Professor instilled love of Greek and more
Pillar of community remembered for kindness and emphasis on culture
In Toronto’s Greek community, Michail Vitopoulos was a keystone man.
In the early 2000s, he was one of three scholars who brushed the dust off a long-hidden riot in Toronto’s past, a moment of violence toward its Greek community that was one of the worst in Greek-North American history. They reconstructed the riot from archived sources, preserving the dark slice of history in a book, which was given to then-prime minister Paul Martin.
“We must remember our history so we do not repeat our mistakes,” then-MP Jim Karygiannis said at the time, asking the House of Commons to recognize the moment.
In his seven decades, Vitopoulos wrote works of theatre about the Greek diaspora, performed at the Greek Cultural Centre. He dove into research on the modern Greek language and its writers. He made sure new funds breathed life into York University’s language program, and he acted as a father figure to firstgeneration Greek Canadians in his classes.
But in his private life, he showed a broader love of culture than just the Hellenic world. He’d play his family music from France and show them poetry from Latin America.
“What he gave us, what he gave his daughters, was the idea that all cultures have deep meaning,” one of his two daughters, Nina Vitopoulos, told the Star. “As a little kid, he knew everything.”
Vitopoulos, who retired from York University after nearly three decades in June, died Feb. 18. His family was by his side. He was 70. “He was very present in the world of ideas,” Nina explained of her father. And indeed, the ideas and demeanour impressed upon his students hadn’t faded with time, evi- dent as tributes cropped up to Vitopoulos following the news of his death. It’s been 22 years since he taught Patricia Vertou, but she still remembers his teaching vividly.
“I remember him being a down-toearth man that we as students related to because he reminded us of our fathers,” Vertou told the Star. The majority of students in his classes, she said, were first-generation Greek Canadians.
They identified with his humour, she said, and his “easygoing nature.” He encouraged them to seize opportunities to learn in order “to become outstanding members of society,” Vertou said.
But that didn’t mean eliminating failure. He had believed that those who struggled or made mistakes could still be fundamentally good people, Nina said. “You can fail and I’m here, or you can succeed and I’m going to cheer you on,” was his mentality, she said. Also important was the idea of providing that to others. She said it wasn’t unusual to find him sitting in the Starbucks by their house, surrounded by young people calling him “Professor Mike.”
Another one of his students, Nicholas Stribopoulos, ran into Vitopoulos at a soccer tournament outside of class. “At the end of the game, I went to talk to him for a bit, and introduced him to my father,” Stribopoulos told the Star. “He then told my father that he’s proud of what I’ve accomplished in his class, and that he loves me ‘as if he was my son.’
“He was a kind man, who loved and cared for every student he ever had.”
Vitopoulos worked as an associate professor of Modern Greek studies at York University, joining the school in 1989. Before that, he worked as a multilingual educational consultant in the Toronto District School Board, said Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, chair of Vitopoulos’ department.
“I remember him, really, as a gentleman,” Iannacito-Provenzano said, telling stories of Vitopoulos arriving at departmental meetings with treats or Greek wine. And the sting of his loss has rippled out across the university.
Professor Themis Aravossitas is holding a book launch on Monday. Inside that book, he said, is the last article Vitopoulos wrote.
“I’m quite emotional, to be honest,” Aravossitas told the Star. Vitopoulos was the man who inspired him to pursue a PhD. The pair met when Aravossitas was a radio show host, and Vitopoulos called in as a listener.
But for all his legacies, his daughter Andrea stressed that her father would never tell you any of it himself. To her, he was the man who loved Leonard Cohen and The Godfather— “like all old European men,” she said with a laugh — and shared a love of literature, politics and history with the people around him.
“He’s a man who built community wherever he went.”