The Story of Greeks in Vancouver – A Pharos Lecture Event featuring Sophia Karasouli-Milobar
This article was originally published in the April 2020 edition (p. 17) of the regional Hellenic newspaper Gnomi. The paper was published from 1988 to August 2022, when editor Kostas Karatsikis passed away. This is in his memory.
Greeks are known as a part of the community and history of Vancouver and the Fraser Valley through Greek Day, food festivals and restaurants, and of course, this is a city that proudly hosted the Olympic games. People may be less aware of how Vancouver Greeks are linked with the Polar Bear swim and vaudeville theatres, or that there was a replica of the Parthenon here at one time, among many more stories from the Greek community’s history.
In 2017, the Vancouver Public Library in partnership with Hellenic Community of Vancouver invited local Greeks to share their stories and photos for the Hellenic Stories project. This was part of the VPL’s larger Story City project that collected the stories of different ethnic communities to celebrate the city’s diversity, as part of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations that year.
Sophia Karasouli-Milobar of the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) delivered a presentation on the Greeks in Vancouver on Monday evening, February 24. The presentation was part of the public lecture series hosted by Pharos Hellenic-Canadian Cultural Society. It was a trip down memory lane for many in attendance, and an interesting and visual overview of the history of the local Greek community.
Ms. Karasouli-Milobar shared some of the stories and photos in the Hellenic Stories collection that were told by Greek Vancouverites from three generations. Here we share some of the stories discussed that evening, and provide additional details on where to find the full story archive.
The First Greeks to Arrive
The first Greek to arrive in this part of the world was Ioannis Fokas from the island of Kefalonia. He was the first Greek Seafarer in southwest Canada, and when he arrived in 1592, he explored the Strait of Juan de Fuca, named after him using the Spanish translation of his name, as he served the King of Spain.
Immigration to Canada and the U.S. started in 1827 after the Greek war of independence. The first (recorded) Greek immigrant in British Columbia was George Nicolas Kapiotis who arrived in 1851 at port Victoria for the gold rush. John Giannaris (Stevens), a sailor from Syros island, arrived in Gastown in 1878. He is credited as the first Greek fisherman to fish for salmon on the Fraser River, and along with several other Greeks, opened a small cannery in 1895.
Greek immigration was slow in the 19th century. In 1911, there were about 300 Greek bachelors and very few families in Vancouver. Many of the men worked on railroads, in logging camps, and at saw mills.
George Almas, Ted Pappas of Pappas Furs, and Leo Raptis arrived in these early years, and some of the first Greek businesses in Vancouver included Marathon Café, Raptis’s grocery store on Kingsway, and some restaurants.
Nick Kogos, who had several restaurants and took over the Commodore Ballroom in 1931, built a replica (not to scale) of the Parthenon on his property in West Vancouver. People would visit it, often for Sunday picnics, or could look at it as they sailed down English Bay. Sadly, it no longer exists. It was destroyed when the property was sold to developers after his death.
Source: Vancouver Public Library – Special Collections #61579.
Alexander Pantages was important for the show business scene in Vancouver. “You can write at least two novels about his life,” said Ms. Karasouli-Milobar. He left his native Andros island at the age of nine, went to several countries, ended up making his fortune in the Klondike, and settled in Seattle where he started building Vaudeville theaters all over the US and Canada. In Vancouver, he built the Pantages Theater in 1908 and The Majestic in 1917, considered one of the most ornate structures in the city (both theaters were have since been demolished).
Alexander Pantages brought over his nephew Peter Pantages, who enjoyed winter swims and persuaded five of his friends to jump into the Pacific with him on January 1, 1920. This is one of the oldest New Years Day Polar Bear swims. Peter also opened the Peter Pan Cafe on Granville Street and Peter Pan Hall on Broadway, which became city landmarks, hosting many events and celebrations.
By the 1920s, there were about 50 Greek families in Vancouver. They formed the Hellenic Community, incorporated under Canada’s Societies Act, and started planning to build a church. Athena Athans, the granddaughter of George Kapiotis, was the founder and first president of the Ladies Auxiliary, which later became Philoptochos. They helped fundraise, along with AHEPA in the US, for the first church, built in 1930 in what is today Kits House. Before this, they would bring a Greek Orthodox priest from Seattle to do weddings and christenings at St. James Anglican Church at Hastings and Gore streets.
Immigration stopped during the Second World War. During this time, the community mobilized a war relief drive to raise funds and support people in Greece. A large wave of immigration began after WWII and the Greek civil war. More than 100,000 Greeks entered Canada between 1945-1971. As Ms. Karasouli-Milobar describes, family sponsorship laws and employment opportunities enabled this wave of arrivals.
The Greeks purchased the property for the Arbutus church and community center in 1964, a new priest, Father Demetrios Partsafas, arrived with his wife and then three children in 1974, and the opening ceremony for the new church and Hellenic Community Center took place in 1977. People started buying homes and opening businesses near the church and the Greektown emerged. A map of the Greektown businesses in this era is in the book Ethnic Vancouver, by Philip L. Wagner. It included the Louis Zerbinos bakery, Parthenon Market (one of the few surviving businesses, though it has changed owners and locations), Minerva Imports, many restaurants, Omega Travel, and even Greek barbers, including Dino Arvanitis who was featured in a recent Vancouver Sun article (February 14, 2020) and George Chronopoulos who owned Royal Riviera Hair Salon and was one of the founders of the annual Gold Plate Dinner fundraiser for the Hellenic community.
As the Greek community spread throughout the Fraser Valley, Saints Nicholas and Dimitrios Church in Burnaby was established in 1978 and the church of Saints Constantine and Helen in Surrey was purchased in 2010.
Greeks in the wider community of Vancouver
As the Greeks organized more cultural and community events to stay connected with their culture and each other, they also became part of the city’s cultural scene. The first Greek Day took place June 30, 1974 with food, music and a parade. By the mid 1980s, it had grown very popular with the public. “Greek Days by this time had gone wild, there was too much drinking, too much revelling,” explained Ms. Karasouli-Milobar. “Unfortunately in 1988, Greek Day was cancelled. It was missed by many, but it was stopped.” Fortunately, Greek Day returned to Broadway in 2005, though without the parade. This return was in large part through the tireless efforts of Hellenic Congress of BC. Hellenic Heritage Month (every June) also began in that year, with activities that included an exhibition of Greek books at VPL and a rembetika concert.
The arrival of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver was a highlight in the connection between the Greek community and the rest of the city, as the Olympics are recognized around the world as a contribution from Greece to people everywhere. In 2009, as a gift for hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, the City of Olympia donated a statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, to the City of Vancouver. It sat in storage for four years after the provincial government reportedly rejected the City’s request to install it at Jack Poole Plaza near the Olympic Cauldron, but then the City approached the leader of AHEPA to choose a location and organize an unveiling ceremony. The four-metre tall bronze Nike by Pavlos Angelos Kougioumtzis is now located at Cordova and Thurlow Street, near Coal Harbour.
Another significant achievement of the community is the establishment of the Hellenic Studies Chair at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC fundraised for 10 years and received matching funds from the Province of BC, and the program was founded in 1996. Dr. André Gerolymatos was the inaugural chair, and worked tirelessly to expand the study of Greece’s history, language and culture at the university, until he passed away last year. He secured a multi-million dollar donation by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, leading to the establishment of the current Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, which includes a New Media Lab. The Center recently launched the Rebooting the Greek Language program (rebootinggreek.com) that introduces a new approach to language learning and includes web and mobile applications for children and adults to learn Greek. The Rebooting technology and approach is also used for learning several Indigenous languages.
The Greek Community Today
Over the last two decades, there has been far less immigration from Greece. Between 2006 and 2015, according to census data, about 1,900 people arrived from Greece, partly because Canada made it more difficult to sponsor people. The community continues to organize activities for Vancouver Greek Food Festival, Surrey Greek Food Festival, Hellenic Heritage Month, Greek Day on Broadway, Greek Summer Fest on Boundary, and a range of events throughout the year with music, dance, food, culture, history, and community gathering. The community of east Vancouver is currently building a Greek school for children to have a dedicated space for classes and activities.
“What we are trying to do now,” observed Ms. Karasouli-Milobar, “is to preserve what we have, to remember our history, and to teach that history, our culture and the language to the third and fourth generation.”
“I’m hoping we will stay strong, and we will remain proud and united, and this community will live for many, many years, as we owe it to all these people that came with nothing at all and made it possible.”
This was just a sample of the stories covered in the presentation by Ms. Karasouli-Milobar, and included in the full archive of audio clips and photos of The Hellenic Stories. The archive is available on the Vancouver Public Library’s website.
This presentation was part of the Pharos monthly lectures, which occur every last Monday of the month, October-November and January-April in Vancouver.
Additional stories of Greeks in Vancouver are in the book Immigrants: Stories of Vancouver’s People, by Lisa Smedman (2009).