Lolita Sartorello

September 3, 2020

Lolita Narcisa Sartorello (née Verbaz) was born on August 6, 1929 to Albina Srebovt and Arturo Verbaz in Fiume, Italy. After the loss of her mother at the age of 5, she was raised by her nonna and her old aunt in a downtown apartment near many of her cousins, who became to her as beloved siblings. She grew up in war time and then experienced what she often said was worse than the war—the annexation of Fiume into Yugoslavia. She had a story she frequently told of coming home after work at the family store, hungry and tired, and finding communist soldiers in her house, who demanded that she hand over the pasta in the cupboard. Instead, she threw it out the window. She was taken away to jail until a family friend was able to get her released. The hardships of this regime change—and being on the wrong national side of it—forced nearly 90% of Fiume’s Italian population to emigrate out of the city. At the age of only 19, Lolita became one of these internally displaced people and left her city and her family behind, finding a place in a refugee camp on the Ligurian coast before finally receiving the opportunity to immigrate to Canada two years later. 

In Canada, Lolita was assigned to a family to work as a nanny and traveled to her new destination of Vancouver. She was still learning English but she made friends with other women on similar assignments and enrolled in language classes (and took some tips from the children she nannied). She was, as she remained her whole life, unspeakably brave. 

Wherever Lolita went, she was well-liked; she was charming, sociable, and stubborn from cradle to grave, and she made many friends in Vancouver, especially at the Italian dances and meet-up groups she attended. There, she met Joe Sartorello, who had immigrated from Italy via Venezuela, and they married in 1952. She became a loving mother to Paul (1955) and Louise (1957), raising her children in a house in East Vancouver where she would live for 63 years. She nurtured a beautiful garden in the backyard, filled with roses, snapdragons, wisteria, and her beloved fig and Italian plum trees. She was a gifted cook and loved to share her favourite Italian dishes (among them gnocchi and zuppa inglese) with anyone lucky enough to come over for lunch. 

Always a trendsetter, Lolita undertook a difficult but necessary decision when she filed for divorce in the early 70s, at a time when divorce was still relatively rare. She devoted herself to working, buying out the entirety of the house (a point of pride for her even many decades later), and raising her children on her own. In 1975, she met John Jackson, also a divorcé, at a dance. They stayed together for over 35 years, until his death in 2011. 

Lolita was proud of the many jobs she held all her life, from working at a printing press in Genoa to sorting mushrooms in Vancouver. In the mid 70s, she got a job in the Woodward’s department store, where she worked until her retirement in 1992. Perhaps the job she excelled at most, however, was being a nonna—in 1981, Louise married Charles McPhee and had four children: Mark (1983), Michelle (1985), Esther (1987), and Katherine (1990). Lolita loved to spend time with her grandchildren as they grew and, if they ever needed inspiration, she was happy to regale them with the tale of the Vancouver Transit Strike of 1984, when she had to walk to and from work (over an hour each way) for three months. 

After retirement, Lolita and John took pleasure in travel when they could and especially loved to visit family in Italy and Fiume and to journey to warm climates similar to where Lolita grew up, such as parts of Mexico and Hawaii. She loved the ocean and always brought back special shells from her trips for her grandchildren. John rehabilitated an old sailboat and the two of them spent many happy days together on the water. She had many friends all over the world and maintained lively correspondence, both written and over the telephone, with people she had met throughout her life, including all the way back in the refugee camp. She was always up for an adventure and, in her later years, especially loved to spend time with “the young people”—her grandchildren and their friends and partners. In fact, she became an honorary nonna to quite a few of those young people, which was a role she cherished. 

The last three years of Lolita’s life were complicated by the onset of dementia, but even as she forgot certain details that she had previously recited with ease, she began to remember and share sweet moments from her youngest days, such as songs she had sung in primary school. In her final two weeks, she stopped speaking English and instead reverted to her first language—Fiuman—the language of her city and her people. 

Throughout a life of great intensity, Lolita found comfort in her Catholic faith, and in her love of music, dancing, art, reading, and good food. She could move from tears to laughter in five seconds flat and she never lost her childlike wonder for watching clouds travel across the sky. She blessed all who knew her with her presence. We will love and miss her forever. 

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