13 - The man who created Villa Colombo

Along with the community and its prominent members Anthony Fusco conceived project

The man who created Villa Colombo is shy, deeply religious, and a hard worker. This summarizes about one hour of conversation with Anthony Fusco.
He's shy because he says that Villa Colombo (the large seniors' residential complex near Lawrence and Dufferin) is the fruit of an idea of his, all right, but also of the entire Italian community and of Elio Madonia's untiring evangelism (cfr. Tandem, November 7, 1999). He's deeply religious because "a man's success is almost never his own; it is due to the Lord who guided him." And he's a hard worker because, in spite of an intense life and some trouble with his heart, he never lost the "workoholism" he inherited from his father.
It's not by chance, then, that this man has received multiple honours: he's a Knight of Malta, Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and Knight of the Republic of Italy. "But I only did my duty," he protests, and one can see his is no false modesty.
He claims to be a Sicilian from Termini Imerese, but he was born here, 66 years ago. His father Giuseppe left Sicily in 1908, with the great waves of Italians emigrants looking for jobs all over the world. His father ended up in Canada, and after roaming the country while doing hundreds of jobs he stopped in Toronto, where he opened a grocery store on Danforth Ave.
Business was beginning to thrive and compensate him for his hardships when he was killed by a heart attack; his two sons, Joe (18) and Anthony (13) had to abandon their studies and their ambitions ("My brother Joe wanted to become a doctor") to go behind the counter of the family store, their family's only source of income.
It must have been tough.
"Yes, it was, but the Lord has always been very generous with us, and never forsook us. As for me, I always strove to put into practice my father's legacy."
Which was...?
"He always said: 'Try and leave the world a little better than how you found it.' This motto influenced my whole life."
In spite of Giuseppe Fusco's sudden death, the grocery store flourished, and business was good for Joe and Anthony, who weren't contented with staying behind the counter.
"We noticed that a fellow countryman was doing good with a second-hand truck he had bought. We thought that transportation could be a profitable business. So, with our savings, we too bought a used truck and started to transport goods. My brother drove it by day, I drove by night. That's how we started."
They ended up being the proprietors of one of Canada's biggest trucking companies, Apex Forwarding Ltd., which would eventually absorb several other companies. In its brightest moment, Apex owned 350 vehicles.
"We had an interesting formula, the so-called 'small shipments.' What we did was give a truck not to a single customer but to all the customers who wanted to send goods to the same place, filling it to capacity. This way, the cost was shared among several customers and became affordable even to a small company that could not fill a truck all by itself.
"The fortunes of Apex derived from this. At the same time, with other partners, I had created the Caboto Trust, a financial institution that gave me good satisfaction because even in this case the Lord helped me. As He helped us when my brother and I decided to sell Apex because he had some health problems and I didn't feel like going on alone: we received a very interesting offer and we sold."
In spite of his "workoholism," Anthony Fusco found the time to get married. He married Vincenzina, a girl he met during his repeated travels to Termini Imerese, who bore him four children: Giuseppe, Vincenzina, Filippo and Antonino, who in their turn made him the grandfather of nine ("until now," he specifies, "let's not limit the Divine Providence").
But his "workoholism" kept tugging at him, and then there were children to provide for. So he noticed Commercial Bakeries Corp., a cookie manufacturer that was in deep water. He purchased it and with the help of his three sons he put it back on its fee. Now it not only makes Canadian cookies, but also imports Italian products. "And now," he adds, "I'm really rich."
Why, Mr. Fusco, were you poor before?
"I'm rich now because I'm working with my sons and I can see them any time I want. Look at this big oval table we're sitting at: at noon, every day, this becomes our lunch table where we sit, eat and chat in harmony."
You have the spirit of a Biblical patriarch...
"No, I'm just a lucky man who can enjoy the great richness God bestowed upon men: the family."
Now let's talk about Villa Colombo. How did you get the idea?
"Let's talk about it, OK, but first we have to go back in time to when I got married."
What happened then?
"I married Vincenzina in Termini Imerese and brought her here. It didn't take long to realize I had saddened her."
Saddened her?
"Yes, because she was alone, far from her hometown, from her relatives; she had nobody to talk to except me, but I was away, working all day. I understood then the immense loneliness of emigrants. I had never felt it, because I was born here, but I could see how sad my wife was, and this upset me as well. Thus, in order to enable her to talk to her townsfolk, to find company, I began to assemble the immigrants coming from Termini Imerese, there were a lot you know, and I founded a club. Those who left Italy at the time had many problems, from employment to language to integration in a new society: the club helped them solve these problems. That's when I met Elio Madonia, who was doing, on a larger scale, what I had been doing for immigrants from Termini Imerese. Elio, in fact, had just founded the Federation of Canadian Italian Clubs, which would later become the National Congress of Italian Canadians."
This is how we arrive at Villa Colombo?
"Well, we can say so. But there's more. This concerns the situation of seniors. At the time, the first to emigrate was the eldest son, or the husband; after making a little money, they went to the Consulate and filled the 'sponsorship application,' having their parents, wife, and grandparents come over. But it was a shock, especially for the elders, because their relatives were always away at work, and they were left alone for months and years, almost abandoned. This, let me tell you, is one of the least-known tragedies of our emigration. But this tragedy was the decisive issue when Elio Madonia, myself and several other important members of our community decided to create a large structure for the seniors, where they could live with their peers, being cared for, spending their days among bocce fields, park boulevards, a library, a concert hall and a cinema. And then there was another idea that helped a lot."
Which idea?
"We said that we did not mean to create a rest home for Italian Canadian seniors, but rather a structure for all of Toronto's seniors, regardless of their heritage, built by Italian Canadians. This gained us the trust and sympathy, as well as some economic support, of the Provincial Government, with William Davis as Premier."
As far as I know, at the time, Italians were appreciated for their hard work, but looked upon with some suspicion by the Anglo-Saxons. How did you manage to gain their trust, so much so that the Provincial Government financed the construction of Villa Colombo?
"By working hard. It's true, we were regarded suspiciously, and then the connection between Italians, especially Sicilians, and the Mafia was a constant and annoying refrain. Meanwhile, Italians were constantly increasing in numbers; there were already 500,000 of us in Toronto, and our presence inevitably worried some. We held long meetings about this equation Italians = Mafiosi: to get rid of it, many wanted to march on Queen's Park with signs reading 'We're honest workers.' I firmly opposed this: we have nothing to prove, I said, let's work and let our work be our reply. And so it was for Villa Colombo."
How much did it cost?
"Over four million dollars at the time, which would be about 20 million dollars at current prices. We're talking 20-25 years ago. One third was given by the Province of Ontario, two thirds was collected by us."
How did you collect all that money?
"First of all with a great campaign through our media: Dan Iannuzzi's Corriere Canadese and Johnny Lombardi's CHIN Radio brought the message in every home. And then with a Telethon, first on Citytv, then on Channel 47 which at the time was owned by Corriere Canadese. And the miracle happened: a community still fragmented and divided by regional, provincial and even municipal jealousy mobilized to offer its seniors a dignified place to live; we can call this an act of love towards those who had given us life."
Do you have a special memory of those days?
"Those days are full of special memories, of small and big episodes. After all these years, however, I'm still trying to understand what, besides the practical and psychological reasons I already mentioned, determined the success of our initiative."
Did you find an answer?
"Maybe the answer is in a remark Joe Carrier made when we still were at the first stages: Tony, he told me, we have to do like the Jews."
What do Jews do?
"Their community is rigorously organized, so they don't waste any chances in reaching their objective. So that's what we did, and Villa Colombo is there to prove it."
A final question. You know our community like few others: in addition to the many chances taken, did the community lose any?
"Let's say it didn't achieve the objective our Lord had given it: becoming the hinge between our culture and the Anglo-Canadian one. Especially in first-generation immigrants, a peculiar attitude is still widespread: a great love for Italy and a sort of tolerance for Canada, still seen as a country where they've been forced to live in order to survive. I say that Italy is beautiful, but Canada is too. I believe that we would have grown faster, had we been able to pick the best parts of Italian and Canadian cultures to create a third culture, getting rid of old schemes. We'd have helped Canadians to grow faster, too."
But this attitude is not shared by our youth.
"Of course, because they feel Canadian. They can be proud of their Italian heritage, but this is their country. And this is natural. That's why I call this a lost opportunity for the first generation, which only strove to achieve economic objectives and family well-being, and did not always look beyond the door of their homes. Let's not forget, anyway, that this generation gave great examples of honesty and hard work. And of immense generosity: Villa Colombo is not just a social facility, it's an example of the great heart of Italians. And please, don't write I created it. We all created it and wanted it. I was one of the wheels, an important one if you want, of this mechanism." u


(translated by Emanuele Oriano)

Publication Date: 2002-12-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2188