Greek

Toronto’s “Little Athens” sprang up in the sixties, bringing the tastes and sounds of the Mediterranean through shish kebab houses, tavernas, kafenions, and bouzouki music. Although many Greeks moved out of Toronto to suburbs in Etobicoke, York, North York, Mississauga, and Scarborough, the Greek business district has flourished for the last three decades. Today, along the Danforth strip between Chester and Jones Avenues, restaurants serve traditional Greek food and mezes to a new clientele.
Toronto’s Greek community numbers around 130,000, a striking contrast to the 20 Greek names that appeared in the 1907 Might’s Directory. Many of the first Greek immigrants in Canada were young men, most of them refugees, who came in the 1890s to work in agriculture or in Northern Ontario’s mines, forests, and railways. The exception to these working-class settlers was Dr. Petros Constantinides, an eminent scholar and surgeon who arrived in Toronto in 1864. Today, the community is proud of its more than 15,000 professionals.

In 1909, members of the community established the St. George Greek Orthodox congregation and a year later opened a church in a former warehouse on Jarvis Street. One of the earliest organizations was the Ladies Philoptochos (Friends to the Poor) Benevolent Society which set up a school in the church building and provided social services for newcomers.

During the next decade, the Greek presence became more evident as businessmen opened restaurants, fruit stores, ice-cream parlours, shoe-shine shops, and billiard halls along Yonge, College, and Queen Streets. The Greek Community of Toronto was founded in 1911. Greeks were often victims of discrimination during the early years of the 20th century. This discrimination peaked in August of 1918 when veterans of the First World War, frustratrated with Greece’s late entry into the conflict, led a riot which resulted in the destruction of many Greek businesses.

In the early 1930s, the first cultural organizations and regional clubs were established to preserve Greek language and traditions. One of the first was the Helleno-Macedonian Brotherhood of Ion Dragoumis, which was established in 1936. Youth groups and the Greek Orthodox parish schools became instrumental in teaching the language and heritage of the Hellenes to the children of early immigrants. Large communal efforts during the Second World War and beyond included the Greek War Relief Fund, set up to assist the homeland.

Following the Second World War, another wave of Greek settlers, most from Northern Greece—Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace—came to Canada, many to Toronto. In the 1950s, the Greek community moved into the Danforth area—originally a neighbourhood for the Anglo-Saxon proletariat and later an Italian enclave.
Today, numerous restaurants and businesses, Greek street signs, and the classical architecture of the National Bank of Greece and other buildings bearing the names of Hellenic associations such as the Pan-Arcadian Federation, the Pan-Macedonian Association, the Pontion Brotherhood, the political party offices of the PASOK and the Democracy signify the neighbourhood’s most prevalent and flourishing culture.

Prominent Greek Torontonians have included the internationally-renowned soprano Teresa Stratas, who began her career singing for nickels at her father’s Cabbagetown restaurant. Andreas Papandreou, the late Prime Minister of Greece, and many other Cabinet Ministers have been members of Toronto’s Greek community.