------------------------------------------------------------------------
| THE TELETEXT GOPHER SERVICE |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 2026
Greek lawmakers hear Montreal's case for schools, culture and youth
(GIF) article photo
By Dimitri Papadopoulos
Beneath a Greek flag and the blue banner of the European Union, in a
wood-panelled committee room hung with deep red curtains and a painting
of horsemen crossing a sunlit plain, the Hellenic Parliament turned its
attention across the Atlantic on September 23 to one of the oldest
organized Greek communities in North America. The Special Permanent
Committee on Hellenism of the Diaspora devoted the first item of its
evening sitting to the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal and its
120 years of service, placing on the parliamentary record the
community's case for Greek-language schooling, faster consular services,
public health coverage for Greeks abroad and stronger ties for a new
generation, in a hearing that would also show how quickly an
institutional presentation can lose its way.
Committee chair Filippos Fortomas, a New Democracy member of Parliament
for the Cyclades, welcomed community president Basile Angelopoulos,
anniversary committee chair Justine Frangouli and Father Nicholas
Alexandris in the chamber, with executive director George Tsantrizos and
several board members joining by videoconference from Montreal.
Angelopoulos read a memorandum describing the community as "one of the
most historic and most active organizations of the Greek diaspora." He
asked Athens for a stable, institutional posting of teachers from the
Ministry of Education to staff the five branches of its trilingual
Greek, French and English day schools, a permanent cultural
partnership with the Ministry of Culture, free camps and visits to
Greece for diaspora students, and more staff at the consulate in
Montreal, where he said appointments for citizenship and passports are
being given as much as a year out.
"The community has the infrastructure, the experience and the audience,"
he said. "It needs, however, the active participation of the state to
strengthen Greece's cultural presence in Montreal."
Tsantrizos described an institution that oversees five private day
schools, a high school, six churches, a cultural foundation and social
services, with Greek instruction dating to its first school in 1909.
Frangouli recounted an anniversary year that saw March recognized as
Greek Heritage Month in Ottawa, followed by recognitions in Laval, in
Montreal and in the National Assembly of Quebec, along with three summer
festivals. "It was a moment, one summer, when everyone was drinking to
the health of the Hellenic community," she said.
The most moving testimony came from Angelopoulos, who left Nafpaktos at
four months old. His father earned $25 a week, and every Saturday the
family wrote to the grandparents in Greece, slipping $5 into the
envelope. "If you keep us at a distance, we will stay at a distance," he
told members. Alexandros Kazamias of Course of Freedom said he obtained
his own Greek social security number only at 54, upon his election,
despite travelling to Greece since he was five.
Fortomas pledged to forward the memorandum to the deputy foreign
minister responsible for Greeks abroad and to the ministers of education
and culture. "The Hellenic Parliament must listen to the diaspora,
record its real needs and carry the voice of Greeks abroad to the
state," he said in a statement on September 25.
The hearing began to unravel once Frangouli, after noting her
anniversary mandate ends with the year, introduced herself as
president of the Lyceum of Greek Women of Montreal, a separate
organization, and used the community's time to promote its immigrant
monument and its proposed Greek museum, closing that segment by
placing "the Lyceum of Greek Women" at Parliament's disposal. She then
turned to health coverage, contrasting diaspora Greeks with "all the
migrants, the illegal ones," and urged members to pressure their
parties "especially before the elections."
A running dispute over pension taxation with Paraschos Papadakis
of Greek Solution followed, until Fortomas cut in: "Let's not
have a dialogue." Father Alexandris from Toronto then ranged
across postal voting, investment incentives and 3,000 diaspora
cars with foreign plates.
Retaking the floor, Frangouli urged members "not to take the focus away
from the 120 years of celebrations and the community's requests," then
moved directly into European election turnout, credited New Democracy,
accused the other parties at the table of "petty politics" over
diaspora constituencies and recalled being elected a vice-president for
the media at the Council of Hellenes Abroad in Thessaloniki. Fortomas
thanked her for a "very assertive" intervention. "I agree with a great
many of these points, but it is another conversation, and not one for
today," he said, handing the floor back to Angelopoulos "to close as
brilliantly as he began."
The transcript shows the anniversary chair speaking roughly 2,400 words
across 16 interventions, against about 1,600 for the president in three.
When Fortomas asked whether the president wished to close, it was
Frangouli who answered, "Let the president close." On a day meant to
showcase a 120-year-old institution, its elected president spent long
stretches of his own hearing as a supporting speaker, and it fell to a
Greek parliamentarian to steer the delegation back to its own agenda.
An official presentation before a national legislature carries a
narrow and demanding brief: a single voice, led by the elected
president, speaking for the institution named on the agenda and
leaving members with a short list of requests they can carry to the
ministries. The Montreal delegation delivered that list in its opening
memorandum, then buried it beneath a separate association's museum
project, a quarrel over pension taxation, partisan credit for the
governing party and a history of the defunct Council of Hellenes
Abroad. The committee draws its members from every party in the
chamber, several of whom had just heard a community guest accuse their
parties of "petty politics," and the community needs their goodwill
for its requests to travel any further. Papadakis had already told the
delegation he hoped "we do not stay only at the level of theory." The
parliamentary record of September 23 now holds a clear account of what
Montreal's Greeks need, set beside an equally clear account of a
delegation that struggled to keep to its own agenda.
Frangouli also spoke the delegation's final words in the chamber,
asking leave for the Montrealers to withdraw so the committee could
attend to its internal business.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(DIR) [Back to Headlines]
(DIR) [Article Archive]
(DIR) [Home]