Falconi's Tractor

Like his three siblings, 32-year-old Alfredo Freddy Flowers Falconi has led two lives: the idyllic one before The Incident -- his mother's 1984 death -- and the complicated one afterward. He was just eight-years-old when his father abandoned the family, and nine when his oldest brother, Small Carm, covered up the circumstances of Rosa Falconi's demise to keep the family's honour intact. Twenty-three years later, that lie has become a black hole: hidden at the centre of all of their lives, it's supremely powerful force that, when uncovered by Freddy, threatens to tear them apart. Set against the backdrop of the Falconi family's shuttered tractor showroom on Toronto's pulsating and ethnically diverse Spadina Avenue, Falconi's Tractor explores the Italo-Canadian experience, Catholicism, family dynamics, the fall of a family business, infidelity, and mental health—all with a red Falconi tractor and a Ferrari sports car as bookends to the action.

Toronto-born Dave LeBlanc has been writing weekly as the Globe and Mail's Architourist since 2004. His work has also appeared in international design magazines. He is an award-winning producer of radio commercials, and in 2014-15 he hosted Where Cool Came From on iChannel.