i posted some pictures of my father a few weeks before that, looking very much like a visible minority. this is a picture of his father, trying to figure out what the fuck he's doing with a white kid on his lap. january, 1983 - probably some time around my second birthday.
that man was not italian; he married a woman who was adopted, and raised as a zito. the italian in me is on his wife's side. according to what i know about him, he identified as a french canadian and was raised as a quebecois catholic. his name was william robert parent, which i know because it is a reversal of my father's given names, although i think i remember hearing about a joseph in there, as well. i was given my father's name as a middle name.
he would have been born in the mid to late 30s. i remember his funeral; he died in the late 80s or early 90s of a massive heart attack brought on by poor lifestyle decisions, before his 60th birthday. those poor lifestyle decisions - drinking, smoking, over-eating and also gambling - are the sum total of what i know about him.
he worked as a bricklayer; he was a mason.
besides having some clear french canadian features, and the next post will discuss this, he's actually rather ambiguous in phenotypic expression. it is possible that he may simply have had old european ancestry from the south of france, although my research into my surname has suggested an origin in the historically celtic (belgian) areas around paris, so this is not entirely consistent with an absolute solution to his ethnicity. one may rather suspect that he may have been roma, that is gypsy - or perhaps of middle eastern extraction. some sort of jewish is one possibility, but do recall that much of the middle east was colonized by the french in the period between napoleon and the first world war. my immediate assumption would be either lebanese or jewish, that is some sort of carthaginian, however far removed from the area. it is in fact very difficult to determine a lebanese person from a jewish person on first glance. but, note the lamp behind him, which is somewhat cut off in this 2013 scan, but quite oriental in the original.
i would carefully point out the wooly hair, which is a trait carried almost exclusively by africans, as well as some semites. i am left no more certain about the situation. is he jewish or african?
as it is, i also have a picture of myself with his mother, that is my great-grandmother.