Current
Il Museo at the Italian Cultural Centre - proposed publication (2010)
Ray Culos, as member of the Italian Cultural Centre’s Museum and Archival Centre, is presently engaged in assembling a collection of memorabilia and archival pieces that depict the Italian Immigrant’s experience in the Greater Vancouver area, circa 1900 to the present day. The value of these items, of course, relates to presenting a physical depiction of the story of Vancouver’s pioneer Italians. The social history of the Italian community will include vignettes about pioneer Italian experiences, trials, sacrifices, successes and legacy. This collection of memorabilia and/or archival pieces will comprise photographs, fraternal badges, Citizenship certificates, individual citations, passports and correspondence. In addition, items that depict lifestyle also are welcome i.e. tools, sports trophies and regalia, fraternal pins, documents, photographs, religious relics, scholastic diplomas, etc.
An appeal is being made to all descendents of Italian immigrants living in the Vancouver area to contribute, donate or loan any item that helps to convey the intended message. Do you have items of interest that you are prepared to make available? If so, please contact Ray Culos or the Italian Cultural Centre. (See Contacts page)
Culos hopes to publish a book in which the museum’s items and donors are featured.
Britannia Remembers 100 Years of Achievement is a commemorative piece released as a souvenir publication in May 2008
The 234-page hardcover book, co-authored by Clive Cocking (Class of ’57) and Ray Culos - student council president in 1954, is a brilliantly prepared historical review of the school’s one hundred year history. Thirty-six ex-Brit students, introduced as "stars", are profiled. Britannia Remembers makes a remarkable contribution to the history of Vancouver and Canada.
Hundreds of ex-Brit students and friends attended the Britannia Centennial Reunion Celebration, May 16/17. One of the highlights was the social dance and entertainment scheduled for Saturday evening at the PNE Agrodome. Register on-line using the Britannia Centennial Reunion Society website or e-mail the school at info(at)britanniacentennial.com
The publication is available at Britannia Secondary School for $20 per copy.
Vancouver's Shoeshine Boys Released in June, 2009
At a Prior Street Reunion luncheon – to which over 190 guests attended – on Saturday, June 13th at the Famee Furlane Hall, 2605 East Pender Street, Vancouver, Ray Culos introduced his latest non-fiction book, Vancouver’s Shoeshine Boys. It is the social history story of Italian immigrants and their offspring sons who pioneered Vancouver’s shoe shine parlour industry circa 1906 – 1986. >>>>click to view
The Vancouver Courier, Friday, November 6, 2009
Many Italian immigrants shined shoes - Italian community shines in Culos’s Boys
By Lisa Smedman
“Start to research any of the immigrant groups that came to Vancouver, and you’ll quickly notice something immigrants from a particular region of the globe tend to wind up in the same trade or profession.
The Chinese of the 1800s were known for their laundries and produce stands. The Sikhs of the early 1900s worked in lumber mills. The Portuguese, who began arriving in the 1950s, were labourers in the construction industry. Many Italians also worked as labourers, helping to build the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways. Once these were complete, they settled in cities like Vancouver.
Here, they needed work that would accommodate their limited education and English. Work that allowed them to sustain themselves as independent businessmen during the hard times of the Depression.
The answer was right at their feet. Shinning shoes.
Local author Raymond Culos uses the shoeshine trade as his entry point to his latest history of Vancouver’s Italian community. Vancouver’s Shoeshine Boys – A Shinning Social History follows on the heels (pun intended) of his previous three-volume work, Vancouver’s Society of Italians, the definitive history of the local Italian immigrant community.
Shoeshine Boys is chock full of the wonderful first-person anecdotes Culos is so apt at collecting, as well as historic photos of shoeshine stands and other Italian businesses, predominantly on the city’s East Side. The sagas begin in the first decades of the 1900s, winds their way the Depression, the Second World War and the discrimination Italians faced as “enemy aliens”, and the 1950s. (The book’s cover includes a couple of wonderful colour photos by Fred Herzog that set the scene for Vancouver of that decade.) It wraps up in the 1970s. Along the way, it takes a look at some of the other hallmarks of Vancouver’s Italian community: boxing, barbershops, music, language classes and church.
An entertaining read, Shoeshine Boys is a great way to learn more about Vancouver’s Italian immigrant community.”