The mind of a revolutionary thinker

Giacomo Forneri was the first to teach Italian and Modern Languages at Toronto university

He was born in 1789, the same year when in Paris the Constituent Assembly abolished feudal rights and promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; the year of the French Revolution began. It would sweep the Western world. He, Giacomo Forneri, too young to join, chased the revolution across Europe before becoming the teacher who introduced Modern Languages at the University of Toronto. For 13 years he taught French, Spanish, German and, of course, Italian.
He did more than lecture on grammar and literature, though; he was an exemplary man, and the admiration of his students who long survived him.
He was born in Racconigi, in the province of Turin, in 1789. His ancestors had distinguished themselves in the Crusades, his family was well off, his father a lawyer; he studied with the Jesuits, then graduated in Law.
He was to become a lawyer himself, but he passionately absorbed the ideals of the French Revolution, and its last great leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, captured his fancy. The Emperor's deeds were raising the enthusiasms of the liberals of the period, who saw those deeds - and young Forneri shared this opinion - as helping the people shed the yoke of tyrannical regimes. Therefore, in 1812 Forneri enlisted with a group of friends in the Napoleonic army that was leaving for its Russian campaign. This was a rather unfortunate turn of events: he found himself fighting for the incompetent Gerolamo Bonaparte trying to restore the Kingdom of Westphalia, which then fell into the hands of the Cossacks. They offered him freedom and the rank of captain in exchange for his enlisting in the Russian army; he preferred to remain a prisoner.
Humiliated in his revolutionary aspirations, Forneri returned to Turin determined to go back to practising law, but the codes did not elicit any emotion in him. The meaning of life for him was in the torching of the Bastille. He joined the Carbonari and took active part in the riots following King of Piedmont Carlo Alberto's refusal to accept constitutional reforms. The riots were a failure and Forneri, pursued by the police, was forced to flee to Spain where he enlisted with the rank of captain in the Italian Cacciatori (Light Infantry), a unit of fusiliers siding with Spanish reformers.
Wounded in a firefight, he had to flee again and went to London, completely broke because the Piedmontese government had seized the conspicuous estate of his family. In London, thanks to his linguistic knowledge (he could speak English, French, Spanish and German) he became a teacher. At first he taught in a private school in the British capital, then in Kingston-on-Hull where he lived for a decade and made many friends, especially among Polish exiles; he even joined their patriotic association, the Friends of Poland, with the enthusiasm of an unrepentant revolutionary.
In London he met Elizabeth S. Wells, the daughter of a rich British merchant. He married her in 1836 when his fame as a language teacher had grown beyond the circle of private schools, and he had even become a teacher at Belfast's Royal Academy. Those were years of intense study; he published political and educational treatises, a grammar of the German language and some poems in Italian. He also cultivated his passion for modeling; he reconstructed a miniature plan of ancient Rome in plaster, and his work was displayed at Dublin's International Fair, where it was admired by numerous visitors.
Because of his fame as a brilliant teacher and because of his experience, in 1851 he was invited by the Collegiate Academy of Windsor, Nova Scotia, to hold the chair of Modern Languages. A few years earlier, the same subject had been taught in Windsor by another Italian patriot, Carlo Antonio Napoleone Gallenga, a follower of Mazzini from Parma who had changed his name to Louis Mariotti in order to avoid the police of his hometown.
Gallenga was not unique. In the same period, many more Italian patriots had crossed the ocean and had become teachers in American universities. New York City, for instance, was the residence of many exiles who had served time in the Spielberg prison with Silvio Pellico, and had been remembered in his autobiographic My Ten Years' Imprisonment: Borsieri, Castiglia, Foresti, Piero Maroncelli. That was the reason why, with The Divine Comedy and Jerusalem Delivered, Pellico's book also was greatly circulated in North America. From here, Maroncelli would integrate his friend's autobiography with his own, Addizioni alle mie prigioni ("Addendum to My Ten Years' Imprisonment").
Giacomo Forneri followed the destiny of so many comrades, and left for Nova Scotia with his wife and 10 children. He was over 60 already, but he did not hesitate to turn his life upside down once again. Moreover, he was fascinated by the idea of transferring his principles onto the other shore of the Atlantic.
He did not mean to stop in Canada; his objective was Australia. But he never made it to Australia, because after one year his position at Collegiate Academy was not renewed, and at the same time his wife fell seriously ill. At 63, he had to start anew.
Reverend Irvine, a former student of his in Belfast, helped him. After coming to Canada in 1852 and learning of the conditions his old teacher was in, he mentioned
him to the Premier of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Hincks. Hincks also knew Forneri as he had been a colleague and friend of his father, Professor Thomas D. Hincks. At the same time Irvine suggested Forneri submit an application and résumé to the University of Toronto.
Things went well, and Forneri obtained the chair of Modern Languages on May 28, 1853. He kept it for 13 years, until 1866, and then became lecturer of Italian and Spanish for two more years. He was also called to be a member of the College Council. His wages: 206 pounds, 12 shillings a year. He could afford a house on the edge of the woods, at 285 Sherbourne Street, south of Gerrard; today's downtown was then the city's far periphery.
The University of Toronto, founded in 1827 as King's College under the control of the Anglican Church, had been transformed in January 1851 into University College, independent from any religious denomination. A few months before hiring Forneri the College Council had decided to introduce Modern Languages among the subjects taught, and Forneri himself explained the meaning of that decision in his opening speech for the 1853-54 academic year.
"First of all, they must be known in order to communicate," he said. Then he explained that Spanish, French, German and Italian were the languages spoken in the immense territory stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Gulf of Venice, even discounting countries this side of the Atlantic that used Spanish as their national idiom. Moreover, Italian was worth studying because that was the only way to understand some classics that enjoyed great popularity at the time; French because Canada was not solely Anglophone; and German because it was indispensable to religious people in order to gain access to Luther's version of the Bible and to the theological debates of the early reformers.
William Van der Smissen, who succeeded him in the chair of German, wrote about him: "His knowledge and academic skill in Romance languages, including ancient French and Provençal, were of extremely high level. His lectures on Dante were instructive and pleasant. How hard he worked can be estimated by the fact that he lectured for 24 hours a week and occasionally more, while the average for other subjects ranged from five to 18 hours."
"He had the culture of an Italian gentleman," wrote another successor, John Squair.
Those years were not always easy - the academic world never was a Valley of Eden - but he managed to overcome difficult moments (he was well equipped for this, having survived worse) and to be an example for his students. One in particular, John King, future father of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, would devote a big and affectionate biography.
He died in 1869 and had a public funeral. Thirty years later, some former students of his commemorated him by writing an article for the University of Toronto Monthly. After remembering his life and teachings, they closed with a verse by Dante, in Italian: "Tu duca, tu signore, e tu maestro" ("Thou Leader, and thou Lord, and Master thou").

Publication Date: 2002-09-29
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1791