The funding will expand the existing physical archive and establish a digital archive of images, documents, video and other assets that are related to Greek Canadian history.

When Christopher Grafos entered the Graduate Program in History at York University, he encountered the same problem time and time again.

“When I spoke to Greek Canadians about their immigration experiences and their time in Canada, they would often tell me that they had thrown out a lot of the materials that would help researchers examine their history,” says Grafos, who completed his PhD in 2016. “It was such a tragedy for me to learn that we were in danger of allowing these experiences to fade away without preserving them through images, videos, newsletters, and other materials that brings this history to life.”

Together with his then-supervisor, Professor Sakis Gekas, HHF Chair in Modern Greek History, Grafos founded the Greek Canadian History Project in 2012. As the archives grew, so did the need to catalogue, digitize, present and preserve these materials, and to help Greek Canadians tell their stories through recorded oral histories and other methods.

On Sept. 22, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies announced an important $1.4-million gift from the Hellenic Heritage Foundation (HHF) that will help York preserve, catalogue, digitize and teach these histories.

Read more in the yFile article published September 22, 2021.