SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Oxi Day

Honourable senators, every Greek child in Greece, Canada and every corner of the diaspora grows up knowing one word before they understand what it means: Oxi — No.

Today, I rise to tell you why that single word still carries the weight of an entire civilization.

In the early hours of October 28, 1940, Mussolini’s ambassador delivered an ultimatum to Greek Prime Minister Metaxas: “Open your borders to our armies or face war.”

Greece was small. Greece was poor. Its enemy was one of the strongest military powers in Europe, backed by a Germany that had already swallowed a continent.

Even so, the answer was one resolute word: “Oxi.”

That word was not a calculation. It was not diplomacy. It was a nation remembering who it was.

Honourable senators, that nation was, and is still today, the heir of Athens, Marathon, Thermopylae and the people who first dared to say that a citizen is not a subject, that free men can govern themselves and that reason and debate are stronger than the sword.

Democracy, philosophy, the rule of law and the very architecture of this chamber we sit in trace their lineage back to a hillside in Athens.

The Greeks did not merely inherit greatness. They built it, and they built it upward — in marble, in thought and in law. Twenty-five centuries later, it is still standing.

In 1940, the descendants of those ideals showed that they were not relics. Within hours, the streets of Athens were filled with people singing, cheering and ready for battle.

Farmers, shepherds and students marched into the snow-covered mountains of Pindus and pushed the invader back.

It was the first Allied land victory of the Second World War, delivered when the free world needed hope more than at any other moment. Greece would pay for that courage with occupation, famine and tragedy, but it never surrendered its soul.

Colleagues, I am proud to be a Canadian of Hellenic heritage. I was raised on these stories, and I believe they belong to all of us. I say that because the ideas Greece defended in the 1940s are the same ideas that built this great country: liberty, the dignity of the individual and the conviction that no tyrant has the right to dictate how free people live.

Today, tyranny is again stirring in the world. Authoritarian regimes test the resolve of democracies, and too often, they find hesitation. We would do well to remember that freedom is never inherited whole. It has to be defended by every generation, one “no” at a time.

To the people of Greece and to the Hellenic community of Canada, who carry this flame with such pride and generosity:

[Editor’s Note: Senator Housakos spoke in Greek.]

Thank you, colleagues.