In 1903, the Italian population of Brantford consisted of approximately two families. By 1967, this figure has increased to approximately 6,000 people of Italian birth or descent.
Early Italian Immigration
The first Italian to arrive in Brantford to settle was Filippo Tommaso in 1891. Tommaso was twenty-seven years old, trained as a labourer, and married to a woman named Susan of Irish heritage. Tommaso is remembered as the first recorded immigrant to be living in Brantford; however, Cathy Murtland (née Bonaccorso) of Simcoe, explained that Leonardo Fardella and his wife Santa Ceravola, were living in Brantford in the 1880s. Their daughter, Frances Fardella (married to Salvatore Domenico) gave birth to a child, Francis Anthony Domenico, in Brantford on October 29, 1886. None of these names appear in the census of 1991, but it can be proven that they lived in Brantford for the remainder of their lives.
