Man brings Greek village to Sudbury

BY JANET GIBSON

One morning last week, the maestro who supervises the annual Greek festival was sitting outside the Hellenic Centre sipping his morning coffee.

Soon, trucks would arrive hauling 400 kilograms of chicken, 200 pounds of rice, 40 bags of potatoes and enough vegetables to make Greek salad for 5,000 people.

But now Peter Roumanes was savouring a few minutes of quiet as he gazed out over St. Charles Lake.

His mind drifted back to 1962. He was 14 years old living in a small Greek town called Metamorphosis.

Even though he was not yet a man, his father sent him to live with his older brother George in Sudbury, a Canadian city of 23,000. There were better opportunities there, his father said.

The boys lived in a house on Park Street owned by their great uncle, Gus Lagges. Roumanes attended Elm Street Public School and Lasalle High School. After class, he helped his great uncle run his convenience store.

When he finished his schooling, he started working as a restaurant operator, first at Mr. Prime Rib, Sudbury's second oldest restaurant, then in Vancouver and Florida, where he ran pizza parlours. In Daytona Beach, he had three pizza places by the strip including one beside Club Mocambo, where race car drivers did live interviews in the 1970s. "It was crazy," he said.

Every year, 300,000 students invaded Daytona during March break.

As the years went by, he longed to return to Sudbury, where members of his family were running restaurants such as White Rose, Carnaby Fish and Chips and Nick's Pier.

"All my roots are here," he said, "my brother, nephew, nieces."

He came home with his belongings and his dreams in 1991. Two years later, he organized the first Greek festival in a parking lot on Ester Road, where St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was being built.

The idea was to give people good food and a good time. "Every year it gets better and better," he said.

Two shifts of five cooks prepare moussaka, souvlaki, chicken, rice, potatoes, spinach pie, salad and 10 homemade desserts including baklava.

Roumanes loves watching visitors come to the festival and the area's Greek families enjoy the party together.

"It's all family oriented," he said. "Everything starts from home. If you have a good upbringing, life becomes easier."