Luigi Vendittelli

So in 1965, my mother's father, my grandfather, who was basically like my second father.

I spent a lot of time with him when I was in Italy as a kid and Montreal as a kid.

We always were together all the time.

You spoke Italian at home?

We've always spoken Italian.

And he was a very big reason why I spoke Italian.

He's very strict, actually, when it came to that.

He says, you have to learn it perfectly.

So I was able to learn Italian and speak it like the people in Rome did.

That was important.

We stayed in Rome.

Anyway, and so...

In 1965, five years after he moved to Montreal with my grandmother, my mom, and her sister, he was outside on a balcony with a friend of his who was visiting from Italy.

His friend's name is Corrado Zenga, who was a famous soccer player in Italy, by the way.

And they were outside on the balcony smoking a cigarette.

as most people did in the 1960s.

And in front of the apartment building, it was a field.

It was like an open field at the time.

They hadn't built yet.

And he's looking out at the horizon and sees this orange light coming in really fast.