The Carpenter, by Vittorio Rossi, directed by Gordon McCall

Marvelous. The play was really delightful to watch. Looking at the actors’ talent, the dialogues, the costume designs, the stages effects were indeed well mastered so that each scene seemed very realistic, not even mentioning all of the equipment they possessed to create an inner home or a room at a welcoming center for the elderly out of the stage. During the play, it was interesting to be frequently sent to Silvio’s and Carmela’s past to view their story instead of simply hearing it. That whole idea of taking us back to the heroes past made us sink-in deeper in their story, their personal life, to make us feel that we lived it with them. That is why most of the audience, included me were touched by the ending of the play. It is a story about an Italian veteran who has moved to Montreal to build a new and better life for his family of three kids, Liliana, Luciano, Maria and his wife, Carmela. Throughout the story, Silvio who is 82 years old,
is fighting a non-curable disease, the Alzheimer that has reached a critical stage and getting worse. He does not have a lot of time left to say goodbye before his brain shuts down. The only thing that the family can do is to make his last days as comfortable as possible. In this play we witness love, determination, devotion and loyalty. A combination well worth to see and live.

Issues of immigration in QC

After the much devastating World War II, a lot of veterans and survivors were found in very miserable situations. Some were left with no home, no family or no work. Many decided to flee their country to find better live conditions for themselves or their families elsewhere so they took a boat for two weeks to reach America. By that time, Canada and the United States were practically invaded not by enemies, but by immigrants who were mostly from Europe. A lot of the men who arrived on that new and unknown land were very determined and strong to face whatever would come in their way. For those who had not yet had a family in America, had to start everything from scratch and depending from what country they were it was either harder or easier to find work. Montreal was the city that received most of the strangers from Europe in that time. There were many sub communities and neighborhood that were organized like countries. For example, an Italian native would be beaten and insulted if he would stroll around a Canadian neighborhood. So depending from what country the immigrants were, in was better for them to stick with their kind. That way they would find work more easily and support themselves was one big family. Like Silvio said in the play, “Back then, people use to help each other”. Nowadays, a lot has changed, as we can see. In cities like Montreal, most of people are used to seeing and living alone with immigrants. The society is still kind of separated in many bits like before but there is much less tension between different nationalities living alongside each other and every person is considered equal as long as they are in the country legally. The only thing that has not change is the time for the immigrants to adapt to the new country and its mentality. It is for that reason that children are sent to integration programs at schools where they learn the country’s language and values with other immigrants from different countries and they stick together at school until they are sent on to the regular program where they are mixed with natives. That way they will get used to the country at their on pace without being bullied or made fun of.

Last group discussion

In our latest group discussion we mostly discussed the whole morality factor behind that vaccine called Gardasil. So basically, we each gave our own opinion on aspects such as the parents POV (point of view) when their normal and healthy daughther contracts diseases shortly after being inoculated with a new vaccine that was supposed to help her in the first place. According to the text, parents are more likely to send their kids to get a shot against a sexually transmissible disease than to sit with them and discuss the matter. However, we could not say that all parents want the easy way out of a problem only by basing ourselves on one article, but we did found that it is always better, in our opinion, to have conserned parents that will discuss these kind of issues with their kids instead of letting them hear it from a stranger or a doctor when it is too late. With the statistics the article gave us about the efficiency of the Gardasil shot, we all had to share our thoughts whether to keep or to ban this vaccine. Looking at the costs and benefits of this product, we found that it would be in the governments' advantage to take this vaccine out of the market for a while in order to do more research on it!