international

"I am grateful for this very warm welcome and I am so happy to be here in Ottawa on my first visit to Canada," Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said in remarks ahead of a meeting with his Canadian counterpart Melanie Jolie on Wednesday. "We are friends, we share the same values."

As he mentioned, on the agenda of the meeting were the "geopolitical challenges in Ukraine, in Europe, in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the whole world".

"But also issues related to human rights, women's rights, children's rights. And also how we can strengthen our economic relations, how we can do more together."

The Greek community of Canada is passing on the huge Greek tradition to the younger generations

The Greek community of Canada and the Greek school preserve and transfer to the younger generations the huge proud tradition of Greece, noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias, during his visit to the Center of the Greek Community of Greater Montreal.

Mr. Dendias expressed his joy and emotion at being among our compatriots, who "crossed the Atlantic and in a new and dynamic country succeeded by transferring to this new and dynamic country the spirit of our homeland".

"I'm very excited when I see the sign of the school here and the community," he said. "The Ionic column, our ancient tradition, the double-headed eagle, the over-thousand-year-old medieval empire of Byzantium, the star of Vergina, and the two insignia of Quebec and Canada, all within a blue background that best represents , like a color, what we are and feel".

Mr. Dendias thanked the Greek community for keeping the language alive, "because our language is not just the way we communicate. It is this essence that she carries with her, with her words, with the nuances of her words, with the huge difference in meaning that words have in the way we use them, a tradition of 3,000 years."

"It is a great river, like the many great rivers that Canada has, carrying with it feelings, disasters, successes, victories, defeats, triumphs, births, deaths, memories of thousands of years. Well, it expresses us, unites us. If we lose our language and if we lose communication with our Church, and what it represents for us, we lose our cohesive fabric."

He also expressed his gratitude to Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie, who, as he said, "is an excellent minister of the values, the principles that Greece expresses in today's world. Because these values and principles are the same that Canada stands for."