Home is the Journey is a critical exploration of current issues and longstanding themes influencing and confronting Portuguese immigrant communities around the globe. Gilberto Fernandes and Miguel Moniz host the thinkers, creators, storytellers, and other folks who discern and discover the histories and cultures that shape this diverse and widespread diaspora. With a focus on North America, we also travel to other places that Portuguese speakers have settled, departed, inspired, and impelled.

Our podcasts include interviews with authors, researchers, journalists, artists, musicians, actors, athletes, and other narrators, talking about their areas of expertise and experience. Shorter sidecasts center on cultural practices and local institutions in immigrant communities and beyond.

This is a PCHP co-production with Migrant Communities Project (Miguel Moniz).

This physical and online exhibition was commissioned by the Embassy of Portugal in Canada for Tempo Historical Consulting (owned by the PCHP’s lead director Gilberto Fernandes) to commemorate the 70th anniversaries of Portugal-Canada diplomatic relations in 2022 and the beginning of Portuguese mass migration to Canada in 2023. The 70 individuals and organizations featured in it were selected from among the short TV documentaries that Fernandes/PCHP co-produced in 2015-17 for the Rádio Televisão Portuguesa Internacional’s show Hora dos Portugueses. This exhibition contains over 80 artifacts (some of them in digitized into 3D objects), 15 virtual tours of relevant locations in Toronto, Guelph, Caledon, and Montreal, 75 short documentaries from RTPi, NFB/ONF, and other sources; an illustrated timeline featuring over 300 events; a series of videos recorded by community members, including Portuguese-Canadian students;
audio recordings with testimonials from several community participants; and a wide selection of historical records from private collections and public archives, including the PCHP and the CTASC.

The exhibition was originally unveiled at Toronto’s Metro Hall by the President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, the Mayor of Toronto Olivia Chow, and other dignitaries from both countries on September 15.

Art mural
October 2021

The PCHP’s directors Gilberto Fernandes and Susana Miranda collaborated with the internationally renowned street artist Vhils (Alexandre Farto) in creating his mural in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood honouring Portuguese “cleaning ladies” and their labour activism through the Cleaners’ Action movement in the 1970s-80s.

In July 2020, Fernandes was asked by the organizers to offer suggestions as to whom should be featured in the mural, which was to be dedicated to Portuguese women. His suggestion of the Cleaners’ Action was approved by the organizers and the artist, who collaborated with Fernandes and Miranda in the creation of this mural. We contributed multiple photos and newspapers from the Domingos Marques and the CAW Local 40’s collections at the CTASC – some of which are featured in the mural – helped Vhils’ team connect with members of the Cleaners’ Action, and provided interviews for a short documentary. The unveiling took place on October 19, 2021, and was attended by a sizeable audience of community members, politicians, and labour leaders.

The PCHP partnered with York University’s Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies program (Maria João Dodman and Inês Cardoso), the Centre for Research on Latin American and the Caribbean (Abubacar Fofana León), and the Global and Community Engagement office, along with the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers, the Working Women Community Centre, and the Camões Institute, to offer a free Youth Summer Program geared to youth of all ethnic and linguistic backgrounds with an interest in the theme: The Lusophone World: Global and Local Communities.

This program introduced high school students in the ages of 14-18 to a university setting, got them acquainted with what is for some an unfamiliar environment, and provided them with the information they needed to make decisions about their academic paths. The program featured lectures, visual art and dance workshops, musical performances, sport activities, and other in- and out-of- classroom activities led by faculty members, professionals, and other community partners that mixed learning, recreation, and creativity.

The students were also offered the PCHP’s walking tour “Portuguese Toronto” and a “scavenger hunt” in the PCHP’s collections at the CTASC, led by Fernandes and the archivist Michael Moir.

On the 40th anniversary of the murder that shocked Toronto, our lead director Gilberto Fernandes put together a Community Conversation public panel with historians Daniel Ross and Tom Hooper (York University), and sex worker and advocate Valerie Scott (Sex Professionals of Canada), where they discussed how the death of the Azorean shoeshine boy Emanuel Jaques impacted the city’s Portuguese, LGBTQ, and sex worker communities, and led to the “revamping” of Yonge Street. The event was held at the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers on 960 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto.

The panel resulted from a collaboration between the PCHP, York University’s Department of History, the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, and the Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies Program, along with the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers, and ActiveHistory.ca. The event was well attended and generated significant media coverage.

Television show
2015-2017

Between November 2015 and December 2017, the PCHP’s lead director Gilberto Fernandes co-produced close to 100 short documentaries for the daily show “Hora dos Portugueses,” on Portugal’s international public TV and radio broadcaster RTPi/RDP, together with Pedro Rodrigues of RoughCut Audiovisual. Also part of the production team were Luis Moreira (director of photography), Daniela Costa (reporter), and other occasional contributors.

The show showcased the Portuguese diaspora around the world, focusing on notable individuals and organizations, and community events. Our segments typically provided historical context to contemporary aspects of Portuguese-Canadian culture and society, within and beyond the communities of Ontario and Quebec. Among our interviewees were Jerry Dias (labour leader), Paulino Nunes (actor), Melissa Grelo (TV hostess), Sid and Alex Seixeiro (TV and radio hosts), Charles Sousa (politician), Ana Bailão (politician), Peter Fonseca (politician), Meaghan Benfeito (olympic athlete), Mike Rita (comedian), Anthony de Sa (author), George Pimentel (photographer), Sandy Miranda (musician), Matthew Tavares (musician), Lucas Silveira (musician), Shawn Desman (musician) Alexandre Amâncio (video game developer), Dale Brazão (journalist), Mário Monteiro (professor and vaccine developer), Pedro Vieira (theoretical physicist), and many more. See here for more information.

In June 2014, coinciding with the Portugal Day celebrations and the Dundas West Fest, we offered for the first time our walking tour as part of that years’s Heritage Toronto program. The guided tour takes people through Toronto’s early Portuguese neighbourhoods, starting in Kensington Market, then heading west on Dundas St. West until it ends at Trinity-Bellwoods Park. In 2016, we became part of Jane’s Walk and the Dundas West Fest programs. That same year, we launched the digital version of the tour through the mobile application izi.TRAVEL, which uses GPS technology to play site-specific audio recordings, illustrated with images accessible through a mobile devices. A desktop version is also available here.

Since the Covid-19 global pandemic, we stopped offering the tour every year in June. But we have continued to offer it to specific groups who have requested it, including during Portuguese studies conferences held in Toronto.

For the 60th anniversary of the beginning of Portuguese mass migration to Canada, the Consul-General of Portugal in Toronto, Júlio Vilela, invited the PCHP to curate a photo exhibition to be included in the 2013 Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival. The exhibition consisted of 20 historical photos, two interpretative banners, and catalogues with extensive information. Other community businesses and organizations provided in-kind support, including photos from their collections. The launch, on May 13, 2013, was held at Toronto’s City Hall and attended by close to 150 people. The event attracted the attention of various community and mainstream Canadian media, CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

This traveling exhibition was subsequently shown at multiple locations and events, including the Consulate-General of Portugal in Toronto (2013); Dundas West Fest (2013-2016); Toronto Catholic High School Archbishop Romero (2013); Azorean House of Ontario (2013); Lillian H. Smith Toronto Public Library branch (2014); IC Savings, Dundas St. West branch (2014); Scott Library, York University (2014); Victoria College, University of Toronto (2014); and Museum Strathroy-Caradoc (2015) – the latter included artifacts from the Gallery of the Portuguese Pioneers, a performance by the musician Nuno Cristo, and a book reading by author Anthony de Sa.

In June 2016, we created a digital companion for this exhibition, with audio captions, soundscapes, and additional photos, using the mobile application izi.TRAVEL. The desktop version is available here.

St. Christopher House (presently West Neighbourhood House) celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2012 . To kick-off the year-long celebrations, its Century Committee planned public history exhibition on March 2-3, curated by our lead director Gilberto Fernandes, who was at the time a board member of St Chris. The materials used for that exhibition were pulled from records still at St. Chris’ and the text was adapted from from Patricia O’ Connor’s The Story of St. Christopher House, 1912-1984 (1986).

The physical exhibition was adapted into an online version hosted by the PCHP’s original exhibition website, onto which was added a original content by the PCHP’s Susana Miranda.

The PCHP’s first exhibition focused on the history of the Toronto-based newspaper Comunidade. It featured records from Domingos Marques’ collection at the CTASC and photos from Gilberto Prioste, and filmed interviews with both.

We launched an earlier version of this website during the Symposium on Portuguese-Canadian Immigrant Descendents held at York University’s Winters College. The launch was supported by the Department of History, where our directors Gilberto Fernandes, Susana Miranda, and Raphael Costa were then doctoral students.

We had a brief collaboration with the Toronto-based Portuguese-language Senso Magazine, for which we produced two features, one introducing readers to the PCHP and the other about the history of the police killing of the Portuguese immigrant Ângelo Nóbrega in 1969 and its consequential aftermath.