Joseph and Rosa Alimonti

​Leaving home at about age 12, Joseph Alimonti was unable to purchase his own ticket to America so he jumped on a ship and worked his way over.  His name first appears in the 1910 Ohio census residing at a boarding house.  By 1914 he was working at a railway construction camp in the Princeton area.  When that job was completed, Joseph and his friends Pasquale Barrera and Louis Constantini, joined his father, Pasquale Alimonti, in Kelowna.  They worked together on Pasquale’s farm before each one buying their own farms.  In 1917 Joseph was drafted into the Canadian forces, serving in France.  He returned wounded, to Kelowna in 1919, and by 1925 married Rosa Culos.  They farmed in the Mission Creek and Ellison areas where they raised their family Katie, Nick and Gina.