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| THE TELETEXT GOPHER SERVICE |
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October 2026
By Dimitri Papadopoulos
Autumn sunshine still warmed the grounds of the
Hellenic Community Centre of the South Shore in Saint-Hubert on the
afternoon of Sunday, October 18, as members filed into the gymnasium,
embraced old friends and took their seats in long rows of blue chairs
beneath twin projection screens. An opening recitation of the Lord's
Prayer, spoken in unison in Greek, set the tone for a gathering devoted
to the stewardship of a 120-year-old institution. Over the three hours
that followed, the annual general assembly of the Hellenic Community of
Greater Montreal heard evidence of a dramatic financial recovery,
ambitious plans for a $10-million endowment fund, frank talk about aging
buildings and school enrolment, and repeated reminders that the Greek
language remains the living heart of communal life in Montreal.
A live electronic dashboard projected above the floor confirmed that
122 members had been admitted and that the quorum of 100 had been
comfortably reached, with 73 attendees from the South Shore, 31 from
Montreal, 17 from Laval and one from the West Island. Members elected
Mr. Nick Pagonis to chair the proceedings and Mrs. Eleni
Panagiotarakou as secretary of the assembly. When the minutes of the
June 28 special general assembly were read aloud entirely in Greek by
Mrs Panagiotarakou, who had offered to proceed in English, the chair
paused the agenda to mark the moment. "We are the only community in
the Greek diaspora whose principal language at our official gatherings
is still Greek," he told the hall. "Congratulations to the new
generation that keeps our roots strong."
The central business of the day was financial, and the news was the best
the community has received in years. John Charalambopoulos, a partner at
Richter, the community's external auditing firm, walked members through
audited statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026. Revenues
reached $18.8 million, up close to $1 million from the previous year,
lifted by school fees, church income and a combined $1.8 million from
dances, festivals and fundraising campaigns. With expenses held
essentially flat at $19.3 million, the accounting deficit narrowed to
$446,264 from $1.5 million a year earlier, and once non-cash
amortization is set aside, the year produced an operating surplus of
$644,626, compared with a shortfall of roughly $512,000 the year before.
Members voted unanimously to approve the statements and to reappoint
Richter for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027.
President Basile Angelopoulos, delivering his first annual report since
his team took office, described a year of financial discipline in which
an operating deficit of about $500,000 was converted into that surplus,
an improvement he placed at more than $1.1 million in 12 months. He
credited the finance committee led by Treasurer Eleni Chilakos, saying
that today no community dollar is spent without its approval, and he
pointed to a transparency policy that has placed every community
contract on the organization's website for any member to read. "The
element of trust is returning to our community," he said, citing calmer
tones, fuller halls and festivals in Laval, Montreal and the South Shore
that drew more than 14,000 people over a single three-day weekend, with
young people making up an estimated 70 to 80 per cent of the crowds.
That restored credibility, Mr. Angelopoulos argued, now makes
possible the project he considers decisive for the community's
future, an endowment fund managed professionally and independently of
any administration, present or future. Commitments of $1.3 million
have been secured and $550,000 already sits in the bank, he reported,
with a first round of donor meetings beginning the Wednesday after
the assembly. "With the experience of this first year, I can tell you
that if we do not reach $10 million, it will be a failure," he said,
noting that a conservative five per cent return would deliver half a
million dollars to churches, schools, cultural and social programs
every year in perpetuity.
The president reserved his warmest words for the volunteers he
affectionately calls his "thieves," asking the roughly 50 board and
regional council members present to stand. "These are the people who
"steal" hours from their work, from their families and from their
personal interests for the benefit of the community and of Hellenism,"
he said. Volunteer tradespeople of Greek descent have renovated the
community's eight derelict seniors' apartments, which now rent at
market rates, repaved the entrance of the Wilderton offices on extended
payment terms, and replaced a dangerous staircase in Laval. New leases
and gifts added more, including about $70,000 a year from an Armenian
secondary school renting the upper floor of the Hood building and a
$250,000 donation for an elevator at Holy Cross church in Laval.
Fundraising told a similar story. A rained-out golf tournament still
cleared $100,000, the lottery netted $233,000, and the schools
radiothon raised $450,000 against a $200,000 target, financing washroom
renovations and new desks across five campuses. The next radiothon, set
for December 5, carries a $1-million goal.
The afternoon was candid about what remains undone. The gymnasium roof
above the assembly leaks so badly that a contractor warned it could
fail, the lowest repair bid stands at $300,000, and 22 workers were
restoring the Montreal community centre roof even as the president
spoke. He placed the most urgent repairs at about $2 million within some
$20 million of accumulated property needs, noted that debt service
consumes $1 million a year, and announced town hall meetings to decide,
as a community family, how the critical roofs will be financed before
winter. Membership also drew scrutiny, with about 2,500 members on the
rolls and annual dues revenue of $109,000, down from $173,000, prompting
a proposal from the floor to double the $50 fee and a reflection from
board member Dimitri Katsaounis that three youth events this year drew
more than 1,200 participants under the age of 22.
The report of the internal audit committee, presented by Nick
Mitsopoulos, commended the board for stabilizing the finances while
urging permanent institutional safeguards, including the 24 formal
executive committee meetings a year required by the bylaws, written
hiring approvals, position-based email accounts to preserve
institutional memory, and rigorous record-keeping for the
administrations of the future. "If we continue to operate like this, at
some point there will be a board, in five, 10 or 20 years, that is not
as capable, and the same problems will return," Mr. Mitsopoulos
cautioned. General Secretary Catherine Stephanou responded that 50
resolutions have been adopted in open board meetings since the
administration took office, with every minute and resolution available
to any member, and Mr. Angelopoulos pledged that each recommendation
would be studied and implemented, observing that the committee's role
"is to pull ears, not to toss flowers."
The schools, the community's largest undertaking and the anchor of its
mission to pass the language to the next generation, dominated both the
committee's report and the question period that followed. For the first
time since the merger of the schools, the committee found, total
enrolment at École Socrates-Démosthène has fallen below the threshold
of 1,000 students, to 976 this year from 1,059 a year ago, a cumulative
decline of 18.66 per cent since 2021, while the average primary class
has thinned to 19.8 students against an operational break-even point of
about 25. Asked from the floor why families were leaving, Mr.
Mitsopoulos cited several factors from the committee's review, among
them a year in which the Démosthène campus shared its principal with a
Laval sister campus, a parents' petition on class sizes in Laval that
gathered nearly 600 signatures, and public radio statements by the
schools' most senior administrator describing the 50-year-old buildings
as inadequate in the middle of recruitment season. "Who will enrol
their child when the head of the schools says there is a problem
there?" he asked, recommending systematic exit surveys of withdrawing
parents and a formal, data-driven recruitment and retention plan
brought back before the assembly.
Mr. Angelopoulos took the question head-on. The decline from the
previous year, he said, stands at 7.8 per cent, and he is awaiting the
province-wide statistics due at the end of October, noting that between
2021 and 2025 the Greek school's losses tracked the average for Quebec
schools, private and public alike. He added that part of this year's
drop reflects deliberate choices by the administration itself. Students
whose families had gone three years without paying tuition were released
from the rolls, and a small number of children whose behavioural needs
had been assessed by outside professionals were redirected so their
classmates could learn in calm, with independent specialists now
evaluating incoming students before admission. A preliminary survey of
departing parents, he reported, found that some had moved far from the
campuses while others judged the tuition beyond their means, and
demographics weigh on every school in the province, with households
raising far fewer children than earlier generations.
He closed the school discussion on what he called the community's
treasure. Fully 86 per cent of the children who graduate from Socrates-
Démosthène choose which private secondary school they will attend, he
said, offering his own granddaughter, who holds three offers for next
year, as happy proof. The $100,000 marketing campaign approved at the
June 28 special assembly, which had projected a school deficit of about
$302,000 on 50 fewer pupils, is already showing results, with 266
families visiting the October 3 open house compared with 66 a year
earlier and a dozen registrations already recorded on the South Shore.
Education secretary Vassilios Christodoulopoulos told members that the
causes of declining enrolment are shared by schools across the network
and are being worked on steadily, crediting Christina Voga, Mrs.
Papachristou and their team for the open house turnout and reporting
that a formal statute governing the parent committees, developed in
consultation with the parents themselves, is now officially in force.
The committee's presentation itself became a talking point, delivered
for the first time as a 13-minute recording of two artificial-
intelligence voices conversing through the loudspeakers, a format
several members found difficult to absorb in one sitting. Mr.
Christodoulopoulos reminded the hall that such tools "require strong
human intervention, because they often create what we call
hallucinations," pointing to a bylaw citation the recording had
garbled. The gymnasium's acoustics, intermittent microphones and
lights kept dimmed for the projectors added their own tests of
patience across the long afternoon.
The assembly adjourned shortly after five o'clock on a motion by Andy
Crillis, seconded by Ms. Stephanou, as the ladies of the South Shore
offered homemade sweets at the door in support of the community.
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