This originally appears in AGBU News magazine (April 2002)

In New York, they say there are eight million stories in the naked city. We can be sure thousands of those are Armenians who have and continue to feed, enrich, and define the city that is known as the greatest in the world. The engine of the world economy and the epicenter of international discourse, New York’s history is as eventful and chaotic as the city itself.

The Armenian chapters of New York history are a collection of flamboyant personalities, shocking events and colorful stories, whose description explodes with the bravado one comes to expect from the city that never sleeps. This is only a small fraction of the Armenians of New York and their impact—the beginnings of a greater story still waiting to be told.

The First Armenian American

In 1834, New York University was entering its third year since its founding and a young Protestant missionary-educated Armenian, Khachadur Osganian, arrived into a city that had yet to claim its place among the cities of the world. It was the period of Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville, the city lacked the infrastructure of a modern city, the great flood of Irish laborers of the 1840?s had not begun, Central Park was still a dream and less than a quarter million citizens called New York home. It was a city still seeking an identity in a young Republic that celebrated its democratic origins.

A native of the Ottoman Empire, Osganian arrived with a Protestant missionary education to attend the newly established New York University. After graduating, he began writing for The New York Herald-Tribune newspaper and later became President of the prestigious New York Press Club.

A pioneer in many aspects, he was the first naturalized Armenian American and the first to publish a book in America, The Sultan and His People (1857). The novel introduced the plight of Armenian self-determination to the American psyche.

The 19th century periodical Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, similar to today’s Reader’s Digest, noted the volume as, “a most admirable and graphic account of the life and habits of the Turks, as seen and described by an insider, and not by one of the outer barbarians, as are all the other tourists and authors upon that country…. On the whole, there are few better accounts of the detail of Turkish life than this of Oscanyans [sic], and he describes with a constant and natural tendency to sympathy with his own people. He, therefore, suggests many sensible explanations of points which are peculiar and amusing to other nations, and shows himself to be an intelligent and vivacious observer.” Osganian characterized Armenians as the “Yankees of the Near East” and he penned articles for many of Constantinople’s newspapers on matters concerning America.

By 1841, the first Armenian settler arrived in Brooklyn and the flow of new arrivals trickled in until the late nineteenth century when individuals fleeing Ottoman political and cultural persecution signaled the beginnings of a sustainable Armenian American community in the city.

Close to 70,000 Armenians arrived in the U.S. in the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 20th century with approximately a quarter settling in New York City. It was a period of migration that shaped the city into an amalgam of the world, and in the case of the Armenians allowed tens of thousands to flee massacres and a Genocide that consumed the Ottoman Empire.

Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million immigrants flowed through Ellis Island and today over 40% of Americans can trace their heritage to one of those arrivals. The Armenian legacy on Ellis Island is preserved today in the museum. The story of one Armenian family along with their world of objects and memories is carefully preserved beside those of other cultural groups. Other surprising items litter the exhibits, including carefully preserved fragments of graffiti left by new arrivals that cover pillars and some of the unseen walls, much like the spray paint graffiti in today’s cities. The fact that many Armenian letters exist among the graffiti may allude to the fact that Armenians had one of the highest literacy rates of any of the ethnic groups that arrived.

Ever Expanding Metropolis

By the beginning of the twentieth century New York attracted the bulk of immigrants and only Massachusetts competed with New York as the destination of choice for newly-arrived Armenians.

Where these Armenians settled remains allusive but certainly most landed in the low-rent tenements that encircled Manhattan.

The first piece of evidence for an Armenian neighborhood is a map drawn in 1901 by Helen F. Clark, a New York missionary, who tracked the city’s ethnic groups for the purpose of evangelization. While Germans, Jews, Irish, Italians, African-Americans and others dotted the landscape repeatedly, Armenians and other Eastern Mediterranean peoples clustered at the southern tip of the city.

In this area, a neighborhood known as the Syrian Quarter emerged in the late nineteenth century. Dominated by Syrian and Lebanese Christians, their restaurants, bakeries and shops blanketed Washington Street from Battery Place to Rector Street. The neighborhood survived until the 1960?s, when residents moved to other neighborhoods, particularly Brooklyn. An Armenian sculptor, Mardig Kachian, was the last to abandon the neighborhood after an extended battle with the city over his eviction. The city prevailed and the street was razed to become part of the Battery Tunnel ramp and a larger plan for a revitalized financial district.

By the first decades of the twentieth century, Armenians converged at another region of the city, the East 20?s in an area bracketed by Lexington and Third Avenues.

Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, one of the few native New Yorkers left in the city, was born in the Armenian enclave, “Growing up in New York was great. First of all, it was just the right size. We lived in the Gramercy Park area and I loved Gramercy Park. It had some posh people around it, like the actress Jane Wyatt. When I was five years old, she had a birthday party and I attended. They had a movie theater in the basement and I wouldn’t forget it. It was the first movie I ever saw—Peter Rabbit.”

For Dobkin, the neighborhood was filled with the sights and sounds of restaurants rich with Near Eastern aromas and characters larger than life that would serve as the material for her 1954 New York Times best-selling novel, A Houseful of Love—it was summarily reprinted in Reader’s Digest’s hugely popular Condensed Books series.

The story of an Armenian American childhood in the heart of Manhattan, Dobkin explains about the lack of stigma she felt surrounding ethnicity, “Everyone around us was an immigrant in New York, so I never felt any of the problems people tell me about elsewhere. Coincidently, at the time there were no Chinese restaurants, no Italian, no French, nothing. It was the Armenian restaurants on Lexington Avenue that were noted as the best places to have a foreign meal.”

For generations, Armenian restaurants were the heartbeat of the community. Nobel prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis sketches one such establishment from an outsider’s perspective in his 1914 novel, Our Mr. Wren: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, “The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at low prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it has not become Bohemian. Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of persons from Missouri whose women risk salvation for an evening by smoking cigarettes. Here prosperous Oriental merchants, of mild natures and bandit faces, drink semi-liquid Turkish coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.”

While Lewis refers to the early restaurants of Manhattan, later restaurants played a role in refining the international taste buds of New Yorkers. Arakel’s restaurant may have been among the first. Located on Lexington Avenue between 27th & 28th Streets, it was patronized by colorful personalities including collector Hagop Kevorkian who ordered food for his soirées and a certain Sourabian who dressed up like a Cossack when performing at various community Barahanteses (dinner dances).

Near Times Square, the Golden Horn was the most elegant of the city’s Armenian eateries. Located on Broadway, it was a magnet for sports and theatre personalities of every strip.

When the Balkan restaurant popped up in the heart of the Gramercy Park Armenian community, it developed a loyal following from the neighborhood, while close by the renowned midtown luncheon spot, Ararat, lasted until the 1970?s.

Downtown, Dardanelles on University Place was the only spot to get your fill of Armenian cuisine. These and other more short-lived establishments in the East Village, near Queensborough Bridge and other locales cultivated the city’s taste for Armenian food. Unfortunately, the family-run restaurants all closed when their children were uninterested in perpetuating the tradition. It is sad to say that today Manhattanites must look elsewhere to find the pleasures of Armenian cuisine.

Dobkin remembers the city life that invigorated her, “In the twenties, I knew summer was here when my father changed his fedora to a straw hat. He would take me to the trolleys on Third Avenue, which were like those in San Francisco. When it passed, it shook the windows and the china would rattle on the shelves. We would travel on the double-decker buses that were open on the top and we went everywhere. I loved walking down Fifth Avenue with one of my uncles—we didn’t miss the country one bit. For the beach, we would go to the Rockaways in Queens.

“When I was very little, the tallest building in my eyes was the Flatiron building, which was not far from where we lived,” she says.

Soon the family moved uptown, like others fleeing the congestion and pollution of the city, to the newly developed regions of Washington Heights and Inwood at the north tip of Manhattan which were dominated by numerous hills, and lacked the claustrophobic ambience of downtown.

It was a treasured time for Dobkin, “By the time I was nine, I was allowed to go on the subway and take my little brother by the hand. It was so safe. My parents taught me that if I had any problems to go to a policeman, who were all Irish and loved kids.”

The Washington Heights community was as accepting as her downtown stomping grounds, “When friends came to my house and they heard me speaking Armenian to my grandmother, who lived with us, they would insist I speak it some more. They were fascinated, for them it was glamorous and unlike anything they had ever heard. ”

Another early uptown resident, Jack Torosian, arrived in America from Smyrna (Izmir) at a young age during the early 1920?s and after brief stints in Midtown and the Bronx he moved with his family in 1930 to Inwood in an apartment he continues to call home.

Overlooking Manhattan’s only natural green space, Inwood Park, Torosian’s life among Irish, German, Jewish and Italian neighbors always embraced the park and it continues to be a focal point for the predominantly Dominican residents of today’s northern Manhattan.

Torosian remembers, “When we first arrived, there were American Indians living in the Park. There was a little museum in there with Revolutionary War uniforms, cannonballs and a library. That was my old haunt. There was a Cherokee princess named Naomi and her son, Bill Kinnedy, who lived there. They had a cold stove and in the winter time I would put my feet up on the stove and read their early American library. My mother would also say, ‘You’re going to visit your relatives?’ That’s how I became part Cherokee Indian.”

He continues, “There was also an Armenian who lived in the park with six cats and beehives and used to collect grape leaves and sell them. Often some Armenians from the neighborhood would visit him and build a fire and have a cook-out.”

Another resident of Washington Heights, George Avakian, points out that some of the reasons for moving to the neighborhood were more practical, “A new Armenian church had been established on West 187th Street, attracting many Armenians from around the city. New stores such as Zarifian’s butcher shop had opened on St. Nicholas Avenue. It was the highest point of Manhattan with clean air and without the crowding of the downtown part of the city. My father felt it would be more healthful for his children.”

Avakian was an unlikely jazz aficionado. An immigrant boy who had acquired his taste for the thoroughly American art form through radio and records, at Yale University he met a number of key personalities who initiated him into the history of the music. While still at school, he began writing a well-read column in Tempo—one of only three magazines that covered the genre. A member of the loose brotherhood of record collectors called the United Hot Clubs of America, he never realized that his hobby would develop into a career. It all began when he was asked by a reader of his jazz column in Tempo, Edward Wallerstein (President of Columbia Records in 1940), to research, select, and annotate the first series of reissues of classic out-of-print jazz recordings. A few months earlier, Avakian had already produced for Decca Records the first album ever recorded of jazz music, complete with a 12-page booklet of the kind that was common only for operatic or classical recordings.

In the course of the dream job of digging through Columbia’s vast archives in search of hard-to-find gems, he produced the first of a long string of singles and albums under the Hot Jazz Classics title and discovered a large number of unreleased gems of previous decades by legendary artists, including his great favorites, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Little did he realize that he would one day become a close friend as well as the producer of some of their greatest recordings in the years to come.

After serving in World War II, he returned to Columbia Records full-time, where he was appointed Director of Popular Records and Director of the International Department, both of which became the company’s largest profit divisions soon after the company invented the 33-rpm long-playing record which revolutionized the industry in 1948. What is unique about Avakian is not only his accomplishments but also his devotion to New York.

Why did he choose to stay in New York? “That’s where it’s at and so are my personal and family roots,” Avakian replies. In fact, he twice turned down the presidency of a record company with a California base (MGM and Warner Brothers) in order to stay in the city he loves so much. He and his wife, the famed concert violinist Anahid Ajemian, eventually moved from Central Park West to the countrified Riverdale section of the Bronx where he remains a unique character with a lifetime of devotion to researching and disseminating American music.

What makes the essence of a New Yorker? Avakian suggests without hesitation, “cosmopolitanism and universality,” two of the attributes that he has maintained throughout his entire career.

While life in the Armenian neighborhoods uptown seemed idyllic, on Christmas Eve of 1933 the political assassination of Archbishop Leon Elisee Tourian in Holy Cross Armenian Church on West 187th Street scandalized the Armenian community.

Jack Torosian remembers the shock, “A man who had been in church at the time of the stabbing came that day to tell us about it.”

Dobkin’s family lived a few blocks away and her father, who was a doctor, rushed to the church to find the Archbishop, a friend of his, already dead. When her horror subsided, the reality of what happened set in, “The incident split the community into two distinct political factions.”

New York’s Daily News ran “Murder in a Holy Place” as a headline and reported, “…two men leaped from the pews as the Archbishop passed them both with knives, very large knives as were used to skin cattle, knives suitable for a man as big as Tourian. Disemboweled on the spot, he fell wordlessly to his knees and gasped for just an instant…enraged parishioners flung themselves upon the pair and beat them senseless with canes and umbrellas, eight other men fled to the street. There had been a whole squad of slayers come this day with blood hatreds festering in their hearts.”

The New York Times allotted the story front page coverage and followed its developments closely. On December 26, 1933 they published what they saw as the murder’s motivations, “The Archbishop’s clashes with anti-Soviet sympathizers in this country, at Chicago, in this city and near Worcester, Mass., had been largely over the question whether the Soviet banner, bearing the hammer and sickle, should be displayed at Armenian functions.”

The ideological conflict between pro and anti-Soviet camps gave cause to seven extremists that were eventually convicted in the city’s courts after a year-long investigation. The two primary culprits, Matios Leylegian and Nishan Sarkisian, were given life in prison when Governor Lehman of New York intervened to save them from the electric chair for what he said were “the most unusual circumstances of this case.”

The Tourian assassination was not the first the New York community had experienced. On July 22, 1907 a wealthy Armenian American, Bedros Hampartzumian, was killed in Union Square by an Armenian political party henchman, Hovhannes Tavshanjian, after refusing to donate $10,000 to their coffers.

The Gramercy and northern Manhattan colonies constituted the majority of New York City’s Armenian presence until after the Second World War. Dobkin says, “I think I’m one of the few people left in the city and not from the outer boroughs. When I tell cab drivers they are amazed. No one wanted to go anywhere outside New York until after the war.”

After the war, the deluge of immigration created a cultural clash and pushed out long time residents, Dobkin explains, “When I returned from Washington D.C. in 1954, it became a different city. It was crowded, people were pushy and the streets were filthy. It was very comfortable before.”

Torosian suggests another factor in the dispersion of Armenians elsewhere, “Most of the residents died, moved to California, New Jersey, Westchester or Long Island. Armenians wanted private homes and not apartments.”

A Salon of Their Own

While the bulk of Armenians lived elsewhere in Manhattan, there formed a small community of intellectual Armenian Americans that centered around Columbia University, which developed one of the leading programs in Armenian Studies.

A small circle of intellectuals concentrated around the Balakian sisters, Nona, a long-time editor of The New York Times Book Review, and Anna, a professor of French Literature at Columbia University. Some of the inner circle were Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, jazz aficionado George Avakian, violinist Anahid Ajemian, her sister pianist Maro Ajemian, and others who partook in the first flowering of an Armenian American cultural consciousness in America.

No one seems to know how it happened, but the circle’s network of friends included the Who’s Who of Armenian American letters looking for a unique venue. Some of the extended group included writer Jack Antreassian, occasional New Yorker William Saroyan and Leo Hamalian, long-time editor of the group’s unofficial journal, Ararat.

Established in 1959 and sponsored by AGBU, Ararat offered a springboard for new literary talent, and has since published a wide array of material from such diverse personalities as Rouben Mamoulian, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, James Baloian, Ben Bagdikian, Peter Balakian and a slew of others.

Ajemians, both Maro and Anahid, were seminal in establishing the Friends of Armenian Music in the late 1940?s. While it lasted less than a decade, the organization, funded by a number of wealthy Armenian businessmen, did much to propel the career of a still unknown composer Alan Hovhannes.

All in all, this small loosely assembled community was the harbinger of Armenian American cultural awareness and it set the stage for some of the up and coming talent today.

Branching Out to Queens & Brooklyn

The post-war generation moved from their traditional neighborhoods in Manhattan towards Queens and the suburbs of New York, New Jersey and Southern Connecticut. Today, Manhattan’s community has shrunk to 10,000 of the 150,000 Armenians in the Greater New York area. Together their centrality and affluence continues to make them a driving force in the Armenian American community.

Before the twentieth century, Queens County was a sparse network of towns buffered by open fields and farmlands. As the most culturally diverse county in the nation, Queens was and perhaps still is home to the bulk of Tri-State Armenians with today’s population hovering around 50,000.

Margaret Tellalian-Kyrkostas is a Queens native. Born in Long Island City, she was raised in the Astoria section of the borough. “I think my parents chose Astoria because they wanted the country. My mother was a very forward thinking person and she saw advantages of living in an outer borough,” she says.

The neighborhood at the time was a cross-section of Italians, Greeks, Jews, Slavs and Armenians. Tellalian-Kyrkostas lived a slice of Americana, “My father would always come home with either a Hershey bar or Goobers candies. I’d see him coming down the block and I would run to him. I think people in Queens had an attitude that they were better than the people in the city because we lived in the country and we felt more American. In those days, when someone lived in Manhattan we assumed they were poor. When I traveled I would never say I was from New York City, I would say I’m from Queens.”

But Tellalian-Kyrkostas still enjoyed the riches of the city and her father made sure that they would go to the Museum of Natural History at least once a month. This interest led her to rekindle her academic aspirations at age 41 and go on to complete a graduate degree in anthropology. She has since founded the Anthropology Museum of the People of New York at Queens College with the help of the late Margaret Mead, an internationally renowned anthropologist.

Her proudest academic achievement was the creation of the Armenia: Memories From My Home exhibit at the Ellis Island Museum which for a time was embroiled in controversy because the display mentioned the Genocide and used what the Parks Department described as “gory” pictures. The project was curiously initiated by Tellalian-Kyrkostas’ non-Armenian class at Queens College, where she teaches. Their interest was peaked at exploring the events of the little-known Genocide.

“The censorship of the exhibit backfired on the Parks Department because we received a lot of publicity and even CBS, CNN and Radio Free Europe interviewed me while the Armenian American community was outraged and mobilized,” she says.

The display educated thousands of visitors during the six months it was displayed. Tellalian-Kyrkostas says she has learned from her heritage and tries to explain what it means for her, “Because I was a New York Armenian I felt different, so I decided I was going to stay different.”

With each successive wave of immigration to New York, each Armenian community whether from Russia, Romania or Iran have formed their own pocket settlements. The Iranian Armenians have joined fellow Iranians in Forest Hills, Baku refugees settled in Ridgewood, Lebanese Armenians in Bayside and newer waves of Eastern European Armenians in Sunnyside, Woodside, and the Russian sections of Brooklyn.

The pockets of Armenians in Brooklyn have always been small at best. Michael Kehyaian (also known as Cane) grew up in the Brownsville neighborhood where his family moved in 1932 after he was born in the Bronx. While thousands of Armenians lived in the borough, most lived in the Flatbush section further south from the Kehyaians.

His father owned a dry cleaning shop a few neighborhoods over but his family like other Brooklyn Armenians ventured into the city to participate in community functions. He says, “I ran with the Armenians and had a great time. My father was the only one to have a car and picked up all the cousins and drove to Van Cortland Park. In the summer, we traveled to the Catskill Mountains where there were roughly 15 hotels that were owned by or catered to Armenians, including the Washington Irving, Pera Palace, O’Hara House, Shady Hill and Hotel Armenia. We would spend the summer there and you heard Armenian spoken on the streets.”

Kehyaian, now living in Queens, knows that things have changed over the years, “In the older days Armenians were clannish, they stayed together, now my children outsmart me. They go away for weekends, do as they please. If I looked at my father I shook in my boots, now if I look at my children they say, ‘What are you looking at?’”

Today’s New York community remains strong and is served by six churches and various institutions, including Armenia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, AGBU’s international headquarters, Armenia Fund’s East Coast headquarters, the Diocese and Prelacy of the Armenian Church, the Armenian Center of Columbia University, an Iranian-Armenian center, two Armenian day schools, the Armenian Center and a cluster of young professional societies that include the Armenian Students Association, the Armenian Network, the Armenian Youth Federation, and the AGBU Young Professionals of Greater New York.

Lawyer and politico, Edward N. Costikyan, has lived in Manhattan since he was seven years old. He’s spent four decades at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he’s penned must-read books on the city’s politics and he’s developed a reputation as an astute political voice with an eye on the future of city government.

Costikyan admits that Armenians were never concentrated enough to make a dent in general city politics, “The Armenian community was always dispersed, and during the thirties they spread out even more, though they did build churches at the epicenter of the old neighborhood and they still come back.”

“When I was a kid, I became interested in politics after watching the 1940 Presidential debates. It was the time of the New Deal and the government was looking at ways to restructure,” he says.

Costikyan recognized early that centralized governments were cumbersome, remote and inefficient and with New York Governor Rockefeller’s approval he helped along the slow process of shifting the power from a strong central city administration to districts—a process that continues today.

He’s served as Democratic County Leader for New York but in the last decade Costikyan has endorsed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as the best choice for the city, “I supported Giuliani even though he was a Republican, I just prayed I wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

He was active on many committees during the Giuliani years and is optimistic that Bloomberg will continue the wave of reforms.

Even with his early reservations, Costikyan admits that Giuliani has done a great job and he cites the Mayor as one of the greatest civic leaders he’s known, though he chides, “This is despite the fact that he is a little bit of a nut.”

“I think he’s also the luckiest man alive,” Costikyan says about a Mayor that was unpopular only a year ago in many circles, “Many people in this city hated him but after September 11th, people were so shaken by the tragedy and they respected the fact that the Mayor didn’t capitalize on the event and he did what was genuinely good for the city.”

A long-time friend of the city’s Armenians, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recognized the community’s contributions when in 2001 he hosted Catholicos Karekin II at Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence, and announced, “The Armenians are a blessing for New York, and are special for their values of family, faith, and business acumen. The reason that New York is the capital of the world is because of immigrants who brought with them their language, culture, faith and special humanity. The Armenian community is a great example of how wonderfully immigration works.”

Armenians can be proud to be an integral part of the energy that makes New York a cultural, media, business and political mecca, a backdrop for their ambitions, dreams, realities and future.

A Golden Age for Armenian Cuisine

In 1928, Aram Salisian moved to New York from California. Six years later, with the help of family and his friend Jack Warner (of Warner Brothers fame), he opened the Golden Horn restaurant in Midtown that served lunch for a quarter and dinner for 95 cents.

The founder’s son, Raphael, remembers the restaurant as ground-breaking. It helped to shape the city’s taste buds, “We made shish kebab and pilaf famous. No one knew it before we did it. We were voted one of the 100 best restaurants by Gourmet magazine. I remember seeing people like actress Lana Turner and her husband Artie Shaw, the King of Swing, at our restaurant.”

Restaurant critics agreed about the Golden Horn’s importance. One New York Sun reporter, Malcolm Johnson, took issue with NBC studio’s decision in 1941 to import San Francisco caterer George Mardikian protesting, “As for Armenian cooking—well, there is a restaurant within a stone’s throw of the NBC studios which, from our experience, is unsurpassed…. Countless celebrities and gourmets dine there regularly and swear by its food, proclaiming it to be the finest of its kind within their experience. Personally, we would stack Aram Salisian’s cooking against that of George Mardikian or of any other Armenian chef.”

The restaurant’s menu, a unique invention all its own, famously evoked the Orient with spicy language that egged the novice to try something new. “This is it!” begins the menu’s description of Kouzou Dolma, “Roast lamb stuffed with specially prepared rice, pine nuts and currants. A dish for epicures, whether Olympian or mere mortals.”

A pioneer in more ways than one, the Golden Horn displayed walls of Kodachrome candids of their famous clientele which became a regular feature of many Manhattan hot spots. The eatery developed a national reputation, attracting patrons from every industry. It was a special place still remembered today decades after closing its doors.

Armenians on Eighth

From the 1920?s until the 1960?s, an indigenous American musical form emerged on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue. It was a cabaret scene as diverse and hybrid as New York itself.

Harold Hagopian of Traditional Crossroads records, has worked hard to preserve the music that filled the predominantly Greek-owned venues that lined Eighth Avenue between 23rd and 40th Street. The scene hosted the likes of master ud player Marko Melkon, Kanun player Kanuni Garbis, and the ever colorful Sugar Mary Vartanian–who played the wooden spoons and sang with her own rambunctious style.

Not confined to the city, most of the performers would summer in the so-called “Yogurt Belt” of the Catskills, which centered around Tannersville, NY, and perform for the predominantly Armenian-owned and patronized resort hotels.

“When the scene consisted of the first generation, they would go week after week to performances, their children went more as a novelty and the scene died,” Hagopian explains, “Eighth Avenue was a place where people would go to dance, eat and drink. They preserved a piece of what life was like in the big cities of the old country like Istanbul or Izmir.”

The repertoire of the musicians was predominantly Turkish, with Greek, Armenian, Jewish and other music fused in. The musicians themselves were culturally diverse and the music’s cosmopolitan sounds attracted an equally diverse audience.

The music of this small group was admired by other New York musicians such as Dave Brubeck, Lenny Tristano, Tony Scott, Herbie Mann and Leonard Bernstein all of whom were frequent visitors and admirers of the Eighth Avenue musicians.

Hagopian’s work has been successful in discovering priceless recordings in the archives of now defunct record labels. He has reissued most of them and they have proved popular with pop groups who have sampled the music in recent songs. They have also found a place in the libraries of world music fans.

Today, Los Angeles may reign as the center of Armenian music, but the Eighth Avenue Armenians evoke a by-gone age when newly arrived Eastern Mediterranean immigrants melded their music with the sounds of New York.

Originally published in AGBU News magazine (March 2000)

Atom Egoyan and Arsinée Khanjian: Canada’s Premier Couple of the Arts

At the forefront is cinematic superstar Atom Egoyan. Interviewing Egoyan is like stepping into one of his films. As the light of the tape recorder flashes the discussion is filled with pregnant pauses and frequent segues. After three awards at Cannes, two U.S. Academy Award nominations and accolades from most international festivals, he continues to be known for his subconscious strain of cinema.

Egoyanesque has become a word to film aficionados, commonly understood to mean a cinematic moment that examines sexuality, technology and alienation in the modern world.

Egoyan and his actor wife Arsinée Khanjian have become what one reporter termed, Canadian Reel Royalty. When the couple attended the 1997 Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, Canadians felt their culture was beginning to receive the attention it rightfully deserved.

Born in Cairo, where his parents met in art college, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1962 with his family, away from all the established Armenian-Canadian communities.

“During my childhood I was desperate to assimilate. In Victoria, I wanted to be like the other kids. They used to call me the little Arab boy because I was a little darker, had a strange name and came from Egypt. It wasn’t until adolescence that I realized something had been lost in my life,” Egoyan says.

Inspired by his artistic parents, Egoyan fostered his interest in theatre at a young age and began to write plays at age ten. He moved to Toronto in the late seventies to study International Relations at the University of Toronto, but continued to work in theatre.

“When in Toronto, I experienced an Armenian community for the first time. Armenian student activism became a part of my life,” he says.

Fortunately for him, his college seemed unresponsive to his interest in mounting his plays so he began making films instead. After completing a series of edgy short experimental films he started working on his first feature, Next of Kin.

The small budget film describes the story of a young man who masquerades as the prodigal son of a Toronto Armenian family. In retrospect, the film seems to reveal some of Egoyan’s own anxieties emerging from the Anglophile city of Victoria to the bustling metropolis of Toronto. He would meet his cinematic muse and future wife, Arsinée Khanjian, while casting actors for that film in Montreal.

In contrast, Khanjian was born in Beirut and moved to the heart of Montreal’s Armenian community at the age of seventeen. She remembers her shock when she first saw the young director, “In 1984, Atom arrived in a beige tweed suit. He didn’t speak Armenian and he was a director. I was fascinated by this new species of man. He was the first man from the community who I met that was a full-time artist.”

She was cast in the film and moved to Toronto, leaving her failing marriage of five years and Montreal forever. “I moved to Toronto knowing no one and having only a practical grasp of English but I knew I wouldn’t return. When we were shooting Next of Kin we would talk afterwards. For him it was ironic to meet someone from the Armenian community with whom he had so much in common,” she says.

Khanjian and Egoyan both arrived in Toronto during a period when the city was transformed by massive foreign immigration and the migration of English-speaking Montrealers from Quebec. Soon, the couple would go on to collaborate on Egoyan’s early video-obsessed features like, Family Viewing and Speaking Parts and later his more mainstream films, The Adjuster, Exotica and his most popular film to date, The Sweet Hereafter–for which he received an Oscar nomination for best director and best screenplay adaptation.

“The most enduring impression I have of Oscar night is seeing all these people in the auditorium and then seeing Cher and introducing myself. She looked at me and said, ‘Inch bes es,’ and I was amazed. It was an amazing weekend,” he says and then admits he knew he wouldn’t walk away with the golden statuette. “As much as you know that Titanic is going to win, you think you might walk away with an Oscar. So you feel like a king. During that weekend you’re leading this other life. You get access to any party, you get a car, and it’s great fun.”

The director has never shied away from his Armenian heritage and last year when a Member of Canadian Parliament, with strong ties to the Turkish lobby, made erroneous remarks about the events of 1915 Egoyan responded in the national media, “I was infuriated that a member of my government would say something like that. I live in this country pretending like it has already been accepted as fact.” His films also explore the rich experiences of Armenian identity. Shot in Armenia, Calendar is Egoyan’s most personal film. “It uses an experimental form to chronicle the levels of Armenian consciousness and it does so through the prism of my relationship with Arsinée,” he says. “I saw Calendar the other day and I’m really quite proud of that film, it’s quite unique. It’s almost embarrassingly personal, regarding my worst fears of myself and what might happen to our relationship.”

Some have also recognized overtones of the Genocide in The Sweet Hereafter . The film, based on Russell Bank’s novel of the same name, tells the story of a fatal bus accident that traumatizes a small British Columbia town — a subconscious allusion to the Armenian community’s own unhealed wounds of Genocide and Turkish denial, critics have suggested.

Always preferring to forge his own path independent of Hollywood, Egoyan has also proven that he is the master of many mediums. Equally at ease in opera, television or cinema, his 1996 production of Richard Strauss’ seminal opera Salomé used projected video imagery and capitalized on the story’s sordid sexuality. He has been invited to Houston, London, Ottawa and Vancouver to direct other operatic performances.

Khanjian has herself been establishing an international reputation independent of her superstar husband. She works extensively in France, where her celebrity has long been recognized, and has appeared in Jean-Pierre Lefebre’s La Boîte à Soleil, Marilu Mallet’s Rue de la Mémoire, and numerous films by Olivier Assayas, including his contemporary classic, Irma Vep.

In Irma Vep, she plays the role of an American who, while reclining naked on her bed and whispering on the phone to her lover in Los Angeles, is unaware of a thief stealing her jewelry in an adjacent room. Khanjian says it was a strenuous experience that forced her to confront one of her greatest fears by acting in the nude.

When Assayas called her she accepted reluctantly, “I don’t know why he chose me, so when I went out to dinner with him in Paris I told him, ‘I don’t know if you realize that my body is not what would be considered a perfect body.’ Olivier interrupted and said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ”

Why has she received a great deal of attention in France? She answers, “I’m not sure but it is a culture I can appreciate and project into. It is an auteur cinema culture and they follow Atom’s career very closely. I feel like I am a fantasy from abroad for them and I speak fluent French. I think they perceive me as a persona that spans the ancient to the modern. I am different from many French actresses because I am from an ancient culture and still in the present.”

Last year, Khanjian undertook her most ambitious project with another Canadian director, Ken Finkleman, in a dramatic TV mini-series, Foolish Heart. To accommodate her the director altered this complex story that weaves together the emotional lives of all its protagonists. Originally written as a Hispanic immigrant with an at-risk son, Khanjian helped remodel the character so that it would conform to Armenian-Canadian realities.

The second episode centers on Khanjian’s character, Lena, and her adaptation to the foreign Canadian culture. It was the first prime time national broadcast predominantly in Armenian and, ironically, her first professional work in her mother tongue.

HRANT ALIANAK Pioneer of the Canadian Theatre

Before Egoyan and Khanjian, there was another Armenian pioneer, Hrant Alianak (who Egoyan admits was his idol during his youth). While many ethnic groups arrive in Toronto without an established theatre tradition, Alianak has done a formidable job of reaching out to the city’s Armenians–trying to lure them to productions. He produced Richard Kalinoski’s post-Genocide immigrant play Beast on the Moon in 1997 and was surprised by the response.

“When Beast on the Moon came across my desk, I thought I should do it. During the run I realized that the majority of my audience was from the Armenian community. So when The Hats of Zenobe [about the life of outsider artist Vahan Poladian] came my way, Armenians were responsive again. I decided that my non-profit company, Alianak Theatre Productions, would produce at least one Armenian-related play every two years because they break even and I can raise the money through the Armenian community. They’ve been wonderful about their support,” he says.

In 1967, Alianak arrived in Montreal from Sudan and a year later his family settled in Toronto. In his adopted city, he worked as a postman and moonlighted as a student of theater at a local university. He would soon join the booming Toronto theatre scene.

“I was one of the pioneers. There were few theatres and I arrived on the scene when people were only starting to write Canadian plays. In the eighties there was a big boom, then government funding for the arts bottomed out. But, now there’s a lot of talent and the theatre community is huge,” he explains.

His early theatric successes included the so-called Gangster Trilogy (Night, Passion & Sin and Lucky Strike ). During the eighties he would go on to act in many projects including numerous Egoyan films and write numerous screenplays. Beginning in the nineties he has discovered a new interest, “I decided ‘enough is enough’ and I started producing my own work.”

Alianak is mounting two new plays this year but continues to plan for the future, “I actually have a new play in development right now, we are going to do a workshop of it this year and present it in the fall of 2001. Arsinée [Khanjian] is involved and it’s called The Georgetown Boys. It’s perfect because it’s a Canadian story as much as an Armenian story.

“I started [in Canadian theatre] as the only Armenian and then Atom came and now there’s a new breed of Armenian actors and directors out there,” he says.

ARTO PARAGAMIAN and GARINÉ TOROSSIAN Taking notice of a Younger Generation

Among the new wave are director Arto Paragamian and experimental filmmaker Gariné Torossian. Being a male Armenian-Canadian director can be difficult under the shadow of Egoyan, but as independent director Arto Paragamian coyly points out, “We both deal with issues of alienation but we do have different glasses.”

Born and raised in Montreal, he studied film during his university years. “The first day, as part of a class project, I was chosen as director and I’ve been one ever since. It was natural for me and I never felt burdened by it,” he says.

His first film, Because Why , is an existentialist satire about a group of friends in Montreal. The film was well received in Canada and Scandinavia and utilizes a dry comedic tone he attributes to his heritage.

“I feel the Armenianness comes out as irony in a humorous way that is reflected in my films,” he says. Equally at ease in French or English, he was asked to join a stable of young Quebec directors to collaborate on Cosmos in 1997, which toured internationally and won many awards.

Always an iconoclast, his latest project, starring Hollywood actor, writer and director John Turturro, Two Thousand and None is a comedy about death. He hopes that it will be his breakthrough to a wider cinematic audience and distributors all over Europe have already signed contracts.

Another unique talent, Gariné Torossian, was born in Beirut in 1970 and permanently settled in Toronto in 1979, where she continues to work.

“At first Canada appeared cold and distant. I went to school not knowing the language, which was very difficult. My experience in Toronto only changed when I discovered photography in grade ten. I later felt limited by the still image and started using a friend’s college library card to borrow a video camera and began taping myself. I then discovered Super 8 and started breaking down images and I continued from there,” she explains.

“My early films, like Girl From Moush and My Own Obsession , are very much a woman’s point of view, what goes on in a girl when she is discovering her sexuality and growing up wanting to break free of the conventions. I didn’t realize my films were experimental until people told me. It felt intuitive.” It is unusual for such a young director to have been shown at the Pompidou Center in Paris, given a retrospective as part of the Cineprobe series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and this year she received an award at the Berlin Film Festival from the New York Film Academy for her latest short, Sparklehorse.

Respected by many senior directors, including Egoyan, last year she was voted by a national magazine as one of the ten up-and-coming young Canadians. She is appreciative of the support Canada has given her, “Though in some ways I find I still don’t belong here, I think there will always be Canada in my life. Right now it’s the best place to be.”

Maestros RAFFI ARMENIAN and NURHAN ARMAN

Conductors Raffi Armenian and Nurhan Arman have enjoyed major success on the Canadian scene. As an active Armenian presence in classical music and opera they have been part of the cultural landscape for decades.

Armenian arrived in Canada in 1969 after studying music in Vienna. He became the Artistic Director of the fledgling Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in southern Ontario and in two decades made it into one of the outstanding orchestras in the country. He even helped design a new concert hall in the city that would bear his name.

After dozens of CD’s, an Emmy Award nomination, numerous Canadian awards and his investment as a Member of the Order of Canada he continues to teach at the Conservatoire de Musique in Montreal and the University of Toronto. He has been welcomed in orchestras internationally and his music was even used by Woody Allen in his 1992 film, Shadows and Fog.

The younger Arman is originally from Istanbul and arrived in 1982 to become the Music Director of the North Bay Symphony in northern Ontario. From there he became a Visiting Instructor at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and later became Music Director of the Symphony New Brunswick in eastern Canada.

In 1993, his talent was recognized by his homeland when he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Yerevan Symphony Orchestra. He warmly remembers his experiences in Armenia during the winter of ’93 when the country confronted power shortages for the first time, but it didn’t deter the national love of classical music and audiences filled the theatre. Arman remembers that the musicians found it hard to practice with cold hands, and while the Parliament buildings were cold the Symphony Hall was the only heated building in the city.

Today he works with the Sinfonia Toronto and has learned to appreciate and cherish the love of music he believes is an integral part of Armenian culture. Coincidently, his son Stepan along with 18 year-old Catherine Manoukian are up and coming violin virtuosos of the first rank.

Diva ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN In opera, the Armenian community boasts Aline Kutan, who has long enjoyed a solid national reputation, and now young diva Isabel Bayrakdarian is fast emerging as a future superstar.

Born in Zahlé, Lebanon, she arrived in Canada at the age of 15 and settled with her family in Toronto. While studying engineering, she enrolled at a local conservatory to improve her singing in the Armenian church choir, something she has done since childhood. She soon won the 1997 Metropolitan Opera Council auditions while finishing her Engineering thesis–it was her first ever performance on an opera stage.

Always placing a high value on education, only after finishing her undergraduate degree did she become serious about her singing career. She has been fortunate to develop a close relationship with acclaimed mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, with whom she studied for two years in California. Now 25, she remains in Toronto and continues to develop an international presence performing both in Europe and America.

The constellation of stars and talent that have gathered in Canada have created one of the most vibrant and accomplished artistic communities of the Diaspora. Comfortable in both Armenian and Canadian cultures they continue to explore the limits and futures of their creativity.

Originally published in AGBU News magazine (July 2000)

For decades, the names of Karsh and Cavouk continue to evoke a world-standard of photography paralleled by few. Together the two familial dynasties have documented the who’s who of the twentieth century and the timeless images of Canada. Today, Malak Karsh and Onnig Cavouk work within their family’s great traditions and continue to guarantee a prominent place for Armenian-Canadian photography in the national psyche.

MALAK KARSH

Originally from the Arabic-speaking city of Mardin in Anatolia, the brothers Yousuf and Malak Karsh found their way to Canada through a chain of immigration begun by their great uncle Aziz Setlakwé — one of the first known Armenian settlers in the province of Quebec. Malak Karsh explains, “Aziz Nakash, a nephew of my great uncle, became a well-known portrait photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Uncle Nakash brought Yousuf to Canada and taught him his craft. He encouraged Yousuf to go to Boston and study with the Armenian master Garo. When he returned to Canada in 1932, Yousuf strategically opened his studio in Ottawa, because he insisted he wanted to photograph the greats of the world and the nation’s capital would offer that opportunity. Over the years, he developed friendships with many world leaders.”

Yousuf Karsh’s iconic images of Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Kissinger, to name a few, have become as famous as the personalities themselves. While Yousuf retired a few years ago and chose to withdraw from public life, Malak continues to work in his beloved Ottawa and photograph the country he has grown to love.

Though never receiving the popular fame which his brother garnered at every turn, Malak doesn’t mind living in his brother’s shadow. He even jokes that Yousuf has introduced himself to friends on a number of occasions as Malak’s brother.

Malak is best remembered for his 1963 photograph entitled, “Paper and Politics,” an image that has been reproduced over 3.5 billion times on the back of the Canadian dollar bill (a distinction which ended only in 1987 when it was replaced by a dollar coin). The image reflects both the artist’s keen eye for classical composition and appreciation of things uniquely Canadian. Coincidentally, Yousuf’s photo of Queen Elizabeth II graced the front of the same bill.

Malak’s love affair with his adopted homeland began when he first arrived in 1937, “I knew you could make a living easily. There was freedom and no persecution. I came knowing the ideal way of life could be found in this country.”

Malak learned quickly under the tutelage of his brother, but from the beginning it was obvious his eye was focused on subjects other than portraiture. “I arrived in Canada in October and Yousuf took me out to the wilderness and I saw the leaves turn red. I thought it was wonderful to fall in love with a country where the colors in nature were so intense. In the back of my mind, I already dreamt of being a photographer who traveled cross-country,” he says. Eager to forge an independent artistic identity, he made the decision early on to use his distinctive first name so as not to be confused with his brother, who was commonly referred to as “Karsh of Ottawa.”

After his three and a half years of apprenticeship, the brothers both realized Malak’s calling was not confined to the studio and they placed a local ad for an artistic secretary. A young woman named Barbara Holmes applied for the position and soon stole Malak’s heart.

“She started working for me and when during the Second World War she was called to work overseas by the Red Cross, I called her commanding officer,” he says and continues in a shy tone. “I told him that she couldn’t go because we were to be married–this was before she knew of my wish to propose. I tried myself to enlist but was rejected on account of my flat feet. As a result, we married and both of us spent the war years in Canada.”

But shortly after, Malak encountered misfortune during his first major assignment for The Toronto Star Weekly in Ontario’s hinterlands. Catching pneumonia during a story about record setting cold weather he developed tuberculosis, which Canadian doctors believe Malak originally contracted in Syria. Malak spent the remainder of the war infirmed in a sanitarium.

It wouldn’t be the first time Malak would confront his mortality while he “thought photographically” — a term he himself uses to describe his single-minded quest for ideal compositions. At a British Columbia aluminum factory after his recovery, he sent his guide into quivers when he accidentally stepped onto poured aluminum that fortunately for him had been cooling for days. Then in Quebec, he coached lumberjacks into holding his ladder on a log in the midst of a log drive so that he could find the ideal angle. “When I fell in, all the loggers could remember seeing were my arms straining to keep my cameras above water.”

Soon assignments began to flow in, but the big break that would establish his national reputation was still to come.

Upon her return to her native country Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who found refuge in Canada during the war, arranged for 100,000 tulip bulbs to be sent as a thank you gesture to Ottawa. This opportunity changed Malak’s life forever.

“The first photos I took of the nation’s capital awash in a sea of tulips were published internationally. At the time, people were tired of images of war and wanted something new. My photos were so successful that they captured the public imagination and sold the entire nation on the idea of tulips,” he says of his greatest achievement. The Netherlands Flower Bulb Institute quickly took notice and hired him to supply promotional photos for the organization’s North American operations.

But Malak’s creativity and initiative did not end there. In 1952, Malak inaugurated plans for a Canadian Tulip Festival in the nation’s capital that would showcase the city while attracting tourists internationally. Today, the festival generates over 20 million dollars of annual revenue and has paved the way for other festivals that have built on its success. As a symbol of recognition for Malak’s tireless work, the Dutch institute honored him with a tulip that carries his name.

He would go on to publish books on the Canadian Parliament buildings and his beloved Ottawa, freelance for numerous magazines, promote the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry and create educational projects for schools across the nation. With a fierce pride in his adopted land, Malak is thankful that Canadians have continued to embrace his work over the decades.

But in a life filled with creative success and national acclaim, he continues to remember one day in 1995 as the proudest moment in his life. On that day, Malak and his cousin Raymond Setlakw?, a prominent Quebec businessman, were awarded Canada’s highest civilian honor, the Order of Canada–an award also received by his brother Yousuf.

“It was an unforgettable day as the two of us were being simultaneously recognized for our accomplishments. Days before the ceremony I spoke to my cousin and it seems that we were both shy about telling the other of our expected award. When we realized that we were both recipients we laughed and it all meant much more,” he says.

Over 80, his work continues to evolve and new subjects arise daily. Barbara, who continues to be his faithful secretary, hopes that one day Malak will fulfill his promise to retire, but until that day the artist’s creative fire continues to burn. “If a photographer says that he has photographed everything, then he’s not realistic,” he insists. For Malak there is still much to learn and teach through photography.

What has Malak learned from Canada? “Canadians have a solid sense of friendship and hospitality. There is no feeling of superiority in Canada and as a result they are accepting of others. This is a mark of a great civilization. We are all lucky to be in Canada and people who are born here don’t appreciate it,” he says and then punctuates his answer with a smile.

ONNIG CAVOUK

Canada has also offered a safe haven for the nation’s other great photographic family, the Cavouks. When clients enter the studio of Onnig Cavouk they are entering a treasure trove of historic photos, medals and artifacts. Each client is offered a cup of Armenian coffee that the photographer assures will soothe the most reluctant subject. He coyly admits, “I’m only as a good as they let me be.”

The modern day Cavouk myth begins with Assadour Cavoukian. A painter who gained his family’s freedom with a portrait of the Turkish leader, Jemal Pasha, at a time when Armenians desperately sought ways to escape the horrors of 1915. When Jemal saw the finished portrait he allowed the family safe passage out and after a brief stay in Jerusalem to repair 78 paintings at the Cathedral of St. James the family settled in Egypt. It was in Cairo that his grandfather established the first Cavouk photo studio and through his contacts with Jemal Pasha acquired a prominent clientele that included the likes of King Fouad of Egypt.

Onnig remembers his grandfather as one of the nicest men he ever met. “He used to put me on his lap and tell stories of all the places he had visited. He taught me that the eyes are the windows to the soul, it was as if I was ordained to follow in my father’s footsteps,” he says.

Harootune (Artin), Onnig’s father, commonly referred to as simply Cavouk, was the next to explore the evolving terrain of photography. “My father was a genius in this industry. Every time there was something new he wanted to experiment with it. When color emerged he knew it would give his work another dimension,” Onnig says.

But during the nationalization of Egypt in the 1950’s many Armenians, including the Cavouks, escaped to the West. Soon the family arrived in Toronto and a chance happening insured the continued success of the Cavouk studio.

“In Egypt, one day a green 1958 Chevrolet arrived from the Canadian Embassy. The Ambassador and First Secretary had come to be photographed. When my dad arrived in Canada he exhibited those photos, along with others, in a hotel near his studio.

“My mom remembered that one day a woman dressed in minks arrived at the studio and said she had seen a picture of her son in the exhibit. My parents’ English wasn’t great but they soon understood that the woman’s name was Kilgore and her son was the First Secretary. She offered to temporarily replac the paintings in her Rosedale home, Toronto’s elite neighborhood, with 25 Cavouk photos and invite the who’s who of Ontario.” And so began the Canadian chapter of the Cavouk legacy.

In 1963, Onnig’s father asked him as the eldest son to help him with the family business. Onnig was at first reluctant and explains, “Against my better judgement I quit school and joined my dad. Within the first year we had already photographed the Shah and Empress of Iran.”

The Iranian royals were only one of an impressive list of clients that included: U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. But the one individual who most impressed Onnig was the Queen Mother whom he met in 1965.

“I used to be very shy in those days so I withdrew to the corner of the room and watched my parents greet the Queen Mum. They must have told her about me because soon she walked across the room and shook my hand saying, “I understand you just recently joined your parents’ business.” She asked me about photography and I got the feeling she knew more about it than I did. When she finished she came, shook my hand and wished me well in my new profession. I was really touched. She used the portrait as her Christmas card that year,” he says.

Onnig remembers the years of working with his father were an incredible learning experience. When his parents died in 1995, within hours of each other, Cavouk decided that he needed to rediscover his heritage.

“I used to hate tradition. I guess we all want to rebel to some extent. But now that they’re gone, I’m rediscovering my roots,” he says.

Onnig’s need to learn more about his past led him to Armenia. “I’ve gone four times since my parents passed away, and I was surprised to discover that the Cavouk name is better known in Armenia than here. Between my grandfather, my father and I, we have photographed almost every head of state in Armenia and every Catholicos in the last century.”

Within the last few years he has had the opportunity to photograph President Kocharian and his wife, His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, and last year he photographed the treasures of the Sardarabad Museum. “The artifact photos turned out quite well and when I returned to Armenia the Catholicos told me he wanted me to photograph the antiquities in Etchmiadzin, a project I could only dream of completing,” he says about his newfound passion.

Onnig Cavouk is particularly pleased about the future prospect that one of his children, Kristin, will foster her interest in photography. “She seems interested in her Armenian heritage and has worked in Armenia through the U.S. Peace Corps. She returned from one visit to historic Armenia and I was greatly impressed by the photos she had taken. I dream of the day when we will be able to go together to historic Armenia and photograph the monuments,” he says with a glimmer in his eye.

If the critic John Berger was right when he said, “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget,” then the Armenian talent for photography is no surprise. Two generations of Karshs and three generations of Cavouks can already boast that they have built impressive artistic legacies that will live on for generations to come.

Originally published in AGBU News magazine (July 2000)

The earliest history of Armenians in Canada is mostly an unknown chapter. While records reveal the first Armenian settler, Garabed Nergararian, arrived in Ontario during the 1880’s and lived in the small fishing village of Port Hope, it was not until decades later that any substantial Armenian immigration to Canada began.

In fact, few Armenians traveled to Canada during the nineteenth century and even fewer remained. Some Armenians, led by the dream of coming to America, passed through Canada hoping to avoid the mandatory U.S. health examinations. Official records show that between 1899 and 1917, 1,577 Armenians entered the United States through the Canadian land border. Others arrived in Canada from the Ottoman Empire and Russia and a small number relocated from various regions of the U.S.

The earliest history of Armenians in Canada is mostly an unknown chapter. While records reveal the first Armenian settler, Garabed Nergararian, arrived in Ontario during the 1880’s and lived in the small fishing village of Port Hope, it was not until decades later that any substantial Armenian immigration to Canada began.

In fact, few Armenians traveled to Canada during the nineteenth century and even fewer remained. Some Armenians, led by the dream of coming to America, passed through Canada hoping to avoid the mandatory U.S. health examinations. Official records show that between 1899 and 1917, 1,577 Armenians entered the United States through the Canadian land border. Others arrived in Canada from the Ottoman Empire and Russia and a small number relocated from various regions of the U.S.

The few that settled or studied in Canada in the early years included individuals like Armenag Haigazian and Paul Courian, both Protestant Armenians probably encouraged to make the journey by missionaries in the Ottoman Empire. Courian arrived from Constantinople and opened Toronto’s first oriental carpet store in the late nineteenth century. Haigazian (for whom Haigazian University in Beirut is named) enrolled at the University of Toronto in 1898 to study music after completing his Ph.D. at Yale Theological Seminary. He later returned to Anatolia and died in the Genocide.

Early Canadian oral history reveals that a member of the Cockshutt family, owners of the Cockshutt Plow Co. in Brantford, Ontario, went to Constantinople in the 1880’s and recruited ten Armenian workers, originally from Keghi in the province of Erzerum. Soon, other Armenians began arriving in the southern Ontario industrial towns of Hamilton, Brantford and St. Catharines in search of employment. Dr. Isabel Kaprielian calls this early period of Armenian immigration to Canada, the ‘Sojourner’ period which continued until the Genocide. Most of these pioneers arrived in the country hoping to return to their native villages with their hard-earned savings. Little distinguished the small and predominantly male communities from other Armenian settlements, except for the fact that 80% were from Keghi.

By the 1920’s, the largest Armenian communities existed in Brantford and St. Catharines, each with an Armenian population of 500, while Toronto numbered 200.

Dr. Kaprielian, professor of Modern Armenian and Immigration History at California State University, Fresno, was born in Hamilton and is herself descended from these early southern Ontario settlers. Her father, Kapriel Kaprielian came in 1912 from Keghi, and her mother arrived in 1924 as a picture bride from Erzerum. “The Armenian community was so small and hardly anyone had grandparents, so we grew up in a world of aunties and uncles. When I speak to other non-Armenians of my generation I realize what a warm and wonderful childhood we enjoyed,” Dr. Kaprielian says about her early years in Hamilton.

Community life was active but primarily local and not until 1930 did Armenian-Canadians erect their first church. Built in St. Catharines, Ontario, the church of St. Gregory the Illuminator was constructed through a united effort and quickly became a focal point for Armenians in Canada.

Garabed Sarkisian, Charlie to most of his friends, whose grandfather was one of the original church founders, was also one of the first children baptized in the new church. He remembers that the early community was tightly knit and clearly stood out in the predominantly Anglo town.

He still continues to be an active member of the church which has adapted to the cultural realities of generations of intermarriage and assimilation. While it was for years one of the proudest symbols of early Armenian cross-partisan unity, towards the end of the twentieth century the building fell into disrepair. When Rev. Fr. Shenork Souin, the first Canadian-born Armenian Apostolic priest, arrived in 1994 the fire department was threatening to close down the building.

Shocked by the condition of their foremost symbol, members of the St. Catharines community rallied together five years ago to begin a substantial renovation process which cost over half a million dollars.

In 1999 the renovations were completed. We are happy that today it is serving a 700-strong community as the center for Armenian Christian education. We hope it will bring back generations of lost Armenians. We can also be proud of the fact that many non-Armenians have become members of our church and feel welcome among us,” says Rev. Fr. Souin, a leading force in the church’s modernization and whose special connection to the Armenian church follows his own father’s many years of service as a deacon.

In contrast to Ontario, the Quebec Armenian communities were late to develop. We know the earliest settlers in Quebec were a small group of Pennsylvania Catholic Armenians, originally from Mardin, attracted to Thetford’s asbestos producing mines in rural Quebec during the turn of the century. The Setlakwé family, whose descendents include the famous photographers Yousuf and Malak Karsh, were among those first arrivals. Subsequent Armenians arriving in Quebec would settle in Montreal. In 1925, with some 70 Armenians living in Montreal, the Armenian-American Encyclopedic Almanac lists 43 Armenian-owned businesses in the province, including dry-goods retailers, restaurants, grocers, shoemakers and a photography studio.

As other Western countries welcomed the Armenian refugees after the Genocide, Canada officially closed its doors to Armenians. In 1908, Canada had classified Armenians as Asiatics, who along with Africans and Asians were considered undesirable. Other than isolated cases this halted most Armenian immigration to Canada for the next half century.

After the massacres in Turkey, roughly 1,200 refugees (predominantly young women and children) arrived as domestic workers, picture brides or under the sponsorship of relatives. By the 1940’s, Canadian-Armenians still did not exceed 4,000.

Ironically, while the majority of Armenians were shut out of Canada, the Genocide was extensively covered in the Canadian press. The Toronto Globe daily spearheaded a “Starving Armenians” campaign, along with the Canadian branch of the Lord Mayor’s Fund in London, called the Armenian Relief Association. Daily subscribers were confronted by the horrifying tales of deportation and massacre that confronted the Armenians in Turkey.

In one of the more noble moments in Canadian immigration history, the campaign raised $300,000 for relief and sponsored 110 Armenian orphans who would be cared for and educated in Georgetown, Ontario.

After the Second World War, Canada radically changed its immigration policy, which previously gave priority to “white” immigrants. Middle East Armenians, fleeing the various national crises of their regions, constituted the majority of postwar Armenian immigration. Toronto and Montreal’s Armenian populations boomed as they absorbed the majority of new immigrants. Unlike the earlier generation who came from rural backgrounds, post-war newcomers were predominantly urban and skilled.

Crucial in the fight to correct the misclassification of Armenians as Asiatics, the Canadian Armenian Congress (CAC), formed in 1948, successfully lobbied the government, opening the doors for a new wave of emigrés. Activists, including Yervant Pasdermajian of Montreal and Kerop Bedoukian of Toronto played a leading role in the lobbying effort. After its victory, CAC, headquartered in Montreal, sponsored thousands of Armenians fleeing turmoil elsewhere in the world.

Today, approximately 50,000 Armenians live throughout Canada. Half in Montreal, 16,000 in Toronto and others in the smaller communities of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Cambridge, Kitchener-Waterloo, St.Catharines, and Ottawa. While not large in total population, Ontario and Quebec Armenians have shown their dedication to their heritage by establishing seven day-schools, fourteen cultural centers and sixteen churches.

The Georgetown Boys
Fifty Armenian orphans, later known as The Georgetown Boys, arrived in Canada on June 30th, 1923 through government support and the donations of ordinary Canadians. It was a unique event in Canadian history, an event commonly referred to as “Canada’s Noble Experiment.”

The ‘noble experiment’ was Canada’s first humanitarian act on an international scale. Canadians argued that since Armenians did not side with Turkey against the Allies it was their obligation to support them. The Toronto Globe newspaper appealed to the public with emotionally charged headlines including, “SHALL WE LET THEM DIE?”

Forty more orphans would arrive the following year and others would trickle in, eventually bringing the total to one hundred and ten.

Jack Apramian was one of those young refugees adopted by the country. He wrote about the experience years later, “It was the land of everybody’s dreams, where all the people were rich and wore shoes and dressed in fine clothes, and lived in large mansions. I was one of the lucky ones chosen, and this is how I came to Canada at the age of eight.”

Apramian also describes their culture shock, “We were settled on the Cedarvale Farm–a 200 acre tract of orchard just outside Georgetown, 30 miles northwest of Toronto. We soon got used to the taste of such strange foods as cornflakes, oatmeal porridge, puddings, white bread and apples grown right on ‘our’ farm.”

The boys were taught English and gradually sent to apprentice with farmers in the district until they reached the age of majority. The few girls that were brought over as part of the initiative were adopted into various households as domestics.

The boys left their sponsoring farms at the age of eighteen. Free to pursue their dreams, they were quickly confronted by the harsh realities of the Great Depression, and discrimination in Canadian cities like Toronto, where 80% of the population was still of English ancestry.

They would soon learn to adapt to the culture and through the years settle across the continent. In a final thank you to the community that helped them during the dark days of the Genocide, members of the original group established a scholarship fund for the children of Georgetown that continues to fund the university education of many in that town.

Sidebar:

HEMINGWAY
Toronto Star reporter in Turkey

The young Ernest Hemingway lived in Toronto from 1920 until 1924. During that period he worked for The Toronto Star as a reporter and covered a wide range of events including the Greco-Turkish War. The following excerpts are two of the fifteen dispatches sent by the author from Constantinople that offer a glimpse into the tragic finale of Turkish atrocities.

October 9, 1922
Hamid Bey’s office is at the top of a steep hill beyond an old seraglio and houses the Red Crescent (equivalent to our Red Cross) of which Hamid Bey is one of the leaders and where attendants in Red Crescent khaki carry out the orders of the Angora (Ankara) government.

“Canada is anxious about the possibility of a massacre of Christians when Kemal enters Constantinople,” I said.

Hamid Bey, big and bulky, with gray mustache, wing-collared and with a porcupine haircut, looked over his glasses and spoke French.

“What have the Christians to fear,” he asked. “They are armed and the Turks have been disarmed. There will be no massacre. It is the Greek Christians who are massacring the Turks now in Thrace. That’s why we must occupy Thrace to protect our people.”

That is the only guarantee of protection Constantinople Christians have, except the Allied police force, while toughs from Crimea to Cairo are gathered in Constantinople hoping that the patriotic orgy of Kemal’s triumphant entry will bring a chance to start a fire in the tinder-dry, wooden tenements and begin killing and looting. The Allied police force is compact and efficient, but Constantinople is a great sprawling city of a million and a half, crowded with a desperate element.

October 18, 1922
The Rumanian and Armenian consulates can be distinguished from the others, however, by the long lines of their citizens, stretched out like the ticket line waiting to get into a big hockey match at the Arena, who are trying to get passports or visas. The Armenians, Jews and Rumanians are clearing out of Constantinople. They are selling their property at any sacrifice and getting out. The government issues statements urging them not to be foolish, assuring them all measures of protection for the inhabitants will be taken, that patrols are being reinforced, that there is no danger. But the Armenians and Jews and the Jewish Rumanians have heard all that before. It is probably all true, they reason, but we aren’t going to take chances. Sooner or later the Kemal troops are going to enter Constantinople, or else there is going to be war and the Armenians, Jews and Greeks cannot forget Smyrna. So they go. With a history of a thousand years of massacre behind them, it is hard for the racial fear to be quieted, no matter who makes the promises.

Original published AGBU News magazine (March 2001)

The true Armenian community began to form in Worcester in 1867 shortly after the settlement of Garo from Bitlis, a servant of missionary George C. Knapp. Oral history suggests that while working at the missionary’s home, one of the servants, an Irish laundrywoman, convinced him that working in local factories could make him more than his scant monthly wage of 75 cents. Garo would soon join the ranks of the emerging working class at a remarkable $1.75 a day. Other Armenians flocked to the town with hopes of sharing in the American dream.

The trickle of Armenians would fortify the fledgling communities and by 1882 the first Armenian woman had arrived in Worcester, Sara Yazijian (known as Sara Writer), who would later be referred to as “the mother of the Armenian immigrants.” It wasn’t until the 1890’s when Ottoman massacres drove thousands of Armenian refugees to America that the foundations for a sustained Armenian community began. In the early years, Worcester predominantly enticed immigrants from Kharpert and in time would be known as “Little Kharpert.”

The central Massachusetts city of 200,000 witnessed many firsts for Armenians in the New World. The first “Little Armenia” was formed in the otherwise Nordic immigrant enclave of Belmont and Laurel Hills. The first Armenian American compatriotic organization (The Illumination Education Union of Hassenig) and the first Armenian Church in America also emerged during the nineteenth century.

Worcester, like other New England industrial towns, attracted Armenians searching for well-paying factory jobs. Others became servants and it was reputed that the president of Vassar College employed only Armenians.

In his study of the Worcester community, local historian Hagop Deranian notes that early Armenian immigrants often viewed themselves as pilgrims rather than colonists as they arrived, like the Mayflower pilgrims in search of religious freedom and liberty of conscience. Many in the Yankee missionary establishment supported this perception and drew parallels between Armenia’s Battle of Avarayr and America’s Plymouth pilgrims as symbols of each nation’s resiliency to fight for their freedom of conscience. Reverend Herbert M. Allen wrote in the Watertown Daily Spy of July 15, 1901, “We may draw a fit comparison between the Armenian General Vartan [Mamigonian], who led his people against the overwhelming forces of the Persians in defense of Christianity, between him and the one whom we revere as the hero of Valley Forge and Yorktown [George Washington]…”

The industrial town became a transfer point for many new Armenian immigrants before they moved on to other cities including Boston. It would be known as the “Mother Armenian Community of America,” similar to the claims of American Yankees to the pilgrims of Plymouth.

Sarkis Mugar, father of entrepreneur Stephen Mugar, renowned photographer John H. Garo, sculptor Khoren Der Harootian, plastic surgery pioneer Dr. Varaztad H. Kazanjian and industrialist Moses Gulesian all settled in Worcester before moving on to Boston and other cities. The city was a mandatory stop for the parade of Armenian Who’s Who arriving in America to tour the nation’s Armenian communities, including poet Siamanto (Adom Yarjanian), political activist Garabed M. Tashjian, playwright Shirvanzade (Alexander Shirvanzade) and painter Hovhannes Aivazovsky, who donated a small painting to the local Church of Our Savior where it still hangs.

The Church of Our Savior, the first Armenian Apostolic church of the Americas, was established in 1891 in Worcester. Knowing their community needed outside support, the trustees devised an ingenuous way of soliciting donations from across America. They addressed letters to “Mr. John Armenian” in Detroit, Chicago and other cities hoping that the postal service would deliver them to the first Armenian they encountered. The clever stunt was successful in collecting donations from Armenians in twenty other cities and allowed the community of 600 to build its first communal symbol. Father Hovsep Sarajian would be the first Armenian Apostolic priest to arrive and worked diligently to better the standing of Armenians in the greater community.

The first Armenian Protestant church was consecrated in the following years. It may be no coincindence that Worcester native Rev. William Goodell initiated the first Protestant Yankee mission to the Armenians in the Ottoman empire 1831. In 1833, two young New England ministers, Eli Smith and Harrison Gary Otis Dwight, published their findings regarding the Armenian communities in the Ottoman, Persian and Russian empires. They reported that the Armenians they encountered near Kars had never even heard of America—that would quickly change.

While the missionary establishment did much to bring Armenians to Massachusetts it was rapid industrialization that guaranteed a continuing flow of settlers.

Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company was an important employer of Armenians and by 1889, 285 Armenians were gainfully employed at what was then considered the largest wire factory in the world.

Armenians were ideal workers for many factory owners, as they were uninterested or uneducated about labor unions. In fact, their initial appearance in many Massachusetts towns were as strikebreakers, as was the case in Middleboro, Salem and Lynn during the 1890’s. While new immigrants arrived unaware of union politics, some in the Armenian community reacted to the eagerness of newcomers to scab by shunning them and refusing them admittance to various establishments.

Early settlers faced unfamiliar problems, such as industrial accidents and job buying. Many paid exorbitant bribes to acquire lucrative factory jobs. In 1889, a newspaper reported allegations of bribery in a local factory and soon a foreman and his assistant were dismissed for taking bribes from Armenian workmen.

Others complained of being beaten by co-workers who took offense to their willingness to work for little pay. In 1891, some would organize the Armeno-American Ameliorating and Protective League to address their concerns, perhaps encouraged by a court case which five years earlier awarded an Armenian a $10 settlement for being insulted with the phrase, “God-damn Turk.” But their resilience was strong and one early Armenian settler remembers, “…I’d eat five kuftehs (Armenian meat balls), a big bowl of madzoon (yogurt), take a picket off my fence and knock down three men…to get to my job at the mill.”

By 1910, many had moved beyond traditional factory jobs to professional trades or opened independent businesses. The famous Velvet Ice Cream company developed by the Kalashian brothers (Sam, Giragos and Sarkis) became a highly visible symbol of new Armenian American enterprises. The Kalenian family developed Armeno Cereal Company into the first national manufacturer of “bulghur” (cracked wheat) and provided their compatriots with an indispensable component of Armenian cuisine.

By the end of the century, Worcester also fostered one of the earliest flowerings of an Armenian American press as both Yeprad (Euphrates) and Tsain Hayrenyatz (Voice of the Fatherland) were being published. Curiously, the latter had transferred its headquarters from New York, “because New York was far from the Armenian communities.”

Worcester continued to play a national role until the 1920’s when Boston, and particularly Watertown, became the focus of future immigration.

Reverend Dajad A. Davidian, born in Worcester, recalls growing up in the tightly knit community, “Whoever wasn’t Armenian was considered American. Worcester was highly ethnicized like Watertown or for that matter all of Massachusetts.”

But Rev. Davidian, pastor of St. James Armenian Church in Watertown since 1969 and now retired, also remembers some of the difficulties he faced, “Growing up there was a time when I was not very proud of being Armenian. Living in an Irish neighborhood I had racial slurs thrown at me and occasionally found myself in fights. Only at the age of 16 did I start to hang out with Armenians. Because of my conditioning that whatever was not Armenian was considered American I became pro-Armenian to the point of becoming anti-American and this was during the McCarthy era.”

He adds that the rich mix of cultures was a strong asset of growing up in Worcester and even remembers the comical names each ethnic group had for others, “The Armenian kids would call Irish kids ‘tevek’ [Turkish for green leaf, an allusion to the shamrock], the Italians were ‘khmor oodogh’ [dough-eaters] and Armenians were called ‘Armos’. I even remember as a child ‘Babahoney’ was used to describe us, a distortion of ‘Babad hai ee?’ [Your father’s Armenian?].”

Soon the Worcester Armenian community would shrink as the town’s economic fortunes waned and people moved to Boston or other cities.

Rev. Fr. Davidian says his own move to Watertown was a natural progression, “Watertown was the larger community [during the twentieth century] and I felt like I fulfilled my life’s dream when I became the pastor of St. James.”

Now a long-time resident of the town, Fr. Davidian describes some of the town’s Armenian character, “Drive around east Watertown and you’ll discover there are many two-family houses where Armenians lived–upstairs and downstairs. It was closer to the factories and the men and the women who worked there could walk. The neighborhood has retained the middle-class character it always had. The trolleycars also traveled up Belmont and Mt. Auburn Avenues which made it convenient.” The town still has numerous Armenian businesses, institutions and place names, including Artsakh and Kondazian Streets.

He adds, “Watertown and Worcester are only 36 miles apart and everybody had relatives in both communities.” Only in the 1920’s did Greater Boston become the unchallenged center of Armenian life.

BOSTON AND WATERTOWN:

Building the institutions for a future community

While Garo is credited with being the first Armenian of the Worcester colony in 1867, during the same year Jacob Arakelyan settled in Boston and established what became the largest printing house in New England. But before Arakelyan another pioneer Armenian, Joseph Iasigi from Smyrna, settled in Boston as early as 1835. Iasigi, the Ottoman Consul in Boston, established India Wharf in partnership with an American as an import-export business. Iasigi’s lasting legacies include statues of Columbus and Aristides he gifted in 1850 to Louisburg Square Park in historic Beacon Hill and the historic Holy Family stain glass windows at Boston’s Catholic Cathedral later gifted in his memory by his son.

Other notable Boston Armenians of the nineteenth century included entrepreneurs Hagop Bogigian, best remembered as the “first Armenian American millionaire,” and Moses H. Gulesian.

Bogigian opened the city’s premiere oriental carpet store on Harvard Square in the late 1870’s. As luck would have it American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would be his first client. Their eventual friendship helped the merchant court his clients among the city’s elite. In 1882, when Bogigian moved to the fashionable Beacon Street, Longfellow used the store as a rendezvous point with friends who would arrive to have discussions before proceeding to the Atheneum literary club further down the street.

A native of Marash, Moses H. Gulesian would became a shining symbol of New World success. After arriving penniless in New York harbor in 1883, he moved to Worcester and eventually settled in Boston where he opened a successful copperworks factory.

In 1900, he was commissioned by the state to replace the wooden lion and unicorn symbols of the Old State House with copper ones–the originals incidentally were installed later on his home in Chestnut Hill.

Today Gulesian is best remembered for his efforts to save the U.S.S. Constitution, commonly known as “Old Ironsides,” the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy and the champion of the War of 1812. In 1905, Gulesian, overtaken by a strong sense of patriotism, sent the following telegram to Naval Secretary J. Bonaparte, “Will give ten thousand dollars for the Constitution, Old Ironsides. Will you sell?”

The offer made national headlines and one reporter suggested that the ship might worry the “Sultan” of Turkey if it was sold to an Armenian. “It would be a good joke if they could be led to believe that the old frigate might steal out of Boston some night and sail for the Mediterranean to bombard some of the unprotected ports of Turkey,” Gulesian replied.

Gulesian’s efforts rallied public support and saved the ship. For his role, Gulesian was elected President of the Old Ironsides Association and later he would be given the distinction of becoming the first foreign-born member of the Sons of the American Revolution.

Boston’s first Armenian enclave formed in the South Cove region of Boston, which by 1900 was also home to large concentrations of Syrians, Greeks, and Chinese and was commonly referred to as the “Orient of Boston.” As their economic fortunes improved most moved to other areas. Those that lived on Harrison Avenue moved to Watertown, while those on the haughtier Shamut Avenue would move to the wealthier towns of Newton, Belmont and Arlington.

The Boston community fostered an indigenous Armenian culture that gave rise to theatre troupes such as the Dudley Street Opera House, and a plethora of newspapers, including The Armenian Mirror-Spectator and Hairenik—which was the first to publish the unknown William Saroyan.

Sporting events, charities and politics also became fixtures of Armenian immigrant life early on. In 1911 the Boston Chapter of the Kharpert Union Educational Association sponsored a Boxing and Athletic Night at the Knights of Honor Hall in Boston which prominently featured Armenian fighters alongside boxers of other nationalities. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, all the major political parties had centers in Boston. The city would be home to many philanthropic organizations including AGBU’s first American chapter in 1908. By 1911, AGBU Boston had developed an employment agency in the midst of one of the era’s worst depressions.

As a testament to the growing Armenian presence in Boston, Otis Frothingham, a mayoral candidate of 1905, appealed to Armenian voters by purchasing a half page advertisement in Hairenik.

As early as 1895 some Armenians saw the need to train and prepare young Armenian men as military volunteers for Armenia. During the Ottoman massacres of 1894-96, the fledgling Armenian community could do little except watch the suffering of their compatriots on the other side of the world, but by the First World War there were efforts not only to collect funds but also to organize units to help fight the Ottomans.

By 1905, Armenian United Guard units were organized in Worcester and during the First World War many Armenians would join the Armenian Legion to fight the Turks in the Near East. Of the 1,200 Armenians that fought in the Legion, the majority hailed from Massachusetts. Greater numbers would volunteer during the First World War with the American military and in the famed YD (Yankee Division) of Massachusetts Armenians were particularly numerous.

In the war years, the community’s center of gravity would shift to Watertown, a town adjacent to the city of Boston and the eventual heartland of the region’s Armenians.

After the Second World War, Greater Boston played a crucial role in establishing institutions that would reflect the emerging diversity of the Armenian American community. Most prominent among them is the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) founded in Cambridge in 1954, “to foster the study of Armenian history, culture and language on an active, scholarly and continuous basis in America.” Other organizations still active include the Armenian Cultural Foundation (ACF), the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA), the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA), the Cambridge-Yerevan Sister City Association and two day schools (St. Stephen’s in Watertown and the Armenian Sisters Academy in Lexington).

The city’s world-renowned universities have always attracted many Armenians from around the country as well as from the four corners of the globe. Barbara J. Merguerian, born and raised in a suburb of neighboring Providence, Rhode Island, was first lured to Boston in the early sixties to attend Harvard and remembers encountering the unique character of Watertown, “It was a real shock to get on a bus in Watertown and hear people speaking Armenian. This was before the Lebanese influx and it wasn’t very common in those days.”

After a brief stay in Washington D.C. she would return to Boston and become editor of The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, “When I was first named editor, the fact that I was a woman was the first thing everyone noticed—I wasn’t expecting that.”

She has witnessed the changes that have occurred over the decades and offers her insight into the evolution of the community, “During the Cold War years, and I know from my own family, the different political affiliations and debates were rather bitter. I think things changed during the 50th Anniversary of the Genocide when the political parties came together. Since then, during important events we unite when necessary.”

It was during the years of her editorial career at The Mirror-Spectator that she would witness the cultural shift that would revitalize and change the community forever. She recalls, “The pre-1970’s community was mostly made up of Armenians who had either come before or soon after the Genocide. People worked their way up—it was a settled community. In the seventies the influx of Armenians from Lebanon fleeing the civil war saw tensions develop between those who knew American ways and the Lebanese who didn’t but were more educated in Armenian ways. Eventually both sides grew to acknowledge and learn from differences and develop a cohesive unit.”

After the seventies, other waves would arrive in Watertown, including Iranian-Armenians and refugees from the former Soviet Union, particularly Baku Armenians fleeing the bloody pogroms of the late eighties.

Rev. Fr. Davidian notes that a unique group of Armenians from the remote village of Gigi near Kayseri in Central Anatolia adopted Watertown as their New World home. He describes the impetus for their arrival, “The first Gigitsi, known as ‘Topal’ or ‘Bastermadji’ Markar, arrived before the First World War and started to bring over his relatives. Some villagers moved to Istanbul but 75% of the village is here in Watertown. It may only be seven or eight families but that constitutes over 300 people.”

The face of the Armenian community in Watertown is as strong and diverse as ever, according to the pastor, who challenges the perception that the community may be past its glory days, “There are more Armenians today than there have ever been in Watertown and there are 10 Armenians serving on the town committee.”

He adds, “Today you have a number of visible groups in the Watertown Armenian community. The old Armenians or ‘deghatzis’ [natives], the Armenians of the Near East and since we are often the first American stop on transatlantic flights we’ve had Iraqi Armenians and others who claim refugee status here. Then there are the ‘Hayastantsis’ [Armenian-Armenians] which include many repatriated Armenian Americans from the forties as well as those that first settled in California and have chosen to call Watertown home.”

Today’s community faces the same issues, assimilation and unity, which confront other communities around the world. Barbara Merguerian who admits that these issues are something she faced daily when raising her two daughters, suggests another dilemma is increasingly becoming part of the issues to be confronted by the community, “I think there is an issue of where we should put our strength. It came up during the 1988 earthquake and then again after Independence. There is a strong feeling that we need to help Armenia and we do, but we also need strong and thriving Armenian institutions to preserve our heritage.”

Merguerian is optimistic about the future of Boston’s role in the American Diaspora, “The Boston area institutions have the potential to be a great impetus for the future. It will depend on whether we can find the leadership needed from a younger generation.”