Toula Leos was born in 1930 at Stadio, Arcadia Greece. Her younger brother, Jimmy, had immigrated to Canada and Toula’s father asked her to move to Canada too in order to look after him. He was 15 when he came here, and Toula immigrated to Kingston in 1953. The Zakos family invited Toula into their home. Eventually, Toula’s other brother, George, also came to Canada in 1955. Toula missed life in Greece at first, but things began getting better when she met other Greeks. In 1963 she married the late Louis Leos, and their wedding was the last Greek wedding hosted in St. George’s Cathedral before the Greek Church was bought in 1964. Both Toula and Louis were extremely active in the Greek Community throughout their lives. Together they owned businesses, such as the GJP Restaurant on Princess Street.

Toula speaks English at an elementary level, and found the language barrier difficult. Her husband spoke a higher level of English, and he very much enjoyed being in Canada. They both felt that Canada provides a good quality of life, and Toula has no regrets about moving here. Toula found that Canadians were very polite when she first arrived, and were very welcoming to the Greeks. She and her husband did not feel uncomfortable about speaking Greek here.

Fil Menikefs came to Kingston for educational pursuits in 1951, following his brother Leukos who came to Canada in 1948 to attend Queens. Fil’s father was a high commissioner of the British government in Cyprus. He was governor of the district of Pafos. When Leukos finished high school his father wanted to send him abroad for undergraduate studies, and he had a millionaire British friend who suggested Queen’s University. Fil was accepted for Engineering studies at Queen’s. When Fil arrived to Kingston for the first time, the Greeks living in Kingston were the ones who had arrived before the war. There were 3-4 big families.

At that time, there were no other Cypriots living in Kingston, apart from him and his brother, although more immigrated to Kingston later. The interactions between the Greeks who arrived before this wave of immigration and those who arrived afterwards was, according to Fil, positive.

Fil’s first year in Kingston was very difficult. He ended up not attending school, choosing to work instead. Feeling despaired, since he was unhappy in Canada and was not even doing what he immigrated here to do, Fil wrote a letter to his father saying he wanted to return home. He came from a wealthy family in Greece where he had everything. His father advised him to give it some more time, and to tour around Canada. After some time, Fil met more people, saw more of Canada, and decided to stay. 

Mike Kanellos decided to move to Canada after World War II, since Canada allowed all those who had served as a soldier in Europe to immigrate here freely. Mike’s brother, Theodoros, and his family had moved to Kingston first, paving the way for Mike to come. When he moved to Kingston, he found work as a chef at RMC, among other jobs.

The ship he took to come to Canada was called the “Volcania”. Beforehand, he took a ship called the “Dolphin” from Athens to Napoli (Italy). In Napoli, he waited a week for the Volcania to fill up with passengers – around 1500 people – until it could embark for Canada. When Mike travelled from Athens to Napoli, he met a father and daughter from Sparta. The daughter was about to move to Montreal, and the father asked Mike to look out for his daughter on the ship to Canada, as she was only 16 years old. He protected her like she was “his own daughter” until they both arrived in Halifax. When Mike arrived in Halifax, it was January 1st. It took three days to get from Halifax to Kingston by train.

John Karkoulis came to Kingston in 1953 to join his older brother George and his younger brother Pete who were already living in Kingston and were waiting for him. His first impression of Canada, since he arrived in March, was that there was snow everywhere. In Greece it had be 25 degrees, and when he saw the snow here he said “where am I going?” The Canadians treated the Greeks well overall. He did feel that some people ‘had in the back of their minds’ that they were better, even if they didn’t express it. He experienced some instances where this was shown, such as when someone told him he needed to speak English in this country when he was speaking Greek behind the counter of his restaurant. He slowly learned English. Today, he feels that Canada is a great country, and his parents eventually came to Canada too. John, George, and Pete were successful entrepreneurs. The three brothers, before buying the LaSalle Motel in 1969 (now known as the Travelodge Motel), owned a restaurant at Princess and Division called the “Lunch Bar”, or often called “the GJP” (for George, John, and Peter). Today, they still own the Travelodge Hotel, home to the acclaimed Cavelier Dining Room. 

Pandelis Bettas‘s older brother, Anastasios, had moved to Canada first, followed by his siblings George and Pandelis. Later on, they also brought their sisters Georgia and Ypanti, along with their parents. He took the ship “Olympia” over to Canada. Pandelis remembers that some days on the ship were calm, while other were stormy. One day before finally arriving to Halifax, there was an emergency on the ship, due to the bad weather, and Pandelis was afraid he wouldn’t survive. No one was waiting for Pandelis when he arrived in Halifax: he had to wait for the immigration officers to process the passengers’ applications and tell them exactly where to go to head to their next destination.

Halifax to Kingston was a two-day train ride. Pandelis arrived in Canada in December, and so his first impression of it was that it was very cold. On the first day, the train had broken down, and the passengers had to wait until it was fixed in order to get to Kingston! Once in Kingston, he worked several jobs before finally opening his own business, the “Olympian Billiards and Restaurant Take-out”. He worked there for 43 years and then he retired. Pandelis’s restaurant was popular in the Greek community, and he worked long hours to make his business successful.

Pandelis’s wife, Voula Bettas, came to Canada in 1965 to marry him. She met Pandelis through an arranged marriage, and she was not even 19 years old when she made the journey to Canada – a country she knew nothing about, apart from that it was “very cold”. Pandelis was already living with his family at the time, as they had all immigrated to Kingston. Supported by her mother, Voula made the decision to immigrate to Kingston via a ship from Greece and then a train from Halifax, a route many Greek Kingstonians took. She and Pandelis needed to be married within 40 days to ensure her legal status in Canada. Voula and Pandelis were eventually able to sponsor Voula’s own mother to immigrate to Kingston and live with them, as well as her brother and sister.

Voula Stathopoulos’s parents immigrated to Canada in the 1940s. At first, her father (Elias Anagnostopoulos) arrived in Canada in 1947, followed by her mother (Georgina Founas) and her siblings. Voula has an older brother, an older sister, and a younger brother. Voula’s uncle had been living in Bellville for years, and it was he who sponsored her father to come to Canada during Greece’s Civil War. Elias had been a police officer, and he was in danger during the Civil War, so he fled to Canada. He had to wait 6-7 months for his immigration papers to be processed.

Voula was 21 when she moved to Kingston, following her sister who was already living here. A promotion at work also led her to Kingston. Eventually, her parents ended up moving to Kingston as well. Voula was working at Loblaws during this time, making “a lot of money for those days”. In the following sections of the walking tour, we will see how Voula met her husband, and how they went on to own businesses in Kingston together.

Chris Nikas was 16 years old when he was working delivering fruits in his home town of Tripoli, then named Thano. He remembers looking over to the mountains while on the farms. “I felt from that time that I wanted to see what was on the other side of these mountains,” he said. He wanted to travel: “it was in me”. Chris knew of people who had immigrated to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. He applied to immigrate to Canada, the country he knew best, since others he knew had ‘done it before’. Chris was sponsored to come to Canada by Peter Karkoulis, another member of our Greek Community, and husband to Maria Triada, included in this project. Both he and Peter were from the same town of Tripoli in Greece.

Chris was working in a tavern in Tripoli when he served the Greek ambassador’s chauffeur. Somehow, they started talking, and Chris served him a great lunch. This led to the chauffeur ‘owing Chris a favor’, as he put it. This came to use in his journey to Canada. It would have taken Chris weeks of waiting, he feels, if the ambassador’s chauffeur did not know him and owe him this favor. Thus, Chris was able to skip the lines: he remembers walking beside the chauffeur through the line of people waiting to see the ambassador. When they got to the ambassador, the chauffeur said, “excuse me, this young man is from Tripoli.”

He was told he could go to Canada that December of 1951. Before he left, Chris met a man from Tripoli who was also going to Kingston. Once they both arrived, they met up again. Chris was able to buy a house when he came to Kingston, and he let this new friend stay with him rent-free. Over the course of his early time in Kingston, Chris was generous enough to let many people stay rent-free in his home, including the many family members he later sponsored. Chris estimates that, including the children of those he sponsored, he helped between 50-60 people immigrate to Canada. He would help them with whatever they needed too, including helping them find jobs or providing them with a place to stay if necessary.

Chris was only 18 years old when he came to Canada, arriving with $20 in his pocket. He struggled: he didn’t know the language, and he barely knew anyone. “I didn’t have anybody or anything,” he says. Eventually, Chris found a job working at George Karis’s restaurant, making $18 a week.

Chris brought both his brother and sister over from Greece in 1954, sponsoring and supporting them. Chris and his brother, Gus, entered into partnerships from the time Gus arrived in Canada until retirement. Together, they owned the Downtown Coffee Shop, and they would go on to own five more successful businesses throughout their lives. The Embassy Restaurant, located at 314 Princess Street, was one of these businesses.

The late Ted Brousalis had his story for this project told by his wife, Maria Karis Brousalis, through her own interview, and by his daughter, Kristina Brousalis, via her blog. Ted immigrated from Greece to Canada, through arriving in Halifax, in 1960. The ship he was on was called the “Queen Frederica”. According to Kristina, the ticket would have cost $285.30 US and the duration of the journey would have been 14 to 15 days. He was initially seeking to stay with his grandfather in Illinois, but the easiest way to get to the United States was by passing through Canada, and then applying to immigrate to the US. As Kristina says:

“So Ted came here on a landed immigrant permit having promised to marry someone here – this was something that had been set up as a sham for him to get here in the first place. However, once Ted got here, he decided he liked Canada. I’m not sure why as he had a bunch of crap jobs in his first few years here. He ended up in Montreal working in a nylon factory for 50 cents an hour – the factory was hot and the workers had to buy water from the boss to keep going.” –(https://bespokebybrouhaha.me/2008/08/25/ted/)

Ted eventually “ended up in Kingston”, working as a dishwasher while simultaneously taking English classes at night school. Eventually, Ted went on to meet Maria Karis and own his own business.

Peter Fountas came from Athens. His father moved to Belleville in 1956 in order to work and bring some money back home to Greece. He eventually returned home in 1958 and stayed until 1965. Peter’s father then moved back to Canada for a few months before the entire family immigrated, in order to prepare their future home and get settled. Peter immigrated to Kingston in 1965 at the age of 11, along with his mother and brother, to join his father. They took a ship to Halifax. Peter had a great time on the ship, and remembers it fondly. He was in a cabin with his mother, his brother, another child named Yianni. Peter’s mother and brother got sea-sick, and so Peter spent the remainder of the 11-day trip running around and playing with Yianni. He still has tremendous memories of it. There were very rough seas, and he remembers that people from Spain came with boats offering goods and toys for people onboard to purchase. After their arrival in Halifax, they took a train to Kingston. It was Halloween the night they arrived, so it was very cold. Peter will never forget when he went to the grocery store to buy bread for the first time, and all they had was sliced bread. He couldn’t find a French loaf and wondered how he could ever live here without bread.

Although George Katinas was born in Canada, he has no memory of it. George’s Grandfather had immigrated to Canada in 1912, owning a candy shop in Smiths Falls. George’s parents immigrated to Greece when he was young. George immigrated to Canada after finishing high school in the 1980s, a decision that was in part made because he had heard about his family’s memories of Canada. He also had a support network here. Alex and Ethel Lampropoulos, Greek Kingstonians, had baptized George. His parents had lived in Kingston at some point, and his father had close friends such as Fil Menikefs, and the Karkoulises. George recognized that he had a network here that would support him if he came to Kingston. This doesn’t mean that coming to Kingston was easy: George was on his own for the first time, away from from immediate family and close friends.

The language barrier was difficult to handle as well. He took some English classes before he came here which were insufficient for regular conversation. People spoke too quickly in reality. The climate was very different. It was cold, and he was used to warmth and having access to the sea. What was hardest for George was that he was used to having a close knit support network in case anything happened. Now, he was uprooted and had little support. He had to push himself to make his own connections for the first time, rather than relying on his family. When George first immigrated to Kingston, he “craved all things Greek”, but he pushed himself to form connections outside of the Greek community. This is in contrast to most immigration stories, since most connections for Greek immigrants are made through the existing Greek community. George describes his culture shock in immigrating to Kingston, including his initial reaction that there was no “philotimo” – an essential part of Greek culture.

As a kid, George would visit his grandfather who would tell him stories about his life in Canada. The main theme of his stories was what a wonderful country Canada was and how organized it was. He would describe the stores he owned, such as a candy shop, and would give George drawings of his store. George’s father had a reverse immigration story since he migrated back to Greece. George’s story is different than his grandfather’s because he wasn’t an economic immigrant; he didn’t have to leave for any reason apart from interest in Canada. George feels this is an important distinction that changes the whole story.

Glykeria Martou graduated from high school in 1993, wanting to be a doctor. Her uncle had moved to Canada in 1973 and he suggested that Glykeria attend a Canadian university to study medicine. She immigrated here in 1994. Glykeria finished her residency in 2011, and afterwards she decided to return to Greece as she was married with two children. Unfortunately, Greece struggled with their financial crisis. She and her husband decided to move permanently to Canada as the situation in Greece was not getting any better. Eventually there was an opening in the Kingston hospital, which was a great career opportunity for Glykeria. She became a permanent resident of Canada in 2004, and became a Canadian citizen in 2009. Originally, Glykeria had come to Canada under a student Visa. Glykeria came to Canada under a student Visa. This status constrains the opportunities for scholarships and work, and additionally, getting into medical school and law school as an international student made the competition very high. Residency was also not allowed for international students and Glykeria did not hold a work permit at that point. Glykeria joined the University of Toronto as a research associate and she got a permanent resident status that allowed her to do her residency. The process of immigration is very time-consuming, and it is easy to get discouraged.

When she arrived to Kingston’s Greek community, she found it amazing to see how Greeks kept all their traditions while being in Canada. Eventually, all of Glykeria’s efforts paid off, and she is now a successful plastic surgeon who leads a team for breast reconstruction surgery for breast cancer patients here in Kingston. She has been recently featured in the newspaper for her incredible work. She and her husband, Tasos Papalazarou, have two sons named Yiorgos and Pavlos. She also created an organization in Greece for breast reconstruction. Glykeria doesn’t plan to move back to Greece, but she keeps a very close relationship with her family and friends there. Greece is a huge portion of her life. Above all, she says, she is Greek. Now she is also Canadian, and she feels doubly blessed. Unfortunately, due to the financial crisis many young well-educated Greeks immigrate to other countries such as Canada, and Canada is very lucky to have them.

After completing her undergraduate degree and teaching for some years in Thessaloniki, Olga Xenodochidou moved to the United States to pursue further education. Once there, she completed her Master’s degree and she also met her husband, Aris (Aristides Docoslis) who had just finished his PhD. In 2002 Aris received a job offer at Queen’s University and he moved to Kingston. In the summer of 2004 after they got married Olga moved to Kingston, as well. Her first impressions of Canada were very bad. The weather was too cold and she did not have a permanent residence yet, so, she had limited employment options. She had to wait a while to be able to work. Olga was speaking to her family over the phone on a weekly basis. There were no internet platforms, like Skype, yet. Things started to improve when Olga began working. She started working at Queen’s as an event coordinator for the Chemical Engineering Department. Olga also served as a Greek School teacher in the Greek community of Kingston for 7 years. Today, she works at Queen’s as an English instructor for engineering students.