Greeks & Greek Canadians: Immigration and Language in Canada

Immigrec is an oral history project that studies Greek immigration to Canada between 1945 and 1975. 

The project aims to explore the history and language of Greek immigrants to Canada and to elucidate their connection to the social and cultural history of the country. It will contribute to the study of the second major wave of Greek transatlantic immigration and to a broader understanding of ethnic diversity in Canadian society. 

One of the project's goals is to foster an interdisciplinary spirit among the fields of history, sociology, and linguistics. This kind of integrative approach is particularly beneficial to Greek-Canadian studies, as it will help provide a fully-fledged analysis of both the historical and sociolinguistic characteristics of Greek-Canadian communities. 

No history is complete without the stories of the people who lived it. This is why our Montreal team, based at McGill University and coordinated by Professor Tassos Anastassiadis, is looking for people who came to Canada between 1945 and 1975 in order to interview them. We hope to preserve their stories in a digital museum that will be accessible to a global audience and, most importantly, to future generations of Greek-Canadian Montrealers. 

In order to create this Virtual Museum, we need the help of the members of Montreal's Greek community. If you have photographs, old passports, travel tickets, and other documents that you would like to share through our project, we would digitize the original item before returning it to you and would be glad to provide you with a copy for your personal archives. If you would like to lend us a document or give an interview, please contact Alexandra Siotou at mcgillmoderngreek@gmail.com

You can find more information about the project by visiting https://immigrec.com/

The Immigrec Coordinators & Affiliated Universities

• Tassos Anastassiadis, Asst. Prof. of History & Phrixos B. Papachristidis Chair, coordinator at McGill University, Montreal

• Angela Ralli, Prof. of Linguistics, coordinator at University of Patras, Greece

• Sakis Gekas, Assoc. Prof. of History, coordinator at York University, Toronto

• Panayotis Pappas, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, coordinator at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver