Born in Aleppo, Syria, and raised in Montreal, Canadian-Armenian entrepreneur and jewelry business executive Pierre Akkelian is on a mission of global proportions. He is committed to raising awareness of the heritage of Armenian jewelry and to transmitting this knowledge to future generations of jewelers. Pierre believes that “Armenians are to jewelry what the Swiss are to watches.” The grandson of Armenian genocide survivors, Akkelian has taken what was once a small family business and turned it into a nationally acclaimed company that reaches a global market. Today, Canadian GEM is known as Canada’s largest pearl distributor and has earned the reputation of being, as the company’s tagline states, “Canada’s most trusted pearl specialists.”
On his long journey toward success, Akkelian has remained devoted to his Armenian roots. Besides being passionate about Armenian artisanship and culture, he also is an advocate for genocide studies and awareness through his involvement with the Zoryan Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
Akkelian attributes his success in both business and philanthropy in large part to being Armenian.
Akkelian’s family suffered tremendous losses during the Armenian Genocide. Today, while he recognizes the traumatizing effects of Genocide on survivors and even on their descendants, he also sees a correlation between his accomplishments and the loss suffered by his family. “It becomes part of your genetics, the survival and the perseverance are part of your DNA,” he says.
Waking up to Genocide
All four of Akkelian’s grandparents were Genocide survivors. In 1965 at the age of 11, he attended the 50th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide held at the Forty Martyrs Cathedral in Aleppo. He thus recalls the importance of the commemorative events taking place in Syria, where countless Armenians had found refuge: “There was a huge movement. All of a sudden, Armenians woke up after 50 years.” He recounts how the cathedral was draped in black, an image that has clearly marked Akkelian. “It was very sad and it was the first time in my life that I felt the effect of Genocide on our people.” After attending the commemoration, Akkelian took a deeper interest in the Genocide and began probing his paternal grandmother Khatoun nene, who was a survivor from Urfa (modern-day Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey).
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Khatoun Kassparian Voskerichian Akkelian. Photo: Vartan Derounian
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Khatoun lost both of her parents during the Hamidian massacres in 1895. After a decade or so in an orphanage, Khatoun married her first husband Garabed Voskerichian. By 1915, they had four children. When the mass deportations and killings began, gendarmes took Garabed away. It was the last time Khatoun saw her beloved husband – an engineer in charge of design at a German carpet weaving company in Urfa. Khatoun also lost all four of her children from this marriage during the Genocide.
A close shave: Bedros Akkelian and Djemal Pasha
Akkelian’s paternal grandfather Bedros Akkelian had moved from Urfa to Aleppo, where he was a renowned homeopath, prior to the Genocide. In Aleppo, he worked at a barbershop owned by an American-Armenian.
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Bedros Akkelian. Photo: Vartan Derounian
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One of Bedros Akkelian’s regular customers happened to be Djemal Pasha, the prominent Ottoman military leader. Djemal Pasha trusted Bedros to shave him on a daily basis, bringing knives in close proximity to his neck. Because Bedros had earned the Pasha’s trust, other Turkish military leaders would see him to be shaven as well.
This scenario is paradoxical, considering the fact that Ottoman authorities killed Bedros Akkelian’s first wife and four children in 1915.
In 1916 Bedros Akkelian married Khatoun, who had made a difficult journey from Urfa to Aleppo as part of a rich Turk’s harem that she later escaped with the help of her brothers. Bedros became a prominent community leader. He was involved in the local church committee and also became its treasurer. They had six children together, two of whom died in their infancy. At least two of Khatoun nene’s children were likely abducted, leading Akkelian to speculate that he could well have relatives in Turkey today. The impact of hearing these disturbing accounts about his grandmother’s life had such a profound impact on Pierre that at the age of 11, he decided to rebel and turned into an atheist, a point of view he holds until this day.
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Bedros and Khatoun Akkelian with their children Karnig, Araxi and Angel. Photo: Vartan Derounian
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Akkelian’s maternal grandfather, Stephan Megerdichian from the Cilician town of Yarpouz (near Adana, south of modern-day Turkey), owed his life to his employers: company owner Edward Salem, an Arabic speaking man with Greek Orthodox roots, and to company managers Khawaja Elias Certain and Khawaja Abbdo Gharelias. He was saved near Maskanah (322 kilometers east of Hasake), the town where he worked at a company that shipped licorice root to United States, as secretary and bookkeeper, thanks to his proficient language and accounting skills. His mother and siblings stayed with him, while other family members perished on a death march to Der ez-Zor in the Syrian deserts.
Megerdichian eventually became one of the founders of the Armenian community in Raqqa, northern Syria, where a church and a school were established. He ensured that the school maintained a good reputation and provided a quality education despite limited resources. He and his wife also owned two successful businesses in Raqqa.
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Stephan Megerdichian (left in lineup) in Raqqa
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Akkelian’s maternal grandmother Katerisa Mekenissian was from Kayseri. Her father, Garabed Mekenissian, a mechanical engineer by profession, moved around the Ottoman Empire installing industrial machinery. When Katerisa’s father felt that the situation was about to deteriorate, he decided to place Katerisa at the Shalom Centre, a school for women run by German nuns in Marash.
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Katerisa Mekanissian and her brother, who was hanged a few weeks after this wedding photo was taken, with Shalom School German Missionaries.
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Garabed had seven sons, all of whom perished during the Genocide. One of them was hanged in Marash on a number of falsified charges – one of the 20 Hunchakian martyrs executed by gallows on June 2, 1915. After all his family members were massacred with the exception of Katerisa, Garabed joined General Antranik’s Armenian volunteers fighting against Ottoman army as an artillery expert.
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Garabed Mekenisssian sits to the left of General Antranik
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One hundred years later
On April 24, 2015, Pierre brought five roses to Tsitsernakaberd, the Genocide memorial in Armenia’s capital Yerevan – one in memory of each grandparent and a symbolic fifth for the entire 1.5 million individuals who perished. “The pain comes back, somehow. On the other hand, as a nation we are able to survive and prosper after such trauma,” he recounts.
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Pierre Akkelian at the Tsitsernakaperd Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on April 24, 2015
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Akkelian himself is living testimony to survival and prosperity. Besides being president of Canadian GEM, he is also a co-founder of Nishi Pearls Hong Kong. Over the past three decades, Akkelian has significantly contributed to shaping the Canadian jewelry industry, particularly through his involvement with the Canadian Jewellers Association (CJA). His vigorous efforts were recognized when the CJA presented Akkelian with the 2015 Chairman’s Award.
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Pierre Akkelian receives the Canadian Jewelry Association’s 2015 Chairman’s Award.
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One of Akkelian’s main achievements remains his pivotal role in abolishing the 88-year-old Canadian Excise Tax on jewelry in May 2006. As CJA President, he lobbied the Canadian federal government on behalf of the jewelry industry. “It was a complicated file,” Akkelian remembers. “With the Armenian gene, the DNA, you don’t give up. One hundred years have passed, the Turks have still not accepted the Genocide, and we are still fighting. So, the Canadians are thinking that I’m going to give up easily. No way, we found cracks; we passed through the three readings in the House of Commons, then the Senate. It was impossible, but we did it.”
Alongside his efforts to bolster the jewelry industry in Canada, Akkelian holds his other missions to heart. In 1997, he founded the Armenian Jewellers Association (AJA), an association that creates links among Armenian jewelers worldwide — a strategy Pierre has implemented successfully to advance his business. In 2011, Akkelian became co-founder of the Armenian Jewellers Foundation (AJF) with the aim to document and advance Armenian and world jewellery heritage and establish educational programs for young emerging designers and gemologists.
St. Petersburg exhibit
As chairman of the foundation, Akkelian was involved in organizing an unprecedented exposition to commemorate the centennial of the Armenian Genocide in St. Petersburg in Russia. The exhibit displayed Armenian artifacts rescued by Alexander Miller and a small team of Russian ethnographers from Western Armenia during the Genocide, including costumes, jewelry, and carpets from the city of Van, the towns of Alur, Bitlis, Moks, Mush, Shatakh, and neighboring villages. The foundation funded and managed the project, which officially opened on April 27 at the Russian Museum of Ethnography. A catalogue entitled “Treasures of Western Armenia,” which encompasses the photographs of the artifacts, was published in conjunction with the exhibit.
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The “Treasures of Western Armenia” catalogue
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Full circle
Pierre Akkelian is also the driving force behind another initiative that was launched by the Armenian Jewellers Foundation and supported by Hay Doun, a local NGO that has resettled over 900 Armenian Syrians in the city over the last year. Akkelian has set up an educational grant program aimed to provide newly resettled Syrian-Armenian refugees an opportunity to enhance their gemological skills and knowledge surrounding gemstones. On September 9, a group of 11 Syrian-Armenians began their studies at the Montreal Gemological School, one of the reputed jewelry sector academies in North America.
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Syrian Armenian students with Pierre Akkelian at the Montreal Gemological School.
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Akkelian’s own family members were once refugees in Aleppo, Syria. Today, he is ensuring that Syrian-Armenian refugees are given an opportunity to start their new journey in Canada. With this particular initiative, Akkelian’s contributions to the community have come full circle.
Akkelian is married to professional artist Norma Papazian. Together they have three children: Arka, Bedros and Alique.
The story is verified by the 100 LIVES Research Team.
Header image: Ara Samson
