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| THE MONTREAL GREEK TIMES GOPHER NEWS SERVICE |
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August 2026
The Greek presence in early Quebec
(GIF) article photo
By Dimitri Papadopoulos
Along the wharves of the St. Lawrence, where ocean ships once unloaded
their crews into the river towns of Lower Canada, the Greek story in
Quebec began in quiet, carried ashore by sailors whose names slowly
dissolved into French and whose grandchildren would grow up knowing
little of the islands their forebears had left behind. That hushed
beginning, traced today through worn church icons, parish records and
the memory of old families, is the thread running through one of the
most intriguing chapters of Hellenism in the Americas: the question of
when, and how, the first Greeks reached the shores of Quebec, and the
slow assimilation that nearly erased them.
The difficulty begins with the records themselves. A precise date for
the first Greeks in the greater Montreal region remains, by most
accounts, beyond reach, owing to the absence of clear and specific
documentation. Their presence can be followed only through the visible
marks they left behind, a christened child here, a Hellenized surname
there, an heirloom passed down through generations. The prevailing view
among researchers and historians holds that the arrival of the first
Greek immigrants in the province of Quebec, and in Montreal in
particular, began around 1843. The earliest Greeks in Montreal, whether
they came as registered immigrants or slipped ashore as stowaways, were
overwhelmingly men of the sea. Many married into the local population,
most often French-Canadian women, and over time altered their names.
With each passing decade their ties to their origins thinned, until they
were absorbed into the wider society and effectively vanished as Greeks.
That pattern was set down decades ago by the educator and historian
George Demetrios Vlassis, whose English-language volume “The Greeks in
Canada” appeared in Ottawa in 1953 and remains a foundational reference
for the community’s early history. “No one can speak with certainty
about the first Greeks of Quebec,” Vlassis wrote, in a passage rendered
here from the Greek. He went on to observe that from the early 17th
century onward many arrived as sailors, lingered for various reasons in
the ports along the St. Lawrence, married and were completely
assimilated into the local French population.
The idea of a Hellenic footprint on these shores well before organized
migration finds its boldest illustration far to the west. Ioannis
Phokas, a navigator from the Ionian island of Cephalonia born in 1536,
sailed in the service of King Philip II of Spain under the name Juan
de Fuca, and in 1592 explored the broad strait that today separates
Vancouver Island from Washington state and forms part of the
international boundary between Canada and the United States. The
Strait of Juan de Fuca still carries his name, and he is widely
regarded as the first Greek to set foot on what is now Canadian soil.
His voyage, recorded by English chroniclers and confirmed two
centuries later by the survey of George Vancouver, places a Greek
mariner on the Pacific coast generations before the river towns of
Quebec heard their first Greek voices.
The most evocative evidence from Quebec itself survives in an account
preserved in the community’s archival press and compiled by journalist
John Coconas. It concerns Vasilis Kranidiotis, described in the
account as among the few whose presence in the province reached back
to the late 18th century. In the winter of 1908, Kranidiotis set out
from Sorel, the river town where he had lived for many years, in the
company of the painter Spyros Athinaios and a companion named Nikolas
Tagaras, intending to seek their fortunes in another city. Their
carriage crossed the province to the northwest, and in heavy weather
the driver, Spyros Kranidiotis, lost control of the horses. One animal
broke loose and bolted onto a large farm, and the three men followed
onto the property to recover it.
The owner came out to his front step to see what was happening. The
travellers, fluent in French after their years in Sorel, explained
themselves and mentioned, among other things, that they were of Greek
origin. At those words the farmer, known locally as Monsieur Eustrat
Thaken, lit up with joy and told them that his own father had been
Greek, a man who had died many years earlier.
Thaken, then past 75 and born in Saint-Antoine, Quebec, spoke of
his father with deep affection, recalling a man loved and
admired throughout the district.
While his guests sat inside his manor house, Thaken withdrew into the
inner rooms and returned holding a very old icon, the names of its
saints faded in Byzantine lettering. It was an image of the Three
Hierarchs, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom,
the three fourth-century church fathers honoured in the Orthodox
tradition as patrons of faith and learning. The icon had belonged to
Thaken’s father, a sailor who, in all likelihood around the middle of
the 17th century, had carried it across the Atlantic and up the great
river, a small portable sanctuary that outlasted the man, his language
and even the memory of his homeland.
Other traces point the same way. Across Franco-Canadian society, and
especially in the towns strung along the St. Lawrence, a number of
Hellenized or altered Greek surnames survive as quiet markers of
forgotten origins, lending weight to the view that Greeks were
present in Quebec well before the 17th century. These families
married, raised their children in French, lost contact with their
roots and dissolved into the founding population of the colony,
leaving fragments of their names behind.
The archival photographs that accompany the original feature capture
the human texture of that long arc. In the formal, sober poses common
to the period, groups of young immigrants and families stand and sit
before the camera, the men in caps and the women in long dresses, a
child clutching a white pitcher in the foreground of one image and
parents cradling infants in another. They are portraits of a community
in the making, a people learning to live as both Greek and Canadian on
the banks of a northern river.
By the 1981 census, Canada counted more than 154,000 people of Greek
origin, some 49,000 of them in Quebec, with the overwhelming majority
living in the greater Montreal area.
In the next issue of THE MONTREAL GREEK TIMES: The first
Greek families of Montreal.
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