It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Efstathia Stavropoulos at the age of 94 on October 28 2024 at Scarborough General Hospital.

Efstathia will be remembered as a loving mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt and cousin as well as a wife to her late husband Steve.

Efstathia loved her family greatly and was proud of her two sons and their families: George, his wife June and their daughter Thea, her husband Atlant and two-year-old great grandson Lukas, and John, his wife Mary and their daughters Faye and Marissa.

She will be greatly missed by her younger brother, Bill and his wife Kanella and her many nieces and nephews and their families both in Canada and in Greece.

She is predeceased by her warm and caring husband Steve, her brother Frank and his wife Tasia as well as her other brothers, George and Jim.

Efstathia was born in the small village of Sarakini Ireas Greece on October 14 1930. Poverty, the Great Depression, World War II and the Greek Civil War were major influences in determining the person that Efstathia would become. Her strong work ethic, sense of self, determination and desire to succeed in life led her and Steve, also born in Sarakini, to seek a better life and more opportunities for their boys in Athens where she first worked as a domestic for a wealthy family and then in a hospital. In 1960 her brother Frank sponsored the family to immigrate to Canada. Their voyage on the Queen Frederica was long and rough and the sons, young at the time, remember only that there was tea at 4 o’clock each day with cookies.

In her very first week in Toronto, Efstathia landed a job as a seamstress making a variety of handbags in a factory setting. This was a job she held her entire working life until the company relocated east of Toronto when she was in her fifties. Steve did a variety of jobs from working at a hospital to being part owner in the restaurant business. Together, through hard work and sacrifice, they were able to purchase their home, an income property on Pape Ave., buy a condo in Corinth and rebuild the family home in Sarakini. In their retirement they were able to enjoy six months in Greece and six months in Canada annually. The extended family got ahead in Canada by looking out for each other, sponsoring subsequent family immigration, sharing accommodation, working together in business and supporting each other in good times and bad. The closeness felt by this first generation continues through to the third and now fourth generation.