeath to us, and in turn, he loved us for making Canada a home, which was never anything he could have expected before coming here, but in the end, was all he ever really wanted.
The family kindly invites you to share your memories and condolences here, offering comfort and support during this difficult time"
As there is not a visitation or funeral at this time, we ask that you please refrain from sending flowers. Thank you
