Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
On the grounds of the Holy Cross church on Chemin du Souvenir, the line at the gate stretched down the sidewalk long before the first clarinet taxim of the evening, and inside, under the tents, the voice of Efi Thodi carried over thousands of heads while lamb and whole pigs turned on the spits behind the grills. For three days in early July, in the year the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal marks 120 years since its founding, the festival of Laval gave the parikia one of the largest Greek gatherings the region has seen. The record attendance, the generosity of the sponsors and the striking presence of the young generation told one part of the story. The strain that success placed on safety planning and crowd behaviour, examined later in this report, told the rest.
A record summer for the community
The summer festival of the Regional Council of Laval of the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal ran from Friday, July 3 to Sunday, July 5 at the Holy Cross church, 4865 Chemin du Souvenir. Admission was five dollars, children 12 and under entered free, and the gates stayed open until 11 p.m. each night. After days of punishing heat and humidity, the weather broke in time for the weekend, and the crowds followed. Organizers counted roughly 2,000 admissions on Friday evening, 4,500 adult tickets on Saturday and 3,000 on Sunday, for an estimated 12,000 visitors over the three days once free children’s admissions are included, according to figures cited by Kyriakos Polymenakos, president of the community’s Montreal regional council. The community’s own bulletin called it a record for the institution.
“The first night was something incredible. We had never seen such a Friday at a festival,” said Katherine Hulis, president of the Laval regional council, speaking on the second evening. “We are truly blessed. The weather over these three days has been wonderful, and we are so grateful to everyone.”
Behind the tills and the grills stood an economy of pure donation. The Georges butcher shop on Liège Street in Park Extension gave 10,000 souvlakia, enough for all three days. The roast pigs turned for six hours over the coals, lamb cooked on the spit, and the breads, the Canada Day cake and the sweets came from the Ambrosia bakery of Laval. Grillers stood over the fire through afternoons when the heat off the coals matched the heat of the sun. “We grill and we get grilled,” one of them laughed, estimating between 3,000 and 4,000 souvlakia served by Saturday evening. Aglaia Revelakis, city councillor for Chomedey for 13 years and formerly secretary general of the community, put the human arithmetic plainly: “A festival cannot be carried by five or six people. Look around and everyone you see is a volunteer, more than 300 of them. Without volunteers there are no festivals.”
Efi Thodi, three nights on stage
The artistic heart of the weekend came from Greece. Efi Thodi, among the most recognizable voices of the Greek dimotiko tragoudi, performed all three nights with clarinetist Stelios Kalompatsios and bandleader Giannis Fousteris, joined by local musicians and by the dance troupes of the parikia. On the Friday she sang for two and a half hours without a break.
In an interview with The Montreal Greek Times during the festival, Thodi recalled that her career abroad began in this city. “My first concert outside Greece was here in Laval. That was my first contact with the diaspora,” she said, before listing the stations of four decades on the road: the United States, Germany, Australia, England, France. Asked what she feels when diaspora audiences weep and dance in front of her, she answered without ornament. “I feel Greek, I am Greek, and I love Greece and the Greeks. I am happy because I can offer people this joy. Singing is my soul. I live to sing.” Her message at the end of the conversation was addressed to the whole parikia: “I thank you from my heart, I love you, and I will always be close to you.”
120 years and a Canada Day cake
The Saturday of the festival doubled as a delayed Canada Day celebration, with the cutting of the traditional cake before elected officials from every level of government and the thousands on the grounds. “We are celebrating 120 years of the community and, of course, Canada Day,” said Paris Petrou, head of public relations for the community, crediting the regional council and the volunteers for months of work.
Sona Lakhoyan Olivier, member of the National Assembly for Chomedey back in July, moved through the crowd with evident enjoyment. “I love this festival because it is so much fun. There is food, and everyone is here,” she said, noting how many of her constituents of all backgrounds attend. “Every reason to gather is a good reason.”
For Basile Angelopoulos, president of the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal, the view from the stage was the answer to every question about the community’s future. “When Hellenism celebrates, there are no limits. Everywhere I look I see a sea of people,” he said. He reserved his strongest words for the Friday night crowd, which he estimated was 90 per cent youth. “That let me sleep easily. The future awaits us, and our future is bright.”
Where the planning fell short
Honest reporting requires the other side of the ledger, because the same success exposed serious gaps in safety planning. By this newspaper’s direct observation, the main tents were filled well beyond comfortable movement, with chairs packed so tightly that passing between rows was a struggle, and with none of the measures that fire prevention standards and the Régie du bâtiment du Québec require at such capacities, such as an alarm and public address system and wide, clear aisles. The fenced site operated with a single gate serving as both entrance and exit, where three exits would be expected, and with no counting of entries and exits, the exact number of people inside at any moment was unknown. Estimates on the grounds put the crowd at roughly double the permitted capacity.
The Laval police intervened on the busiest night and presented organizers with a stark choice: shut the festival down, or continue under the condition that anyone who stepped outside would be barred from returning. The condition was never announced to the public, and the consequences multiplied at the gate. Families were separated. The minor son of a community board member stepped out and could not rejoin his family. Revelakis herself escorted an elderly woman to a waiting car and was refused re-entry. The producer of the community’s television coverage, and publisher of this newspaper Dimitri Papadopoulos whose crew and broadcast equipment remained inside, was blocked on returning from the sidewalk and in the end negotiated a security escort simply to pack up his cameras and leave.
A second failure was the absence of crowd control by security at the stage. When the folklore troupes danced, spectators walked onto the floor to film them. When Thodi appeared on a riser barely half a metre high, some 30 people pressed against it with phones raised, children on shoulders, blocking the view of thousands of seated guests and pushing dancers toward the tables and tent cables.
Research gives the phenomenon little justification. Psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University has documented a photo-taking impairment effect, in which reaching for the camera weakens the memory of the event itself, and later studies found that filming in order to share diminishes the filmer’s own enjoyment. A 2024 industry survey found a majority of young concertgoers now film rather than simply watch. Performers and festivals have begun to respond, with artists such as Jack White and Bob Dylan sealing phones in locked pouches at the door and other events marking designated filming zones away from sightlines. Barriers, a raised stage and a few stewards would have spared both the audience and the performers in Laval.
The festival closed its final night on Sunday, July 5 at 11 p.m., and the community’s summer calendar continued with the festival of Park Extension on August 15 and 16.
