Italian Canadians At Table

Food is much like a John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy free jazz piece that goes ?ut there?over generations and then returns to a few bars of recognizable themes to punctuate, bring the listener back to ground and rest-on-the-familiar before going off into the stratosphere again. The evolution of Italian food in Canada is like that to an enchanted foreign palate. So much of my experience of South-Central, (second wave, ancient order) Canadian-Italian Life is rhythmic and cyclical; but speaking more celestially, filled with mobius motion ?the invisible twistings and turnings of fertility; of gender complementarities and rigidity; of evaporation and condensation; of a sun rising triumphantly then setting in soft indigo light; of one ancient man and one ancient woman's myriad sisteme in the garden ?Food then, becomes, in the spontaneous ?ree?compositions of life, the melodic reference point, the diatonic reliever of chordal tensions, the quiet magnificent within the cacophony and greater magnificences of a living opera that is unique to each Italian-Canadian family.