LiUNA Local 506
b. 1932
Born in Italy, Marino Toppan came to Canada in 1955 after spending several summers in Switzerland working as a bricklayer. He settled in Toronto, where he would become a long-time union organizer, activist, and community leader. Toppan would lead organizing drives and safety campaigns of immigrant construction workers. Marino was also a radio broadcaster for La Voce del Lavoro and published two books: “The Voice of Labour : A Life in Toronto’s Construction Industry” (2004) and “Land of Triumph and Tragedy: Voices of the Italian Fallen Workers” (2019). In 2015, he founded the Italian Fallen Workers Memorial as a place of remembrance, where “the Italian-Canadian community [would] have a place to mourn those in our collective history who were tragically lost during the progress of Canada.”