The Dales House at 414 Alexander Street circa 1890 CVA Photo SGN 490

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

REVELSTOKE: A KISS IN THE WIND - AN UPDATE

Angelo Conte, image courtesy of Nicola Moruzzi

Most of you by now will have read my most recent post about the house at 423 Prior Street and its connection to the documentary being made on the journey of Italian immigrant Angelo Conte. Angelo's epic journey started from Valstagna in Veneto Italy across the ocean and a continent to Vancouver's East End (Strathcona), then to Kamloops, and ultimately to Glacier, BC where he died in a tragic post blasting accident working on the Connaught Tunnel.

Revelstoke News Herald October 20, 1915 with article on the death of Angelo Conte

The tragic irony is that this accident took place just a week before Angelo was supposed to return to Italy to pick up his wife Anna and his daughter Gigetta and bring them back to live a new life in Canada. 

Anna and Gigetta Conte, image courtesy of Nicola Moruzzi

The fifty letters Angelo had sent to Anna over the 30 month period he had lived in Canada were passed down three generations of the family, unopened and unread by other family members for 100 years.  

Irene Vecchio and Nicola Moruzzi in Valstagna, Italy - Screen Capture from Teaser Video of Revelstoke: A Kiss In The Wind

My friends Nicola Moruzzi and Irene Vecchio are working on a documentary called Revelstoke: A Kiss In The Wind that follows the footsteps of Angelo from Italy to Vancouver's East End (Strathcona), to Kamloops and ultimately to Revelstoke where Angelo lays buried. It is a heart-wrenchingly beautiful story.

Today Nicola and his team launched their Crowd Funding page on IndieGoGo. Crowd funding allows people with interesting projects like these to appeal for funds to a broad spectrum of people and allows people of various financial means to support the project in sums as small as $10 all the way up into the thousands.

I am a passionate supporter of this project. It links so many of my interests: Canadian and neighbourhood history, my neighbourhood Strathcona, my former hometown, Kamloops, and my love of Italy. 

Please click this LINK to the IndieGogo page, watch the teaser video and Nicola's heartfelt appeal for support that will help fuel their time machine.

If you can, please make a donation to this very worthwhile project... If you cannot support the project financially, but know people who you think might be interested, please forward them the link. Who knows? Your generous support may help make history of another kind... You may be instrumental not only in making this documentary possible, you might be part of making Angelo and Anna's story a winner at Cannes and elsewhere...    


Listen to director Nicola Moruzzi interviewed on CBC West about Revelstoke: A Kiss In The Wind

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