Maltese people who emigrate never quite shake off the need to learn more about their roots. It is a primitive urge to touch base with the land where they were born, and it increases as one gets older.

Mary Cumbo set off for Toronto, Canada with her children Richard and Veronica in 1951, following her husband Joseph who had gone up six months earlier. She settled in immediately and the family has remained there ever since.

Today, Richard Cumbo is in his 60s and visits Malta almost every year. In fact I first met Richard in 2002 when I had interviewed him about the Maltese-Canadian community.

His mother Mary is now 83, and over the years, her nostalgia for the Malta she left behind has intensified. Of course, in her mind she imagines that the country is still the same as how she left it all those years ago in the 50s; the last time she visited was in 1972.

One of her repeated requests to Richard was that she wanted him to find a trace of her father, who was a frame maker by profession. He died at the young age of 33 when she was just 8 years old and with his death, the family suffered a huge emotional and financial blow. As the years rolled by, her need to re-connect with her past has grown stronger.

“My grandfather Silvio Zarb was very well-known in Sliema; he was very generous and philanthropic and the older generation will certainly remember him. He used to frame paintings for Giuseppi Cali. The huge frames at the Lady of the Sacred Hearth Church are all his, and the pulpit was made by his brother Fredu Zarb, who was a sculptor. In fact, I often run across people who remember our family. While swimming in Sliema the other day, I met a woman and as we talked and exchanged names, it turned out that our fathers had been childhood friends,” says Richard.

Richard’s mother has always wanted him to try and find one of the labels that her father used to put on the back of the frames he made.

“This has been her one incessant wish and on every visit, I make it a point to visit bazaars, looking at the back of the frames of holy pictures. I never thought I would find one of these labels as it was so long ago, and between moths and Malta’s climate, I imagined such a label would have simply fallen off or disintegrated.”

On this visit, however, the impossible happened. There was a bazaar at the Ursolini crèche, and although he arrived just as they were closing, they still allowed him to have a quick look round.

“I love religious objects and holy pictures, and as I rummaged through them I found one which was just caked with dust. I picked it up, turned it over, and all of a sudden the label jumped out at me. I had been looking for it for over 20 years. The odds of finding a label still intact after 70 years were tremendous, but there it was, still carefully glued on by my grandfather’s own hands. I bought the picture and when I called my mother she was ecstatic.”

This tiny label may seem like a trivial find to anyone else, but when Mary Cumbo finally sees it with her own eyes on Richard’s return, it will represent a very important link to her childhood past.