Neohellenist, academic, and translator, was born in Québec in 1940. He studied classical philology at Laval University in Québec and Modern Greek philology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens from 1965 to 1970. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1970. His advisors and professors included distinguished scholars such as C. Th. Dimaras and G. P. Savvidis. He served as a professor of Ancient and Modern Greek at Laval University in Québec from 1970 to 1973. Since 1973, he was a professor of Modern Greek literature and director of the Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of Montréal. He was appointed the first holder of the Phrixos B. Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek and Canadian-Greek Studies at McGill University, 2002–2007. Since 2002, he has served as director of the Interuniversity Center for Modern Greek Studies in Montreal. In 2023, he marked fifty years of teaching at the University of Montréal.
His academic interests focus on the Early Modern Greek Enlightenment, Greek-Romanian relations in the 18th century, Greek Surrealism, and literary translation. Among the poets and authors he has translated are C. P. Cavafy, Andreas Embiricos, Nikos Engonopoulos, Miltos Sachtouris, Stephanos Constantinides, Irène Papas, Pavlos Matesis, Margarita Karapanou, Zyranna Zateli, Nicolaos Mavrocordatos, and others.
He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s Academy of Arts and Humanities (2000). He was awarded the Gold Cross of the Legion of Honor of the Hellenic Republic by President Constantine Stephanopoulos in 2005. The Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic awarded him the Grand Prize for Letters 2025.
