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Shortly
after the First World War, political disharmony split Toronto's
Greek community along the lines of the national disruption taking
place in Greece.
Defamation
and slander were readily tossed about, social and religious relationships
became strained and intra-group boycotts injured many businesses.1
As one informant observed, "The community was divided; the church
was divided; even coffee houses were divided."2
By
1923 friction became so intolerable that the small Greek Orthodox
church on Jarvis Street, established in 1909, had to be shut down
temporarily.3
By
1930 political squabbles in Greece, repeated here in miniature,
began to subside as the community once again found common interests.
Throughout the era of political infighting, the Greek population
in Toronto continued to grow. By 1930 the Greek business sector,
concentrated along Yonge and Dundas streets, was visibly expanding.4
With
a permanent Greek population of approximately 850 in 1921,5
a small yet noticeable Greek residential area was developing around
the St. George Greek Orthodox Church on Jarvis and Shuter streets.6
As
the community grew, so did the number of social institutions designed
to ease the transition of the immigrants from Greece to Canada.
Of particular interest to the Greek immigrant women of the community
was the Greek Ladies' Philanthropic Society. This society, or Philoptoho
as it was called, was founded in 1925 by Mrs. Maria Haraka, an immigrant
from Smyrna, Asia Minor.7
The
Philoptoho served not only to encourage community solidarity in
the midst of a strange and often threatening Anglo-conformist environment,
but also helped mitigate the harshness of entry into Canadian city
life for Greek migrants.
Philoptoho
literally means "friends to the poor." The Greek Ladies' Philoptoho
Society was also known as the Charitable Greek Church Fraternity
or Sorority of Ladies. Such benevolent organizations were commonly
formed wherever a Greek church was established. Although the first
Greek Orthodox church in Toronto was founded in 1909, one can only
speculate why its counterpart Philoptoho was not formed until sixteen
years later.
In
1909 there were approximately 200 Greeks in Toronto - most of them
transient labourers. Perhaps the early Greek community's small numbers
and scarcity of women precluded the formation of a Philoptoho Society.8
Perhaps
the early Greek immigrants, closely knit as they were, were able
to meet their own needs within the community without the aid of
a formal society.
Regardless
of the reason for its late development, the Philoptoho Society once
formed played a vital role in preserving community cohesiveness.
The
pioneer ladies of the Philoptoho were considered the right hand
of the church and as such always worked very closely with the priest
of the Greek community. The members of the Philoptoho were exclusively
women (the charter group numbered only a handful), its weekly meetings
were held on the premises of the Greek Orthodox church and its objectives
were purely philanthropic.
As
with most charitable organizations, not only were women considered
more adaptable to the "Caretaking" role but, so too, the appeal
of conducting charitable work tended to attract only the more affluent
members of the community. In Toronto the early members of the Greek
Ladies' Philoptoho Society were the wives of the most prominent
Greek businessmen of the community.
Many
women from Asia Minor were particularly active and helped develop
the Philoptoho through its formative years. These women had greater
freedom of movement and were familiar with participating in activities
outside the home from the Old World. Through church collections,
bake sales, community dances and the annual celebration of the Vassilopita
(the cutting of the New Years' Bread), the Greek Ladies' Philoptoho
Society of Toronto helped raise funds for a number of charitable
objectives.
For
example, in the early twenties they helped purchase desks and other
class-room furniture for the first after-four Greek school in Toronto.
During the depression they provided clothing and food for the poor.
They
visited the sick in hospitals and homes, and they offered assistance
in the burial expenses of the destitute. The society's influence,
however, went beyond the confines of Toronto. After the great exodus
from Asia Minor in 1922, the Philoptoho provided aid to the Greek
refugees in mainland Greece.
In
1945 it helped support the Greek War Relief Fund, an effort in which
all Greek settlements across Canada and the United States joined
together. The Philoptoho also helped furnish a room in the newly
established New York City orphanage and initiated support for the
Greek-American School of Theology in Pomfret, Connecticut.9
It
must be noted that the home and family constituted the main sphere
of influence of the Greek immigrant women in Toronto, and their
purely voluntary participation in the Philoptoho did not conflict
with their family values. The women were able to integrate their
work in the Philoptoho with their domestic responsibilities.
Their
participation in the society was thus perceived as a mere extension
of their "caretaking" role. Another involvement which tended to
attract particularly the Greek women of the community was the after-four
language school.
Women
who participated in this institution by definition also entered
the workplace as wage-earners. However, their economic role in this
arena similarly did not conflict with their domestic roles.
Their
participation in the Greek language schools not only helped fill
a need within the community to formalize the communal desire for
cultural continuity, but also was perceived as an amplification
of their role as educators of the immigrant and Canadian-born children.
The
pressing need to form a Greek language school to accommodate the
community's youth became an increasing priority by the early 1920s
as the number of Canadian-born second generation children began
to increase.
Putting
aside their political differences and aided by the women of the
community, the Greek immigrants of Toronto in 1921 pooled their
resources to establish the first Greek language parochial school.
That same year, a Greek school was opened under the auspices of
the St. George Greek Orthodox Church on Jarvis Street. 10
As
in many Greek settlements across North America, the church served
as the backbone of both the Greek community and the Greek school.11
Indeed, the first responsibility traditionally relegated to the
church was the establishment of a school and, in the early years,
classes were often initiated under the guidance and tutelage of
the priest himself.
Approximately
fifty Greek children in Toronto, immigrant and Canadian-born, enrolled
in the one-room school on the second floor of the church. Elementary
classes began in both Greek and English. The church cantor taught
Greek and an English-speaking teacher - approved by the Toronto
Board of Education - taught English.12
Although
fees were nominal and texts were free, the all-day parochial school
was soon converted to an after-four school where the language of
instruction was confined to Greek only.
Since
the reasons for such a conversion are difficult to ascertain, only
speculation can be offered. Perhaps operating costs were prohibitive.
Perhaps the Greek communal programme ran counter to the official
Toronto Board of Education standards.
Or
alternatively, perhaps the Greek parents' priority to teach their
children English lay in the Canadian school system. Regardless of
the reasons for the Greek school's conversion to an after-four programme
only, community support for the school remained strong. By the mid-
1920s an increasing number of refugees from Asia Minor began entering
Canada and settling in Toronto. Many were well educated, of middle-class
backgrounds and from an urban environment. 13
In
1925 Mrs. Smaro Pavlakis, a certified teacher educated in Constantinople,
Asia Minor, and dissatisfied with the poor reception of the refugees
in Greece, immigrated to Canada as a "picture bride. "14
She first established a household in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
Within
a year, she and her husband moved to Toronto where she was hired
by the Greek community to initiate and organize a new Greek afternoon
school. She was joined in 1930 by Miss Sophie Samara (later Maniates),
also a refugee from Kasaba, Asia Minor, and by a recent graduate
of the Teachers' Academy in Mitilini.15
Although
a number of other Greek immigrants from Asia Minor were able to
find employment in the Greek afternoon school, sometimes temporarily
(for example, Kleoniki Zerva, 1930-31, and Despina Mouhtari, 1933-37),
it was Mrs. Pavlakis and Mrs. Maniates who succeeded in shaping
the Greek elementary school system and in influencing the lives
of the children of the early Greek immigrants in Toronto.
Mrs.
Pavlakis's teaching career lasted twenty-one years and Mrs. Maniates's
lasted twelve years. 16 The school
conducted classes on the second floor of the church on Jarvis Street
for over ten years, albeit with a minimum of furniture and curricular
material and, as one student remembered, "primitive heating facilities
that did not always work in the cold winters."17
It
moved in 1937 to a new location. In that year the present Greek
Orthodox at 115 Bond Street was purchased through the efforts of
the president of the Greek community, who travelled throughout the
Province of Ontario to raise funds for the project.18
Dedicated
to teaching and paid very little in the inaugural years of the school's
operation, the Greek school teachers believed in and worked toward
instilling the Canadian-born Greek children with an appreciation
of their heritage.
The
Greek texts - principally published in New York, with some imported
from Greece - tended to reflect a strong ethnocentric bias. Subjects
taught included reading, writing, grammar, Greek geography, history,
religious studies and mythology.
Injunctions
for cultural and linguistic maintenance among the increasing number
of Canadian-born youth in the Greek community were echoed and re-echoed
by the Greek Archdiocese in New York,19
the Greek press, the church and the local community leadership in
general.
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However,
instilling an appreciation for Greek language and culture did not
always proceed smoothly. Although belatedly appreciative of the
rudimentary knowledge of modern Greek, student informants readily
recall the resentment they felt at having to attend a second school
from 5:00-7:00 P.M.
daily
while their non-Greek schoolmates were free to play or engage in
extra-curricular activities. The subject matter of the Greek school
generally bore little relationship to their everyday life in Toronto
and often seemed out of step with the world outside the school.
As
a result, and much to the exasperation of the teachers, students
were often listless, tired and difficult to motivate.20
That parents, in contrast, showed dutiful and almost fervent support
of the Greek school can be seen from the high enrolment.
Financed
by the payment of one or two dollars in fees per month per family,
by supplementary weekly collections in the church and by the generous
patronage of the Greek business sector of Toronto,21
the Greek communal school grew slowly at first. By 1930 it had 150
students and by 1945 the enrolment rose to 230.22
With
a Greek population in the city of approximately 1,200 at the beginning
of World War Two, it appears that the majority of the approximately
250 Greek families then residing in Toronto must have helped to
support the school.
Yet
if numbers underscore the degree of community support for the school,
they fail to explain the reasons for that support. It would be facile
to argue that the teachers saw the school as a solid buttress against
the assimilation of the Greek immigrant youth.
While
this element was present, the women from Asia Minor, who had already
given up the expectation if not the dream of returning to their
homeland, were themselves caught up in an endless series of adjustments
necessary to "making it" in their new environment.
The
school, too, could not escape the uneasy tension between the two
worlds. In its effort to capture the essence of the Greek culture,
the school was forced to deny an urban North American Greek experience
which provided both its raison d'etre and its student body.
The
child who grew up in Toronto did not see the world through the eyes
of his Greek-born, Old-World-educated teachers and, accordingly,
questioned the curricular relevance of the Greek communal school.
Nevertheless, while it is perhaps impossible to calibrate, the Greek
after-four school, for all its problems, did help create a degree
of Greek self-identity in immigrant and Canadian-born children,
which in turn shaped their lives. And it is the work of a small
group of women from Asia Minor that made it possible.
Although
the exact number of immigrants from Asia Minor who gained entrance
into Canada in the 1920s and 1930s is difficult to ascertain by
simply examining Canadian census figures, the impact of this unique
immigrant group on the formative years of institutional life in
the Greek community of Toronto is evident.
Through
the Philoptoho Society and the Greek communal school, the Greek
immigrant women of Asia Minor were able to help maintain community
cohesiveness in the face of a new world, while at the same time
themselves adjusting to the forces of a new and strange environment.
The Greek Women's Philanthropic Association was founded by these
women in response to the need to provide assistance for the Greek
community's increasing immigrant population.
The
Greek school was established and developed in its early years by
this same group of women in response to the community's need to
maintain a sense of cultural continuity between the Old and New
World cultures.
The
effort to promote the language of the homeland and to keep the Canadian-born
second generation aware of their national heritage was the driving
force behind the Greek school. And it was to the Greek women from
Asia Minor that the role of cultural mediator between the Greek-born
immigrant parents and their Canadian-born children was relegated.
NOTES
1.
Taped interview with Politemi Janetakis, 6 April 1977.
2.
Taped interview with Peter Palmer, 13 October 1977. In Toronto the
Greek coffee-houses became politically aligned according to either
royalist or republican loyalties. The dominance of political discussions
in the coffee-houses and their catering to clienteles of similar
political and regional loyalties was not uncommon. However, tensions
quickly broke out on a more emotional front. Because of the disagreement
over the church chanting of the polichronion (hymn for the king),
the Benezelist faction withdrew and soon took steps to initiate
a new church. Although a second church was not actually established,
separate services were held for some time afterwards. See L. Douramakou-Petroleka,
"The Elusive Community: Greek Settlement in Toronto 1900- 1940,
" in Gathering Place: Peoples and Neighbourhoods of Toronto, 1934-1945,
ed. R. Harney (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario,
1985), p.268.
3.
It must be noted that, in addition to the partisan conflict that
existed within the community, the official policy of neutrality
in the state of Greece created additional difficulties for the Greek
immigrants in Toronto. Canadian officials who resented and were
fearful of the pro-German sentiments of the Greek government insisted
on some form of official action for dealing with the presence of
the "potential enemies among us. " (See Public Archives of Canada,
Immigration Branch, RG 76, vol. 645, File 998358, Part I, "Greek
Immigration; 1905-1951.") On 7 August 1914, The Globe proposed the
following plan to control the growing hostility of native Canadians:
"Every member of a race hostile to us should be forced immediately
to register and a passport should be issued to him without which
he dare not leave his residence. Our foes should not be permitted
to travel without authority and they should report immediately on
arrival at their destination; must be indoors at dusk .... " The
Globe (Toronto), "Is Canada at War? A Plea and Some Advice to the
Canadian People," 7 August 1914. Soon after, immigrant men in Toronto
whose nationalities were associated with the enemy nations were
required to report to the office of the Registrar for Alien Enemies
on Adelaide Street. See also L. Petroff, "Macedonians: From Village
to City," Canadian Ethnic Studies, IX, no. 1 ( 1977), pp. 29-41.
4.
E. N. Papamanoli, Perliptiki Historia Tou Kanada Ke Hellino- Kanados
Odigos (A Canadian-Greek Publishing Co., 1921-22), pp. 341-74.
5.
Census of Canada, 1921.
6.
This was the general observation of a number of oral sources contacted.
See taped interviews with: Maria Letros, 20 November 1976; Politemi
Janetakis, 20 November 1977; Peter Palmer, 30 October 1977; Sophie
Maniates, 15 August 1977; and Smaro Pavlakis, 24 August 1977.
7.
G. Vlassis, Greeks in Canada (Ottawa: LeClerc Printers, 1942), p.
44. Subsequently elected presidents include K. K. Kilismani ( 1930-31),
Kleoniki Zerva ( 1931-32) and Despina Mouhtari ( 1933-37). A11 were
immigrants from various parts of Asia Minor (Interview with Smaro
Pavlakis, 11 May 1985).
8.
Substantiated by Census of Canada, 1911, 1921, 1931. In 1911, for
example, of the 3,594 Greeks listed in Canada, 3,064 were men and
530 were women. Of the 9,444 Greeks in 1931, 6,055 were men and
3,389 were women. By 1944 the number of males was still greater
than females although the proportion was declining: 7,210 men to
4,482 women. Because the great majority of early arrivals were either
boys or older males devoid of normal family relations, their adjustment
was more difficult. This same male bias also characterized the flow
of Greek immigration to the United States. See G. Abbott, "A Study
of the Greeks in Chicago," American Journal of Sociology 15 (1909),
pp. 379-83; H. Balk, "Economic Contributions of the Greeks to the
United States," Economic Geography 30 ( 1943), pp. 270-75; T. Saloutos,
The Greeks in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1964), p. 45.
9.
Mrs. Smaro Pavlakis and Mrs. Politemi Janetakis have donated a number
of valuable documents to the Multicultural History Society of Ontario,
which deal with the early history of the Greek Ladies' Philoptoho
Society in Toronto. Among them is a copy of the original constitution
of the first Greek Ladies' Philoptoho Society, Enosis, a number
of photographs of its early members and several pictures of their
fund-raising activities. The official stamp adopted by the Greek
Ladies' Philoptoho Society of Toronto was that of Mother Mary and
Child - thus their title Enosis, or Union.
10.
Papamanoli, Perliptiki Historia, p. 342.
11.
The importance of the church in Greek settlements across North America
has been documented by a number of Greek-American historians. See,
for example, T. Saloutos, "The Greek Orthodox Church and Assimilation,
" International Migration Review 7 (1973).
12.
Papamanoli, Perliptiki Historia, p. 342.
13.
T. Saloutos, "The Greeks in the United States," South Atlantic Quarterly
44 ( 1945), p. 70.
14.
This was not an uncommon practice among early Greek immigrants to
Canada.
15.
Taped interview with Sophie Maniates, 15 August 1977.
16.
Taped interview with Smaro Pavlakis, 21 August 1977 and Sophie Maniates,
15 August 1977. Note that both Mrs. Pavlakis and Mrs. Maniates also
participated actively in the Philoptoho Society throughout its early
years.
17.
Taped interview with Mary Manetas (nee Fallis), 1 December 1977.
18.
Vlassis, Greeks in Canada, p. 43.
19.
Although the Greek communal schools were formally under the jurisdiction
of the Greek Archdiocese of New York, they nevertheless enjoyed
substantial freedom and independence.
20.
This is what a number of former students expressed, taped interviews
with Reta Harris, 26 July 1977; George Letros, 20 November 1976;
Helen Janetakis, 27 November 1977; Mary Manetas, 10 December 1977.
21.
Taped interviews with Sophie Maniates, 15 August 1977 and Smaro
Pavlakis, 24 August 1977.
22.
Taped interviews with Sophie Maniates, 15 August 1977 and Smaro
Pavlakis, 24 August 1977.
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