In early March 1968, the Guardian featured the Portuguese population of Brampton and Bramalea. Valter Lima (pictured) and wife Maria ran the aptly-named Portuguese Food Store.

According to the newspaper, the couple “dispense in country-store style a gastronomic gamut: squid and stickleback, oysters and olives, mackerel and macaroni. Shelves bulge with mussels, cluster with clams, swim with sardines. Counters choke with cheese, surfeit with sweet marmelada. Walls sprout festoons of chourecos, the fiery Portuguese sausage. The spiced air spreads its appetizing scent, blended of tangerines and turnips, oranges and lemons, figs and grapes, walnuts and garlic.”

The 2016 census found 29,810 people in Peel able to speak Portuguese, with 11,490 of them in Brampton. Fifty years ago, there were 5,000 Portuguese-Canadians in Brampton, out of a national total of 70,000.

A Portuguese mass began at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in November 1967. The two largest employers of Portuguese-Canadians at the time were Brampton Poultry on Kennedy Road (90 of their 125 total employees) and Calvert-Dale Estates (100 of 325 employees).