This is the first issue of Il Postino. Other issues will follow every month.
As the name of our paper suggests, the focus will be the Italian-Canadian community of the Ottawa area, its past, its present and its prospects for the future, as seen by members of the community themselves and by members of other communities.
We cannot say that Il Postino will be the diary of the population of Ottawa which is of Italian descent, that it will record each and every event, each and every concern, each and every image of our community. Since we will appear only once a month, opinion and response to the news will be as important as just straightforward reporting of news items. Selective though we must be, we do, however, accept the role that the mere fact of publishing confers upon us. We do intend to act as a kind of memory. One of our priorities will be to document the history of the Italian-Canadians who have lived in our city or who currently live in it. We will give voice to the personal, individual stories that have made and that make our history, so that our children, and some day their children, may read and know and understand who we have been, and so that the diversity of our city may be better remembered.
With respect to the Italian-Canadian community, it is one of our primary goals to serve as a venue where the views of both the immigrant generation and the generation born in Canada are represented. We hope to be able to bring young and old around the same table in frank and open discussion, as readers and, whenever possible, as contributors.
Il Postino will print articles in Italian, English and French. Why? Because we wish to acknowledge and indeed affirm the multilingual character of our city and because we consider our audience to be anyone interested in community affairs.
We ask for your support and look forward to hearing from you.