This paper investigates the departures and arrivals of a group of Zoppolani, Italians from the northeast of Italy who travelled through Ellis Island to British Columbia in search of work between 1906 and 1923. Zoppola is a municipality located in the center west of the autonomous Friuli Venezia-Giulia Region in northeast Italy, and it is approximately 90 km northwest of Friuli Venezia-Giulia’s capital city of Trieste. It was one of many northern Italian towns from which migrants to North America originated. However, little is known of the considerable number of Zoppolani who left the area in the early 1900s and made their way to western Canada. This sample study examines the historical scholarship in the field, considers challenges posed by a variety of archival records and argues that an understanding of the local geography and history of both the comune of Zoppola and the province of British Columbia is essential to the overall interpretation of the emigrant history discussed.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Arthur, G. C., (2025), "Zoppola, Zoppolani and Migration to Western Canada: A Sample Study", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Arthur, Gabriella Colussi. "Zoppola, Zoppolani and Migration to Western Canada: A Sample Study." Quaderni d'italianistica 33 (1): 2012. 107-132. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v33i1.17090. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.