Casgliadau Arlein
Amgueddfa Cymru
Chwilio Uwch
Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Alvino Canciani
Oral history recording with Alvino Canciani. He was born in Torreano di Cividale in 1931 and moved to Wales in 1954. He was recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
0:32 Alvino Canciani was born to a poor family in Torreano di Cividale in 1931. At the age of he went to live with his grandmother in Spignon, a little village in Friuli on the border with Slovenia, for five years, and then came back to his family. When he was nine years old he went to the Giacomino Bearzi Institute in Udine, a boarding school for the poor. He left boarding school at 16 after an embarrassing incident when his father came to the college drunk. Alvino felt ashamed and left. He went to work as a labourer on a farm, where he had to work full time just to pay for his food and lodging. He had to work there for three months before he could afford a pair of clogs that his boss supplied for him to work in. Then he moved to work on another farm in Togliano di Cividale. 3.29 He had to get up at 5 or even 4 o’clock during the summer to milk the cows and then clean the stables and go out to work in the fields. 5:50 He did his military service in 1953. For fifteen months he was an alpino (a member of the mountain regiment) in Cividale del Friuli. He enjoyed military service, working as a radiotelegraphist. He was happy there. In 1954 he came to Wales, where his brother was already working. He came on a work permit. He borrowed the money to come to England from his cousin, and it took him two years to pay him back. He came with a cardboard suitcase with only a few things inside. He remembers leaving his village on 25 November at 7 am. It was a Thursday and he arrived in Llanaran (Wales) on Friday evening. There were eight of them. 10:28 The work was hard and food was scarce. He used to go out and buy food - sometimes he was so hungry that he would buy sausages and eat them raw without waiting to cook them. For breakfast he was given a piece of bread and cheese. After two months he moved to another job in an iron mine. The work was hard there, too. He worked there for 21 years, and when the mine closed in 1975 he went to work in a coal mine. After 11 years it was closed down. He was 55, too old to get another job. 14:34 He met his wife one evening in a coffee shop in Tonyrefail. They got married and have two children, a boy and a girl. He doesn’t remember much about his village. He vaguely remembers he used to play marbles and a game similar to cricket. He remembers going to church every day when he was at boarding school. 17.36 He learned English from his friends. He’s a member of the Alpino Association and every year they go to Chepstow to commemorate the soldiers who died during the war. He says that he has had a very hard life, but now he’s happy. 19:56 He remembers bombs falling during the war while he was at boarding school, and all the pupils running out into the fields.