A man talks about his experience at the Greek school of Saint Trinity,
Montreal, where he studied.
Res.: Ok. And which school did you go to when you came
here?
D.C.: To Saint Trinity.
Res.: There was a daily one?
D.C.: It was daily, yes. I was to go to a school here,
which is opposite to Holy Mary and when we went… my mother went to register
me, because we were Orthodox, they told us we can’t go -they only accepted
Catholics- and so we were forced and I went and registered down it was Saint…
Saint Trinity it was [...] and Saint Laurent at the corner. Now they’ve…
they’ve brought everything down. And there, there I was going… I went to
school. There I finished Greek primary school and then I went to the English
schools.
Res.: Eh… and so, at Saint Trinity, do you remember
like… did you perform like Greek dances and anything like that?
D.C.: Yes, we did. We performed Greek dances, we
performed theatre too… eh… with the… with the revolutions then, with
Bouboulina, Kolokotronis and that. We performed theatre. I was in the choir
too. I was in the choir in spite of… in spite of having a voice like a
donkey’s, he couldn’t say “No”, because the teach… the teacher we had, the
principal we had at the time, his children lived here at Park Extension and I
was the one bringing them to him and taking them home. And so, whether he
wanted to or not, he kept me. So yeah, it was… we were… we were many Greeks,
but after there, from ’64 to ’71 I had lost all my contacts with Greeks,
because I went to English schools. They were all… most of my friends at the
time were Italian, English, Hebrew and because there weren’t many Greeks
around and then I re-entered the… the Greek environment and oh! It was good!
Res.: When did you re-enter?
D.C.: ‘71? ‘72? About that time.
Res.: And in what way?
D.C.: Eh… when I went to university and afterwards, I
was with the… we formed a dance troupe, we had started the first dance troupe
with Sergiannis, with Theodoros Sergiannis and they gathered children and we
learned… they taught… Mr. Sergiannis was with Dora Stratou and we gathered
there from the association and we formed a Greek dance troupe. We danced
everywhere. We had gone to Quebec City too. We also danced on television. And
now the… that there’s a troupe now which is called ‘Syrtaki’, something like
that, this was born from there also. We the old ones left, who now can’t move
our legs and young people entered. And it was… it was something we all missed
dearly and it was… nice. It was a very, very nice thing.
