The Story Behind the
HHF GCA Oral History Collection

About the Project

The Oral History Collection is a digital public history initiative developed under the broader project of the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives (HHF GCA). The Collection hosts more than a hundred life stories of Greeks and Cypriots in Canada spanning from the early 20th century to the present day, exploring personal experiences and memories of migration, work and family life, community building, and cultural identity. Housed at York University, the HHF GCA brings together a growing body of digitized and physical archival holdings, including photographs, newspapers, and personal documents. In addition, the Archives also supports projects such as interactive maps and public exhibitions that illuminate the diverse experiences and contributions of immigrants across generations. Together, these efforts create dynamic ways for researchers, educators, students, and community members to engage with the collected material.

Methodological approaches

What methodology does the research team use?

The research team conducts semi-structured, one-on-one interviews that foreground the voices of the storytellers, allowing them to share their memories in their own words and on their own terms. To preserve the authenticity of each narrative, interviews undergo little to no editing, with only minimal redactions made when necessary to protect the privacy of participants. Anonymity is offered as an option, and in all cases, the project has obtained ethics approval and informed consent, ensuring that all participants understand the purpose of the project and how their interviews will be accessed—whether publicly or under restricted conditions.
Our approach emphasizes personal narrative as a vital form of historical knowledge. Each oral history project within the HHF GCA brings a distinct methodological lens. Researchers come from diverse disciplines such as anthropology, cinema and media studies, musical geography, and history. This multidisciplinary approach highlights not only the unique themes of each project but also recurring topics that emerge across the collection. Despite these differences in focus, all projects share a commitment to centering the storyteller and ensuring their narratives are accessible. We understand oral histories not simply as testimonies, but as reflective, meaning-making practices. By collecting and curating these stories, we seek to connect trajectories that have historically remained unlinked, revealing broader patterns and relationships across time, space, and experience.

What is the significance of oral histories?

Oral histories offer insights that are often absent from official or written records. They capture the texture of memory, emotion, and lived experience, adding depth to broader historical narratives. By highlighting the voices of individuals—particularly those who have historically been underrepresented—oral histories help democratize the archive. They serve not only as records of the past but also as tools for dialogue, reflection, and community engagement.

How to navigate the HHF GCA Oral History Collection

The HHF GCA Oral History Collection contains over two hundred hours of recorded interviews, carefully organized to support both casual exploration and in-depth research. The interviews are archived with detailed metadata and timestamps, allowing users to quickly locate content relevant to their interests. Interviews are grouped into nine thematic categories and are tagged to reflect the major topics, people, places, and experiences discussed. Each entry is also associated with the referenced decades, enabling users to filter results chronologically.The Collection includes a search function that searches indexed terms for each interview, enhancing discoverability and enabling targeted research across the archive. Visitors can browse by category, follow thematic tags, or search by keywords related to subjects.To access the full archive, visitors must register for a free account. Once registered, users gain full access to the collection.

Team Members

Sakis Gekas

Greeks in Canada

Sakis Gekas is an Associate Professor of History and the HHF Chair in Modern Greek History at York University. He is the co-founder of the Greek Canadian History Project, the current president of the Hellenic Canadian Academic Association of Ontario, and a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association’s Executive Board. He has written and published on economic and social history, British colonialism, migration and diaspora, modern Greek and Mediterranean history. His most recent monograph, Xenocracy: State, Class and Colonialism in the Ionian Islands, 1815-1864 (Berghan, 2016), offers a much-needed account of the Ionian State under British protection.

Greeks in Canada

Alexandros Balasis is pursuing a PhD in History at York University. He completed his undergraduate studies in History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. At the same time, he holds a second master’s degree from York University, focusing on Greek post-Second World War migration to Canada. He has worked as a researcher in Istorima, Greece’s largest oral history archive. His research interests center around transoceanic migration, focusing on migrants’ agency and their interactions with migration policies.

Alexandros Balasis

Angelo Laskaris

Greeks in Canada Childhood Narratives from the 1940s

Angelo Nicholas Laskaris is a PhD candidate in History working under the supervision of Professor Athanasios Gekas at York University. His current research investigates childhood memories and experiences of Greek Canadians during the 1940s in Greece. His work takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the fields of oral history, migration, and diaspora studies. Angelo Laskaris holds an MA in History from York University (2020) and a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto (2019).

Greeks in Canada

Vasilis (Bill) Molos holds the Chair of Liberal Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber. He served as the Director and Research Lead of the HHF Greek Canadian Archives at York University from 2022 to 2025. In this role, he oversaw the archive’s operations, promoted and facilitated research on its collections, and built strategic partnerships with donors and collaborators. Before this role, he taught history at New York University Abu Dhabi, New York University, and Fordham University. His primary fields of interest include modern Greek history, identity, transnational and connected histories, and writing history from the margins. His forthcoming book manuscript is titled The Russian Mediterranean: Shaping Sovereignty and Selfhood on the Island of Paros, and is under contract with Edinburgh University Press.

Vasilis (Bill) Molos

Alexandra Mourgou

Greeks in CanadaMusical Geographies

Alexandra Mourgou is a Postdoctoral Researcher at York University, holding the Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, working on her project ‘Musical Geographies and the Greek Canadian Experience in Toronto. Places, Cultures, & Diasporic Identities’. Her research interests and publications focus mainly on urban, cultural, and historical geography, and more specifically on the interconnections between space and music. She received a joint Ph.D. degree in cultural geography at the National Technical University of Athens and University Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne (joint degree) in February 2022. She holds a master’s in architecture at the N.T.U.A. and a post-master’s degree in Urbanism at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’ Architecture de Paris La Villette.

Greeks in Canada

Effrosyni Rantou is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Rantou has a B.A. from Panteion University, Athens, and a M.A. from The New School, New York. Her work in Social Anthropology focuses on aspects of migration and borders, humanitarian aid as a state of exception and alternative forms of citizenship. Currently, her doctoral research explores subterranean politics, vertical and horizontal material dynamics and the formation of political subjectivities. She is interested in particular, in tracking the cross-scale relations between the disconnected subterranean practices with the politics and notions of everyday life by looking at the ways mines operate as vibrant political borders and maps through which systems of power redistribute socio political tensions at the local, national and international levels. Her research is supported by the Onassis Foundation.

Effrosyni Rantou

Theo Xenophontos

Greeks in CanadaFilm as Mediator

Theo Xenophontos is a PhD candidate in the Cinema & Media Studies program at York University. He holds a BA from the University of Toronto (double major in Cinema Studies and English, with a minor in History) and a MA in Cinema & Media Studies from York University. He currently works for the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives and is helping to establish their Cypriot Canadian collection. Previously, he has worked with such organizations as Archive/Counter-Archive and Vtape. His writing can be read in Found Footage Magazine and Ergon. He can be heard on the podcast "Cyprus: An Island Divided."

Resources
HHF Greek Canadian Archives
Terms of use
Privacy Policy
Land Acknowledgement: York University recognizes that many Indigenous Nations have longstanding relationships with the territories upon which York University campuses are located that precede the establishment of York University. York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities. We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
© 2025 Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives at York University. All rights reserved
Designed By Mahsa Karami