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October 2026
One family's festival keeps a Cretan vow in Park Extension
(GIF) article photo
By Antonia Macris
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The smallest festival of the Greek summer may be the most personal one.
In the yard of the Evangelismos tis Theotokou church in Park Extension,
behind the tents and the folding tables, an 80-year-old Cretan stood
over steaming cauldrons for two days, boiling goat and stirring wedding
pilaf exactly as he learned in his village, while his children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren served the plates. The festival of
Agios Eftychios is organized by a single family, it runs on a promise to
a saint, and every dollar it raises is given away.
The panigiri, held Saturday, August 22 and Sunday, August 23 at 777
Saint-Roch Street, one week after the Dekapentavgousto, is the work of
Eftychios Makrymanolakis, who traces his roots to the village of Prines
in Selino, Chania. For more than a decade he has marked the feast of his
patron saint with a menu found nowhere else on the Montreal festival
circuit: vrasto, the boiled goat of Crete, the gamopilafo wedding pilaf
simmered in its broth, and tsigariasto, alongside the familiar souvlakia
and sausages, with music. "The goat needs three hours to boil, then
straining, scalding, watching, measuring. It is a long process," he
said, in an interview with The Montreal Greek Times at the festival. "At
the beginning it was difficult, but little by little people came to love
it. They wait all year for this day to eat the pilafi."
The festival began as an offering for the small church of Agios
Eftychios near his village in Chania. Today the proceeds stay in
Montreal. "We give the money here, for charitable causes, for the
hospitals and above all for our schools," Makrymanolakis said.
"Hellenism needs this, so that we keep our language, our tradition, our
faith and our genos from dissolving here in the melting pot of Canada."
The family is the whole workforce, by design. Nine children, among them
five daughters, work the tables and the grills, and a long line of
grandchildren and great-grandchildren named Eftychis and Eftychia take
their turn serving. "We do this every year for the grace of Agios
Eftychios, and we want to say a warm thank you from our whole family to
everyone who comes and supports us," said his daughter Toula. Apostolis
Makrymanolakis, the youngest son, framed the purpose a generation ahead:
"We send the money to the church schools here, for the small children,
so they do not forget the language, the history and the religion. They
need to know where they come from."
The weather gave with one hand and took with the other. Saturday was a
fair festival day, and on Sunday heavy rain poured on Park Extension, a
pattern Makrymanolakis lamented in a written account of the festival
dated August 25, noting that storms have cost the effort a day in recent
years. The ledger he published with it is the measure of the family's
work: $5,000 to the community's Greek schools, $500 each to the churches
of the Evangelismos, the Koimisis, Saint Anne and Holy Wisdom, $500 to
Magic Mission, $500 to the Shriners hospital and $1,000 to a Greek
student in need, a total of $9,000 given away.
He intends to keep the vow for as long as he stands at the cauldrons.
"As long as I live I will do this. There is no way I will stop," he
said. "I believe God and Agios Eftychios are beside me." The festival
closed the parikia's summer season, and the community calendar turned
next to the Montreal Greek Film Festival in October.
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