His father was a mailman and a musician. His mother was a waitress. He had three brothers. He wrote about his family life in the acclaimed memoir, "The Closer We Are To Dying".[2][3]
Career
After working for several years in community development, he joined the CBC in 1980 as the manager of CFFB Radio in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit. He then worked as a CBC Radio producer in Regina from 1985 to 1991. While at the CBC, he was president of his union local and in 1998 he was elected president of the National Radio Producers' Association.
He left the CBC to become a freelance journalist in Montreal, where he was a columnist for HOUR magazine, and the Montreal Gazette. Montreal Gazette. He won a National Newspaper Award for his Gazette columns in 1995.
He moved to Toronto in 1997, where he wrote city columns for the National Post, The Globe and Mail and "The Toronto Star". His columns focussed on the small details of daily life, with a particular focus on social housing, mental health issues, addictions, and poverty. His column about the eviction and subsequent death of a tenant in community housing led to a public inquiry and a series of reforms in the treatment of elderly tenants in community housing in Toronto.
Personal life
Joe Fiorito is married to Susan Mahoney. His son, Matt, is a punk musician in Vancouver.
Regarding his Italian roots, Fiorotto had this to say in an interview with italocanadese.com, "My heritage is a faded fresco; I’m third generation. But I have the legacy of the stories of the old days, and I am loyal to the plate on my table. What is clear and indelible, however, is the link to the village of my grandparents – Ripabottoni, in Molise, is the fountain of all of us with the last name Fiorito. Frankly, my last name tends to tie some people in knots, and so it is a test, but it is also an identifier: a guy in Milan, on hearing my name said, “Oh, a peasant.” Anywhere I am, I am never unaware of who I am."[1]
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