Portuguese pioneer association in Canada celebrates 70 years

“ Dhere for 10 years, when we turn 80, I would very much like us to celebrate inside our own house ", said Lusa agency the director of operations of the FPCCC, Carina Paradela.

Founded in 1956, in Toronto, First Portuguese became one of the main support points for the first Portuguese immigrants, functioning as a meeting place and seeking help, employment and housing.

“The biggest contribution was the junction of the Portuguese in one place,” she explained, highlighting later the creation of the Portuguese school as fundamental to the “propagation of Portuguese language and culture”.

The institution, which even considered closing in 2019 due to financial difficulties, was able to recover during the covid-19 pandemic, a period which allowed temporary closure and restructuring.

“ We somehow managed to recover financially and, at the moment, we are quite stable, both financially and in terms of direction”, he explained.

Currently, the elderly center has 130 members and receives, on average, between 35 and 50 people daily, while the Portuguese school, which operates on Saturday mornings, has about 60 students.

The demand for teaching Portuguese has increased in the last two years and the lack of space already obliges the institution to refuse some families, according to Paradela, who admits the possibility of expanding classes to another location in the future.

“There is a new generation very, very interested in learning Portuguese. They go to Portugal and want to learn Portuguese to talk to the family there ", stressed.

The head, from São João da Madeira, district of Aveiro, and resident in Canada for 17 years, has worked at the FPCCC for a decade, after having worked as an education assistant in the public school management of Toronto (TDSB).

Despite the recovery, the institution continues to operate in a property that does not belong to it, a situation that, according to the Director of Operations, conditions the expansion of services and is now one of the priorities of the management.

“The main goal is to be able to buy our house so that we can have a little more control over what we can do and offer to the community,” he said, adding that one’s own headquarters would allow “to have this autonomy” and make programming currently impossible.

For Paradela, the role of the institution also changed with the aging of the pioneers of immigration, being currently particularly directed to the elderly, without abandoning the teaching of the Portuguese language to the new generations.

“ We remain a meeting center for this generation of Portuguese. [...] It is a very great honor for us”, he said.

The 70-year celebrations take place today at LiUNA Local 183 in northern Toronto, starting at 6 p.m. locals (23.00 p.m. in Lisbon), and include performances by Karma Band and the Folklorico Ranch of Nazareth in Toronto.