ABOUT US

The Kingston Greek History Project is an effort of the Greek community of Kingston to collect the stories of its members, and to preserve both our present and our past for years to come. We are passionate about displaying our community’s rich history to the broader public as well as to future generations; and we are excited to be compiling a digital archive of interviews, photos, and documents so that they may be preserved even longer. You may find our complete archives at: https://archive.org/details/@kingston_greek_history_project

 

We are grateful to have received a grant for the second phase of our project by the City of Kingston Heritage Fund Project Grant, allowing us to expand our outreach and our archives even further in 2018. Currently, we are working to have a write-up about our history in Kingston – composed of our interviews, archival research, and more – on Queens’ STONES Walking Tour Website. The website will serve as a platform for us to pinpoint locations on a map which are important to Kingston’s Greek history, and to explore the themes and stories surrounding each location through the mediums of text, audio, and visual (documents and photos). The finished product will also be posted on our website following its completion.

 

We are excited to have Angeline Boswell, a member of the Greek Community, working on this phase of the project as our Research Assistant. The project is led by George Katinas and Paula Antonakos.

 

**Note: This website is for archival storage. For fun facts and more constant updates, please follow our Facebook page!

 

OUR HISTORY

This inaugural phase of the project was funded by a City of Kingston Heritage Fund Project Grant 2016-2017, whereby $11,500 was awarded to the Kingston Greek Community. On March 19th Father Demetre made an announcement about the launch of the Kingston Greek History project (KGHP). Later the same day, George Katinas and Paula Antonakos also spoke briefly about the project.

 

Kingston Greek History Project involves the collection of stories from members of our community in order to create a record of the lives of Greek Canadians in Kingston. The stories of the members of our community were recorded during one to one Oral History interviews. Photos and documents were scanned and collected, and all archival information was donated to Queen’s University Archives and Kingston Frontenac Public Library. We made a large contribution, including over 200 photos and interviews with 20 community members! This inaugural phase was continued into the second phase, which we are hard at work on now.

 

GET IN TOUCH

We are still looking for volunteers to come forward and donate their time for an interview, as well as donate any photos and documents they have for our archives! The recordings of the interviews will then be donated to Queen’s University Archives and Kingston Frontenac Public Library. If you would like to be interviewed, please contact our research assistant, Angeline Boswell (details in the CONTACT US page). If you have any questions or comments about the project, don’t hesitate to contact us either. We would love to hear from you!

 

We are encouraging one and all to come forth on a volunteer basis.  We would like to hear about the early Greeks who came to Kingston and built the church and community.  Please volunteer to speak on behalf of your parents, aunts and uncles or grandparents, if they are unable to do so. We would love to digitize old pictures and items of importance to them. We are interested in also hearing from Greeks who arrived later and from different areas of Greece and the world as well as the most recent Greek and non-Greek members to arrive to make this community their home. How wonderful this would be to have your stories archived so that hundreds of years from now, others can know about our history here in Kingston?

 

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE KGHP ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS:

The interviews:

 

• Are conducted in private by one person with an audio recorder

• Will last a little over an hour

• Take place in your home or another quiet place in town

• Are about the lives and every day experiences of members of the Greek Community.

• You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to

• You can stop the interview any time

• You will receive your own copy of the interview

• You might be asked to have your photograph taken

• The interview will be donated to Queens University Archives and Kingston Frontenac Public Library

• You will be asked to sign a consent form

 

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