In November 1985, several writers, including Joseph Pivato, Antonio D'Alfonso, Pasquale Verdicchio and Dino Minni thought a national conference to take stock and discuss future directions might be a good idea. The Italian Cultural Centre graciously offered its premises, the Italian Cultural Institute agreed to help, and an ad hoc Literary Committee quickly came together. The Committee decided to interpret the word writer in the widest possible way to include novelists, poets, playwrights, historians, film makers and critics. It also decided that the emphasis of the Vancouver gathering would be on literature. This collection of the proceedings contains most of the scholarly papers delivered, plus a sampling of round-table seminar presentations, in the three languages of the conference. The editors have arranged them under common topics: the ethnic viewpoint, literary criticism, poetry.
As these proceedings show, the 23 writers (including two guests from Italy) who participated in the conference agree that (1) Italian-Canadian writing is more than immigrant literature, (2) Italian-Canadian writing is about to enter its second stage of development, (3) Italian-Canadian writing is expanding the tradition of Survival to include the tradition of the Journey, (4) literary criticism of Italian-Canadian writing should take more than a thematic approach, and (5) the options for tomorrow are varied.