Agnos Family Immigrant Trunk

Datec. 1930

DimensionsOverall: 60 x 56 x 87 cm

Credit LineGift of Mary Hontas, 2006.

Object number2006.016.001

Label TextIn 1927, Bill Agnos, born in 1899, arrived in London to start a new life at the behest of his father-in-law James Liabotis, one of London's first Greet immigrants. Though trained as a tailor in his native Arcadia, Greece, he probably started working in his father-in-law's shoe shine shop on Dundas Street soon after he arrived. A few years later, he opened his own shop at 376 Richmond where he cleaned and blocked hats as well as repairing and shining shoes. Just before the end of WWII he built a house at 230 Richmond. In the early 1950s he moved his hat and shoe shop to a building near his house where he continued to work until his retirement in 1972. Bill's wife Pinio brought their young children, Georgia, John, and Elizabeth to Canada in 1935, arriving on the Empress of Australia at Quebec City with only a few belongings in a trunk and a couple of valises. "It was clothing, bed linen, blankets mom had woven on the loom - no dishes, cutlery, or anything like that was brought over. There was nobody to ask how to prepare for the trip, we were the first Green family from the province of Arcadia to leave and come to Canada."

NameTrunk