Events

Octopus Books is thrilled to organize the launch of Harvest Pilgrims: Mexican and Caribbean Migrant Farm Workers in Canada by award-winning photographer and social activist Vincenzo Pietropaolo. The launch will take place on Wednesday, March 10, in the auditorium of the Main Library (120 Metcalfe) at 7 pm. As usual, there is no admission fee. The venue is wheelchair accessible. Pietropaolo has been photographing migrant agriculture workers and recording their stories since 1984. He has travelled to forty locations throughout Ontario and visited the workers’ homes in Mexico, Jamaica, and Montserrat. Pietropaolo has borne witness to these “harvest pilgrims”: the tens of thousands of migrant workers who arrive in the spring and leave in the fall. They are the backbone of the agricultural industry in Canada and, yet, continue to be denied many of the basic workplace rights that protect other workers in Canada. Vincenzo Pietropaolo is an award-winning photographer whose work has been widely published in Canada and abroad. An Italian-Canadian, he and his family immigrated to Canada in 1959.