Greek-Canadians feel pain of savage cuts back home

Canadian-born and raised, John Nikolouzos moved to Greece eight years ago to help run his family's business building holiday homes on the island of Corfu.

Last month, he returned to live in Toronto – bitter about the unravelling of Greece's economic and social fabric, and worried about the fate of his family.

"My parents are still in Corfu, and they are suffering," said the 37-year-old. "My dad is unemployed at age 65, and my mom's getting a minor pension. We support them from wherever we are."

Greece's debt crisis – which has forced the government to slash spending and raise taxes – has led to tremendous hardship for that country's citizens. Unemployment is now up to a record 18.4 per cent, while riots and protests continue to rage in the streets of Athens. But the turmoil is increasingly affecting the Greek diaspora, including the 250,000-plus members of the Greek-Canadian community and their many businesses.

"I get affected by elderly Greeks; they see the news and they don't want to spend a nickel," said Christos Doudoumis, who helps run the Greek House Food Market in Toronto. "They used to buy two kilograms of cheese, and now they buy 200 grams. It affects business, it affects the economy, it affects everything."

One of the biggest uncertainties for Greek-Canadian business owners has been the disruption brought on by a series of strikes. Panagiotis Tsiriotakis imports olive oil from his family's land in Crete, bottles it and sells it to Canadian retailers. He notes that every day, a different group goes on strike in Greece, from trucking to customs to the ports. "Then the ships don't even go into port to collect it," he said. "Nothing is stable right now."

What used to take a few weeks to cross the oceans can now be up to two months. Inventories in his Toronto warehouse have dwindled and he's worried he won't be able to keep up with demand.

The travel business is also seeing disruptions. Aris Sideratos, founder and owner of Skyway Tours Ltd. in Toronto's Greektown, said that demand for vacation packages in Greece has slid 30 per cent from last year and that some non-Greek tourists have avoided the country because they're afraid of strikes and riots.

"We had a big drop in hotel and resort packages," Mr. Sideratos said. "We've had an increase in people coming back to Canada. It's not huge, but it's significant. In terms of Greeks going to their own country, they will always go back."

But for most Greek-Canadians, the impact of the Greek turmoil hits much closer to home, with many sending money oversees to help affected loved ones. George Gekas, a business professor at Toronto's Ryerson University, is one of those sending more remittances back home. All of his family lives in Greece, including his mother, brother and a "million" cousins, uncles and aunts in Nafpaktos, in the southwestern part of the mainland.

His 86-year-old mother has seen her pension cut by 25 per cent in the past 18 months, while her taxes - mainly property taxes - have risen dramatically, Mr. Gekas said. Now he directly pays her electricity and telephone bills. "I worry whether she's going to feed herself properly, and whether she will have enough for medicine," he said.

Helene Demos, who grew up in Canada but returned to Greece with her family in 1983 amid the boom years, has taught English in Athens for the past 14 years. Now the government has chopped her salary by 20 per cent just as her family has to pay a slew of new taxes.

"Here I am with my salary being reduced, my husband has people not paying him … There's no cash flow anywhere and you have outstanding debts from the way life was before. You just can't make ends meet any more," Ms. Demos said in a telephone interview.

She plans to return to Canada with her family within the next year to search for work as a teacher. History is repeating itself, she noted: Her parents left Greece in 1963 to escape economic hardship.

In Vancouver, Kyriakos Katsanikakis, co-owner of the Parthenon Supermarket, said the ripples coming from Greece, Europe and beyond are deepening.

"People in Canada, whether they're Greek, Italian, Portuguese or German, we all know what's going on there," said Mr. Katsanikakis, who came to Canada in 1968 at the age of 16. "We feel for our homeland and what is happening to the people over there." In a globalized economy, he said, "We are all connected and affected by it."