John Fossey, 1943–2024

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of John Fossey, Professor Emeritus at McGill University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and one of the founding members of the Canadian Institute in Greece. He passed away on December 1st.

John taught at McGill for over 30 years and helped to establish its program in Classical Archaeology. He conducted excavations in Greece and was first Canadian archaeologist to work on Greek diaspora sites in the region of the Black Sea, including fieldwork in Bulgaria and Georgia. A prolific scholar, John authored nine books, among which was The History of the Greek Diaspora: From Antiquity to Modern Times, and over 100 journal articles. He inspired a generation of scholars throughout his career.

During meetings and discussions in the early 1970s, John was one of the key individuals who helped found the Canadian Institute in Greece (originally called the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens). Along with Bob Buck from the University of Alberta, John lobbied other archaeological organizations in Canada and the first report of a new institute being founded that would focus on Greece occurred at the November 1973 general meeting of the Canadian Society for Archaeology and Abroad (an organization for which John had also served as President). Approval of the new Institute as a legal entity in Canada occurred in 1974. Lobbying continued and John and his colleagues helped Canada establish a "foreign archaeological school" in Greece on February 12, 1976. John served as the first President of the Board of this new Institute and also its first Director, until 1979.

Part of John’s motivation for establishing a Canadian institute in Greece was the difficulties he and other Canadian researchers were having in obtaining fieldwork permits in the early 1970s. In 1972, John excavated at Lake Vouliagmeni on the Perachora peninsula under the aegis of the British School at Athens. The BSA did not offer a permit for this work to continue in 1973. Another of the founding members of the CIG, John Desmarais, reported that John was so incensed by this outcome, he vowed to create a Canadian institute.

John continued to support the CIG throughout his life and made large donations of books to our library, most recently in 2020. The CIG owes a great debt to John for his tireless work in helping to establish a new foreign archaeological school in Athens and for working to ensure that fieldwork permits would be available to Canadian archaeologists working in Greece. Without him, we would not be here today.

We offer our utmost condolences to John’s children, Jean-Paul, Myrtis, and Pauline, and the rest of his family. And we offer our most sincere thanks to John for everything he did to help establish the CIG.

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