From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Greeks/Peter D. Chimbos
Early Greek settlers usually entered the petty street trades selling cigars, flowers, sweets, and peanuts. However, some soon set up small businesses such as pastry shops, restaurants, and confectioneries – as early as 1880 in Montreal and 1885 in Vancouver. By 1910 Greeks had established such operations in Montreal, Ottawa, London, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vancouver. In 1951 Greeks owned more than 1,000 small businesses – including restaurants, as well as candy shops, bowling alleys, ice-cream parlours, theatres, and hotels. Many immigrants or their children who had received university degrees in Greece or in Canada (450 had done so in this country between 1920 and 1952) entered professions including law, engineering, medicine, and teaching.
The majority of the more than 107,000 Greek males and females who came to Canada from 1945 to 1971 were in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations, including service, processing, machining, product fabricating, and
Distribution of population of Greek origin by province, 1991
Single
Multiple
Both
response
response
responses
_________________
_________________
_________________
Number %
Number %
Number %
Ontario
83,780
55.0
21,555
53.4
105,335
55.0
Quebec
49,890
33.0
6,645
16.5
56,535
29.5
British Columbia
8,465
5.6
5,905
14.6
14,370
6.8
Other provinces
9,015
6.0
6,225
15.5
15,240
100
Total
151,150
100.0
40,330
100.0
191,480
100.0
Source: 1991 Census of Canada (20% Sample Data) Cat. No. 93-315.
construction. Immigrant women worked as machine operators in clothing factories or as hospital workers, waitresses, or cleaners – jobs in which exploitation was widespread. Professionals worked as engineers, lawyers, doctors, researchers, and professors; they received their primary and secondary education in Greece and university degrees in North America. In 1986, for example, more than 160 Greek-Canadian academics and researchers were working in Canadian universities and research centres.
The high proportion of post-war immigrants in low-status jobs is mainly attributed to the low academic attainment; in 1971 at least 61 percent of Greek immigrants in Canada had only eight years or fewer of schooling. Most grew up in rural Greece during the Nazi occupation and the civil war. Statistics Canada’s lack of an occupational category of “entrepreneurs” makes it difficult to estimate the size of this influential group, which emerged especially in food-related activities as immigrants used earnings to set up restaurants, often family-run, which then hired newer arrivals or other Canadians. Restaurants also brought Greek-Canadian business people into closer contact with the Canadian public, particularly politicians, city officials, and leaders of associations. Many charitable, ethnocultural, and commercial organizations solicited the services of Greek restaurateurs or sought their contributions. Today the restaurant business is considered of low prestige and involves long hours of hard work. Many second-generation Greek Canadians have attained higher occupational status than their parents.
Generally, Greek Canadians have been more prosperous and better educated than their counterparts in Greece. Opportunity, political freedom, and tolerance have made Greek immigrants relatively highly satisfied with life in Canada. Greek Canadians nevertheless show sentimental attachment to the motherland. Every year thousands visit Greece; many have returned there permanently to venture into a new business or to retire.
