Certificate of Naturalization for Ettore Sanguiro, 1929

Certificate of Naturalization for Ettore Sanguiro, No. 65315, dated November 2, 1929 and signed by the Secretary of State and the Acting Undersecretary of State of Canada. Ettore Sanguiro has signed the bottom on the document.

The certificate reads:

The Naturalization Acts, 1914 and 1920
Certificate of Naturalization

I the undersigned Secretary of State of Canada do hereby certify and declare that ETTORE SANGUIRO whose particulars are enclosed hereon, is hereby naturalized as a British subject that he is entitled to all political and other rights, powers and privileges, and subject to all obligations, duties and liabilities to which a natural born British subject is entitled or subject and that he has to all intents and purposes the status of a natural born British subject.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto subscribed my name and affixed the Seal of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada this Second day of November 1929.

After the Italian declaration of war, all Italian Canadians naturalized after September 1, 1922 were declared enemy aliens.

Ettore Sanguiro was born on March 25, 1891. In 1923, Sanguiro came to Canada and seven years later, his wife, Luisa, followed with their eight-year-old daughter, Cesarina. Their second child, Rosemarie, was born in 1933. The family residence lived at 557 Cannon Street East in Hamilton.

Sanguiro was arrested on June 10, 1940. It was horrifying for the family, but especially for Rosemarie who was only seven at the time. She remembers how three Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers disrupted the family dinner by kicking in the front, side, and back doors to their humble home. After his brief detention in Toronto, Sanguiro was sent to Petawawa Internment Camp; his family did not see him again until his release in 1942.