Manuela Marujo

Manuela Marujo was born in 1949, in the rural village of Santa Vitória and grew up in nearby Santa-Clara-a-Velha, both in the southern mainland region of Baixo Alentejo. When she was four years old, her father, a civil servant in the local Casa do Povo, tried to immigrate to Canada as part of the labour migration agreement with the Portuguese government. Manuela remembers going with her family to the city of Beja to have their portrait for this purpose. Unfortunately for her father, Canadian immigration officials denied his visa on account of his hands not being “hardened;” in other words, for not being a manual worker.

Marujo completed her undergraduate degree in Germanic Philology at the Classic University of Lisbon. When she moved to Lisbon to study, her parents went with her and the family never returned to live in Alentejo. After graduating, Marujo worked a few summers in London, England, and in Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Bad Godesberg, in Germany. She became a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Bonn but decided to drop out given her decision to focus on languages and travelling. At age 23, Marujo found her first teaching job at the Liceu Nacional Almirante Lopes Alves, in Lobito, Angola, in 1972, where one of her two younger brothers was deployed during the Colonial Wars. She met her first husband there, with whom she had her daughter. After the Carnations Revolution of 1974 and the end of the colonial empire, Marujo and her family were among the many retornados forced to move back to Portugal.

After returning to Portugal, Marujo started teaching Portuguese to foreigners in Lisbon and Sweden. In the latter, she reencountered a teacher from her hometown who taught Portuguese to the local emigrant community and became interested in that work. Marujo then sought a job at the Ministry of Education’s Basic and Secondary Portuguese Teaching Abroad Services of the Institute of Portuguese Language and Culture, where she was initially employed in producing the magazine Contacto for emigrant children. After that, she was sent by the Institute to England and Germany as a Portuguese language teacher working with second language teachers and students.

In 1982, her job brought her to Toronto, where she taught refresher courses for teachers in Portuguese community schools. During her visit, she became fascinated with Canada’s multiculturalist policy and the vitality of Portuguese language education in both public and community schools. About a year after returning to Portugal, Manuela applied for a permanent faculty position at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Toronto, where the Institute’s Portuguese lecturer Teresa Carneiro had previously been placed. She was accepted for the job after an associate dean interviewed her in Portugal. However, because the position was advertised for a Canadian citizen, immigration officials denied her entry for three years, until the university convinced the authorities to grant her a visa. In the meantime, Marujo worked as the Camões Institute’s Portuguese Language Education coordinator in England.

Finally, in 1985, Marujo and her daughter moved to Toronto. She started her new position as a Tutor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and was promoted to Senior Tutor five years later. In the summer months, Marujo completed her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Bilingual Education. Later she would be promoted to Associate Professor Teaching Stream. In 2001 she became Associate Director of her department, until 2017, when she retired.

During her thirty years career at the University of Toronto, Marujo taught many Portuguese and other Lusophone immigrants and descendants; curated various exhibitions; published several articles, chapters, and books – including With Hardened Hands: A Pictoral History of Portuguese Immigration to Canada in the 1950s (1993) with her partner Domingos Marques – organized the Vez e a Voz da Mulher Portuguese academic conference series; and has been involved with several community initiatives, especially those focused on language, culture, and education – including the Portuguese Coalition for Better Education.