Half the time he had no idea what town he was in, he did back breaking work for very little pay, he could only communicate using hand gestures, and he had to have his brother marry his wife for him.
These were some of the things David Marques had to overcome almost 60 years ago when he first immigrated to Canada from Portugal.
As one of the oldest member of the Sault’s Portuguese community he was selected to raise the Portuguese flag at city hall on Saturday during a noon celebration of Portugal Day put on by the Portuguese Canadian Association (PCA).
Marques remembers coming to Canada in 1957, at the age of 27, after he borrowed money from family members to pay for the flight from Lisbon to Toronto.
He said Portugal was struggling economically back then and so he and a group of about 300 other immigrants were hoping Canada would provide them with good jobs and lives.
Almost no-one in his group spoke English.
Immigration officers and employers would corral them around from hotels and living quarters to job sites using hand gestures. Most of the time they had no idea what was going on, said Marques.
His first jobs in Canada were working on farms doing hard manual labor and his first impressions were that the Canadians farms were more modern than back home.
“In Portugal everything was done by hand and animals. I was surprised by all the big machines here,” said Marques.
Marques said he was paid around 40 cents an hour and after a grueling six-day workweek he pulled in about $25.
After working on farms in Southern Ontario for a few months, one day an immigration officer stuck Marques and a few other immigrants on a train. They had no idea where they were going.
As it turns out, they were going to the Sault.
“Everyone walked out of the train and said, ‘what are we going to do here?’
He’s been living and working in the area ever since.
”In the Sault back then the Portuguese were always really hard working because we were trying to prove ourselves," quipped Marques. "The Italians were the bosses because they were more established here and we were more like the slaves."
Before he moved to Canada, Marques was supposed to marry a beautiful young lady, Prazeres, but the marriage was called off because of his move to Canada.
However, three years after moving here, in 1960, he had established himself enough that he could afford to marry her and bring her over.
However, Prazeres’ father was very old fashioned and wouldn’t allow her to move to Canada unless they were married.
So, marriage papers were mailed, and a big wedding ceremony was held in the Portuguese town of Guarda but travelling costs and work prevented Marques making the trip to Guarda so his brother acted as the groom in his place.
“’Marriage by proxy’ they call it,” he said.
While his friends, family, and new wife were having the time of their lives partying and feasting (Prazeres remembers trying meatballs for the first time at her wedding) Marques spent his wedding day working a long 12-hour day in the lumber industry and then coming home to a tiny two-bed room to eat his roommate’s leftover macaroni before going to sleep.
But Prazeres was soon on her way to Canada, though not without some troubles of her own.
“I was so nervous to come to Canada and I’d never been on a plane before. I got on the wrong flight. When I was up in the air I talked to some people and realized I was on my way to France,” she said.
She ended up spending a night in France, then another night in Lisbon before finally getting her flight to Canada.
“She was late three days, I didn’t think she was coming,” said Marques.
Prazeres flew to Toronto, then Sault Michigan, and then took a boat over the river to Canada.
And Marques, the joker, used the opportunity to prank his new wife.
When she got off the boat he had a friend greet her as a stranger and tell her that he moved away from the Sault.
For a minute she thought she was stuck in a Canadian city, unable to speak English and with nowhere to go.
“I was so worried at first, especially after all my problems, but he showed himself pretty quickly,” said Prazeres, who actually gets most people in the Sault to call her ‘Priscilla’ because she found people had a tough time pronouncing her name.
As the Marques’ picked up English over the years they also didn’t want their two daughters, and other children in the city, to loose the Portuguese language so Marques started up a Portuguese school in the 1960s.
The school ran half-day Portuguese lessons for children on Saturdays, mostly out of the Corpus Christi Elementary School.
He said the group eventually morphed into what is now the PCA.
“I used a lot of gas driving kids around to go to that school (however) now, my daughters can speak better Portuguese than me,” said Marques who at 85 (his birthday was actually on Friday) still has a nice thick European accent.
The PCA president George Silva said Saturday’s event was about celebrating “how great Portugal is.”
It's usually held on June 10 to honor the death of the important Portuguese poet Luís de Camões however this year they held it on Saturday June 11 to coincide with the weekend.
The Sault’s PCA has about 40-50 members, many of whom were born in Portugal, but also includes those with Portuguese roots.