Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from author Adriana A. Davies’ new book, From Sojourners to Citizens: Alberta’s Italian History. You can purchase this book, along with her first memoir, My Theatre of Memory: A Life in Words, at Guernicaeditions.com.
Written by: Adriana A. Davies
Restaurateurs and Chefs
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Italian food was considered alien in Alberta. While local pasta manufacturers and grocers helped to introduce Italian products to the general public, it would be pioneer restaurateurs who would build the popularity of Italian cuisine. While individuals worked as cooks in commercial kitchens likely from the earliest days of immigration, Italian restaurants would not emerge as a culinary force until the post-Second World War wave of immigration.[1] Soldiers who fought in Italy acquired a taste for Italian food and looked for it in Italian neighbourhoods back home. Historian John Gilchrist observed in a 2011 article that new immigrants settle near each other and, “Quickly, entrepreneurs open shops that sell foods and materials from the homeland. And soon, a restaurant or two opens to serve the needs of the community.” He continues:
Adventurous diners from across the city venture into the cultural enclave to sample the wares. They report back to their friends and more ‘outsiders’ arrive, bumping up business. In time, entrepreneurs may move or open a second location in the city’s business centre or ‘outsider’ community, expanding the clientele, and helping connect their community to the broader population…. In Calgary, this pattern applies to the two cultural enclaves – Chinatown and Bridgeland – that date to the early 1900s and to the development of many local Chinese and Italian restaurants.[2]
Gilchrist refers specifically to Gene Cioni whose daughter Mary authored Spaghetti Western: How My Father Brought Italian Food to the West. [3] Her claim that her father brought Italian food to the west might seem extravagant but he certainly appears to have created Calgary’s first Italian restaurant at 111 – 4th Street NE on the edges of the Italian district of Riverside/Bridgeland.
Genesio Ciono was born in Antrodocco, Rieti, Lazio, the son of Sabato Cioni, a shoemaker, and his second wife, Flavia Cardellini. Sabato died in 1908 leaving his widow to care for five children. The connection to Canada occurred when 15-year-old daughter Gisa, from the first marriage, went to Calgary to marry a man she did not know – Ricardo Santopinto. Gisa’s letters painted a glowing picture of Calgary and inspired in the 37-year-old Flavia, who felt trapped in poverty, a desire to immigrate. Relatives arranged a marriage with Annibale Corradetti, a 49-year-old widower who worked for the city as a labourer. According to Mary, he was mean-spirited and stingy, and did not honour his promise to Flavia to give her money to bring her sons (Genesio and Sabatino) to Canada. A resourceful woman, she saved money from her household expenses and sent it to Italy. It was enough for only one fare and, Gene, the elder, came to Calgary in 1923. He turned 16 on shipboard. Flavia wanted Gene to become a barber and he worked at the Calgary Shoe Hospital to save money. Two years later he enrolled at the Hemphill Barber School and graduated in 1925. Tragically, his mother died of a ruptured gall bladder in 1926, and Gene blamed his stepfather for lack of attention to her health. This freed him from a trade that he had not embraced and, through his cousin and best friend Mario Grassi, he obtained a job at the Palliser Hotel as a busboy (Mario was a waiter). Soon after, he became sous-chef and learned the CPR repertoire of largely English and French specialties.
In 1931, Gene worked on trains preparing food for gangs repairing lines in Alberta and BC and began to add Italian dishes to the work-a-day fare. His culinary apprenticeship continued in Vancouver where he worked for the Pini family, seven brothers who operated several Italian restaurants.[4] It was there that Gene learned how to cook Italian specialties and the skills needed to open his own restaurant. In 1938, he returned to Calgary and, according to Mary, worked in a gambling club and then ran the Perfection Store and Ice Cream Parlour. In 1939, he married Martha Arndt, who assisted him in his various ventures. The couple purchased the Pacific Lunch that they renamed Martha Lunch and served soups, sandwiches, meat loaf and other Canadian staples. In 1940, their son Gary was born and, according to Mary, just as Genesio had changed his name to the English “Gene” (for boxer Gene Tunney) to fit in, his son was named for film star Gary Cooper. The desire to Anglicize did not prevent the young couple from falling within the provisions of the federal Enemy Alien Act (Martha was German) and both had to register and report to the police on a monthly basis during the Second World War.[5] After two years, the 16-hour days took their toll and they sold the restaurant. Gene went to work as manager of the dining room at the Shamrock Hotel and Martha at Olivier Chocolates. In 1943, he was hired to run the cafeteria at the Burns plant. In 1947, the couple started another cafe venture opposite the Stampede grounds but found that business was good only when the festival was on so they sold it.
By 1951, Calgary had a population of 129,000 but things were happening that would turn the small prairie town into a metropolis. Cioni opened Gene’s Spaghetti Parlour in March 1949 and it was an instant success. According to Mary, this was due not only to hard work but also to the following:
He had come of age as a cook and manager in Calgary; he understood the mood of the city and seized the opportunity. Gene envisioned American executives, business people, soldiers, the Stampeders and their fans, the established Italian community and newcomers all dining on his Calgary cooking – Italian style. He consulted relatives and trusted friends and was overwhelmed by their enthusiasm. A paesano, Vittorio Cioni, loaned Gene a few thousand dollars, and another paesano, Louis Carloni, said that he could rent the basement of an apartment house he owned in Riverside.[6]
Carloni suggested that he renovate the building next door to create a ground-floor restaurant space that Gene could rent. According to Mary, the deal was done on a handshake and Gene’s Spaghetti Dine & Dance was born on December 31, 1949. Carloni opened a banqueting hall on the second floor, the L. C. Ballroom, which also prospered. Gene catered major events booked there. After two years, problems developed between the partners that led to threats of litigation. Mary blames the Carlonis for this. Gene felt that it was his reputation as a chef and his name that brought in the customers. Carloni had problems with this and was less than generous with his offer of compensation; in fact, he succeeded in preventing Cioni from using his trademark name in his next restaurant venture.[7]
This setback prompted Gene to create the La Villa Supper Club, located in a large, two-storey historic home on the edge of the city near the Shaganappi Golf Course and Calgary Gun Club. This would appear to have been a risky move but Mary describes her father’s reasoning as follows: “I need the space. The distance is good. In America, people are going crazy for nightclubs. My villa will be a nightclub, serving the best Italian food. People will drive the distance for the food. The spot is perfect. Adds to the mystique. It’ll be harder for the police to patrol illegal drinking.”[8] He envisioned the facility as not only a supper club for adults but also as a destination for families on Sunday drives to the country. His insticts proved right and the restaurant became a destination for Calgary’s elite. The family lived above the restaurant until 1956, when they moved into a new home.
Gene was a generous, kind-hearted person and embodied the “perfect host.” In fact, these early Italian restaurateurs were the prototypes of today’s “star” chefs, renowned not only for their cooking expertise but also their charisma. Mary provides various examples of her father’s savvy in dealing with influentials. Anecdotes include the names of the wealthy elites of Calgary such as Ras Mikkelson, who was in the oil business; Hal Gooding, chief pilot for Imperial Oil; Hy and Jenny Belzberg, owners of Christy’s Furniture Store; Shirley and Jack Singer, a real estate mogul; members of the Calgary Stampeders football team including Paul Rowe, who was part of the 1948 Grey Cup winning team; sports announcers Ed Whalen and Ted Soskin; the Holdsworths, Hunts and Quigleys, who were part of the booming real estate and insurance business; city councilor Don McIntosh; and Stu Hart, wrester and promoter, with stars Gene Kiniski, Killer Kowalski and Mighty Ursus. Italian businessmen also came including the Amantea brothers – Jack, Ralph, Mike and Frank – who had established Amantea shoes. Mary sums up the restaurant’s appeal as follows:
This cheerful group of Stampeders, and all the other La Villa customers there that night, knew that my parents provided the essentials of enjoyment, Italian style; the best food in town, music, and dancing. The Wurlitzer pumped out Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians and Perry Como, and the jazz beat of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. A powdered wax, sprinkled across the hardwood floor every afternoon, removed friction to free the soles. A customer with one leg shorter than the other had found a warped rise in the oak boards. Planting himself on the secret spot, he danced the night away.[9]
Sadly, Gene was unable to fulfill his potential as an entrepreneur because he died in 1958, aged 51, of a heart attack after surgery to remove gallstones. He therefore did not witness his children’s success: Gary graduated with a law degree from the University of Alberta in 1960 and retired in 2015 after serving nearly 44 years as an Alberta provincial court judge with the distinction of being the longest-serving judge in the province’s history. Mary is a specialist in international education and an author; she did not pursue a career in the opera, which was her father’s dream when he arranged for her to have private lessons with Norma Pocaterra.
Luca (Louis) Carloni’s story is told by wife Adelina (Adelaide) Cardellini and daughter Nina Valerio in oral history interviews.[10] Poverty had prompted Adelaide’s father to immigrate from Antrodocco, Rieti, Lazio; the family owned a small parcel of farmland and raised sheep, but this was inadequate to their needs since there were 11 children. Adelaide was born in 1905 and was brought to Canada in 1923 by her father, who had arranged a marriage for her with a man she did not know. Her intended was Luca, who had immigrated in 1913 and worked in the mines at Nordegg. While some of these marriages between strangers failed, that of the Carlonis was an enormous success; they were married at St. Mary’s Cathedral 10 days after her arrival. The couple became an “instant” family since Luca had taken on responsibility for his sister’s children Ringo, Leo and Benny Fabbi when they were orphaned by the Spanish Influenza in 1918.
The Carlonis initially settled in Nordegg. On moving to Calgary’s Bridgeland/Riverside neighbourhood, in 1927, Luca partnered with Rocco DiLeandro, who arrived in Calgary in 1913, and they opened the Canadian Shoe Shine store.[11] The partners subsequently parted ways and Luca opened two other shoe shine businesses. It would be the partnership with Gene Cioni that launched Luca in the restaurant business. After the breakup, Luca set up the Isle of Capri on 34th Street and 1st Avenue NW near the Edmonton Trail; this combined a restaurant with a dance club. According to daughter Nina, her father couldn’t find a decent hall for her wedding to Tony Valerio, in 1949, and this was the inspiration for the restaurant. She states that it was Calgary’s first Italian restaurant and was a supper club with no liquor service. It became popular with the Italian community and, in 1955, when Luca and other community leaders promoted the merger of the Giovanni Caboto Loggia and the Associazione Italo-Canadese, the new organization met at the restaurant until 1959 when the Calgary Italian Club acquired its own premises. Clearly, La Villa and the Isle of Capri were competitors but the market was large enough to accommodate both.
Valentino (Tino) DeValter was born in Medicine Hat in 1933. His parents, Sante and Amelia, were part of an earlier generation of immigration to the city.[12] Tino completed grade 11 and then had several casual jobs working in the oil patch and at Dominion Glass. He next worked at Val Marshall Printing and trained as a printer. For a change, he began to work in restaurants and managed several including one at the local Elks Club and the Dog n Suds fast-food outlet. In 1958, he married Margaret Ormston and, in 1967, they opened Tino’s Drive-In, which quickly became a popular hangout for young people. Tino was well-known in the community as a talented curler who had played in many championships. In advertisements in the Medicine Hat News, he offered special rates for curlers. Son Terry followed in his father’s footsteps and became a champion curler. Tino was a member of a range of local clubs including the Elks, Moose, Legion and Shriners and was also a shareholder with the Lethbridge Hurricanes, Medicine Hat Curling Club, the three Medicine Hat Golf Clubs and Medicine Hat Rattlers Football Team. He was also a Director of the Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede organization. The motto for the diner remains “where the hamburger is king” and it is still run by the family. In 2017, the restaurant celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and, to keep current, introduced vegetarian burgers and gluten-free buns.
[1] My maternal grandfather Vincenzo Potestio worked as a cook on Welch gangs and also for the CPR in the Kapuskasing to Winnipeg run.
[2] John Gilchrist, “Project Calgary,” in Calgary Herald, November 28, 2011,
[3] The book Spaghetti Western: How My Father Brought Italian Food to the West developed from two essays Mary Cioni contributed to the anthology Mamma Mia! Good Italian Girls Talk Back (Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 2004), edited by Maria Coletta McLean (“Answering Rafaela,” 13-24, and “What’s in a Name?” 175-186).
[4] Keith McKellar, Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Cafe and Street (Vancouver, BC: Exstasis Editions, 2001), 114.
[5] Cioni, 45.
[6] Ibid., 55.
[7] Ibid., 92. According to Mary, Carloni and his nephew Leo Fabi, on October 12, 1951 signed legal agreements to carry on the business using the name “Gene’s.”
[8] Ibid., 82.
[9] Ibid., 8.
[10] See Adelina (Adelaide) Carloni interview, Calgary Italian Club Oral History Project, June 10, 1985, 1985, Glenbow Archives RCT-869-5; and Nina and Tony Valerio interview, Peoples of Southern Alberta Oral History Project, August 18, 1988, Glenbow Archives RCT-854.
[11] The Glenbow Archives holds the Canadian Shoe Shine Fonds, 1931-1971, M-6166.
[12] Collin Gallant, “Hat’s favourite burger man passes,” Medicine Hat News, April 15, 2014.
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