Charlie Gargiulo’s Lowell memoir, Legends of Little Canada, was recently reviewed in Beat Scene magazine, a UK print publication the covers the Beat Generation (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et al). Here’s the review, reposted with permission of Beat Scene:

Reading this new book one gets the feeling it has been around 60 years in the making. Written from the viewpoint of an eleven year old Charlie Gargiulo, living in ‘Little Canada.’ It’s around 1962. Now this is – or was, a distinct district of Lowell back then.

You may recall the writer who so dominates Beat Scene magazine, a chap called Jack Kerouac, writing with a passion about this area. He didn’t invent it for novelistic purposes; it was a real place where thousands of people, often ‘French

Canadians’ made their home from home. Tightly knit streets, you might say it was densely populated, a community where people knew each other. Lowell is a little like this, even today. People came to live and work here from all over. The textile mills were a big draw, offering steady employment. Jack Kerouac’s mother worked in them. The Greek section, the Portuguese area, the Irish sector and so on.

Charlie Gargiulo paints us a vibrant picture of his ‘Little Canada.’ His escapades, his fears on moving there as a young boy. It could be tough, for kids it was their patch. Newcomers often had to prove themselves, get integrated. Young

Charlie ran the gauntlet, faced down the few bullies and made a lot of friends. He tells a wonderful story, much happiness, the camaraderie of his pals, their gang, the street games. All in an area so close to the big church where Jack Kerouac worshipped and confided in the Parish Priest Father Spike Morrissette. That church, coincidentally, now out of use, a mini cathedral, but destined to become a Jack Kerouac cultural centre.

“For the next month, everyone in our gang felt like a death row prisoner counting down the days to execution. Minus the getting executed part. Each day felt sadder and sadder, especially when we found that Ronnie and his family were not only moving away from Little Canada, but also from Lowell. His dad had rented a place about fifteen miles north in Nashua, New Hampshire. ”

Charlie was a comic book lover and one of his special places was Harvey’s Bookland. Harvey was a well liked good hearted character for Charlie and his pals. Well loved by all – anyone who liked used bookstores – I’ve bought a few things there myself A thoroughly decent guy. His bookstore survived into the 1990s.

Legends of Little Canada is a book – wonderful storytelling as it is – on a mission. To put right the wrongs of the early 1960s when ‘Urban Renewal’ raised its ugly head. When Little Canada was – block by block – demolished – stealthily by greedy builders

and a compliant Lowell Council – and the enclave was no more. It all happened by degrees. Families were dispersed to other regions of Lowell, other towns, Worcester, Lawrence. Friendships never given a second thought, just chasing the dollars.

As an eleven year old boy Charlie Gargiulo displays a remarkable awareness of the wrongs that are being perpetrated by powerful organisations. But in with all that are his boyhood, his pals, his beloved aunt, his mother –

the nagging absence of a father who vanished but who – Charlie hopes – will one day return. That

understanding of what happened to Little Canada has stayed with Gargiulo. An example of this is when as a by then young man – when I first encountered him in Lowell, he fought against a repeat of local demolition in The Acre’ – another district of Lowell, home to working people, long established. He formed ‘Coalition For A Better Acre’ and they beat off more corporate schemes and ‘The Acre’ was saved. It has been his life’s work. He loves Lowell. And he loves helping the working people of the place even more.

Now all these years later he feels it was time to change the narrative, the spun story of how the destruction of Little Canada was all for the good. Charlie sees the callous destruction of a community and the lies and this is his story. It needed to be written.

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Legends of Little Canada is available online from Loom Press and in person at lala books on Market Street in downtown Lowell.