The project ImmiGrec: a brief overview

Greek immigration to Canada dates back to the early 20 century, culminating between 1945 and 1975, when more than 107,000 Greek citizens arrived in Canada for economic and political reasons. According to the 2011 census, 350,000 Canadian citizens described themselves as Greeks or of Greek origin. Currently, Greek-speaking communities and organizations are a dynamic component of a multicultural and multilingual Canadian society. These communities can be located in all major Canadian cities, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Victoria, Regina and Winnipeg. The Greek communities’ contribution to the Canadian social, cultural and linguistic milieu has been significant. It is clearly demonstrated in the transatlantic relations between Canada and Greece as well as in the political and social conditions of post-war Greece that steered so many people towards migration. Greek-Canadian communities and organizations have attracted scientific interest in the past (see, among others, Gavaki 1977; Liodakis 1998; Chimbos 1999; Constantinides & Micheladaki 2014; Aravossitas 2016), but crucial issues regarding the adaptation and assimilation of Greek immigrants to the Canadian society have not been sufficiently explored. More specifically, the issue of language remains relatively unknown, particularly in the domain of contact of Greek with English or French, the two official languages of Canada. The project Immigration and Language in Canada. Greeks and Greek-Canadians, sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, was implemented with the cooperation between three Canadian universities and a Greek one, McGill University, Simon Fraser University, York University and the University of Patras. The project’s main aim is to document and investigate the history and language of Greek immigrants in Canada between 1945 and 1975. This program covers a unique interdisciplinary field that links history and social history with linguistics and sociolinguistics. For this purpose, the primary objective was to collect material from many Greek-speaking communities in Canada, both oral (narratives of the experiences of first-generation Greek immigrants) and printed (letters, newspaper clippings, photos, etc.), following the rules and regulations of scientific ethics and the protection of personal data. As a result, printed material and about 350 hours of narratives have been collected primarily by the research teams of the three Canadian universities. In addition, past individual efforts to document the life of Greek Canadians (e.g. Maniakas archive, Maniakas 1991) and the University of Patras have contributed to the total number of the data collected for the project. As a first step, the data were registered in an electronic repository and then integrated into a specially designed database (see articles by Tsimpouris et al. in this volume), while for the oral part there was transcription with the characters of the Greek alphabet. A small part of the material supplied the exhibits of a digital museum. Preliminary attempts to