This story was featured in Episode 67 (please listen!) Liliana Arkuszewski lives in Ottawa. Her life is full of adventures – she spends half of each year in Mexico. And on her way to Canada in the early 1980s. she travelled across three continents. Years later she wrote a book about her immigration journey – it was published in Polish and was titled “Czy było warto? Odyseja dżinsowych Kolumbów”. Now, a few years later, her book was translated to English by Charles S. Kraszewski and published under the title “Was it worth it? Columbus in jeans”. It’s the book’s (and its…
Author: Malgorzata P. Bonikowska
This story is featured in Episode 67 (please listen!) This was three years ago, in 2016. My good friend Eli Rubenstein, a Holocaust educator, writer and filmmaker, the religious leader of Congregation Habonim, a Toronto synagogue founded by Holocaust survivors, Canadian director of the March of the Living and creator of March of Remembrance and Hope, with whom I have worked on a number of projects and who was featured in two episodes of POLcast (Episode 14 and Episode 15), called me to ask if I would interview a special person – the last Righteous among the Nations in Canada. Mr Franciszej Paslawski, then 94, saved…
This story is featured in Episode 66 What is it like to work at one of the top universities in the world – the famous Stanford University in California? The univeristy was founded 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U.S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducationaland non-denominational institution. Few people of Polish origin work at this spectacular…
This story is featured in Episode 65 In Episode 30 we featured Wanda Kościa, a London-based Polish-born director, producer and award winning documentary filmmaker, and her BBC film “Hunting the Nazi Gold Train” – a mysterious story of a train full of gold, buried by the Nazis in Polish Silesia. Wanda Koscia acted as our POLcast interviewer before in Episode 58, when she spoke to Neal Ascherson. This interview she did for POLcast is with Piotr Szkopiak, also based in Britain, writer/director, born in England, the son of Polish refugees from the Second World War. His grandfather Wojciech Stanislaw Wojcik, was…
This story is featured in Episode 65 Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology – everybody talks about these hot terms but not everyone understands what they are all about. Thomas Jankowski is the Chief Digital & Growth Officer at Coinsquare, Canada’s leading exchange for trading Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies. Founded in 2014, Coinsquare is 100% Canadian-owned and operated, located in downtown Toronto. It was awarded the title of the Blockchain Company of the Year – AI and FinTech Awards 2018. In March Thomas gave a TEDx talk about “How Coinsquare Survived the Death Knell of Crypto Winter and The Most Promising Trends this…
This is the first POLcast episode created and produced by Margaret P. Bonikowska alone.Please share your opinions here 🙂 In Episode 64 you will hear: Interviews: • Polish language, literature and culture lovers at a North American university Why is it that not only people with Polish roots but also people who have no Polish blood in them study Polish literature, culture and language in countries outside Poland such as Canada? • The land of mosquitos and Poles in Ontario (Part 2) Kaszuby, an area in northern Ontario, about 200 kilometres west of Ottawa, named after the part of northern Poland from which…
This story is featured in Episode 64 Why is it that not only people with Polish roots but also people who have no Polish blood in them, study Polish literature, culture and language in countries outside Poland? Polish studies exist and flourish at universities all over the world. They definitely do so in Toronto, at Canada’s most prestgious university – the University of Toronto. Lukasz Wodzynski, is an assistant professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. His research interests are 19th and 20th century Polish and Russian literature and culture, modernism, adventure narratives,…
This story is featured in Episode 64 In his review published in The Spectator, Boyd Tonkin writes: It’s hard, in Britain, to imagine a popular museum devoted to a single poem. The Polish city of Wrocław hosts just such a shrine. It celebrates Pan Tadeusz, the verse novel written in his Parisian exile by the poet, dramatist and freedom fighter Adam Mickiewicz in the early 1830s, and now taught as a keystone of collective identity to every Polish schoolchild. He calls it “A Lithuanian Romeo and Juliet”. Adam Mickiewicz is to Poland what Robbie Burns is to Scotland. He is…
This story is featured in Episode 63 In one of our recent episodes you heard a story of Kannuk Vodka. Adam, who couldn’t buy vodka he liked in Canada decided to start producing one. But what if your passion is a sport requiring a specialized facility. Like… speed skating, ski jumping, diving from a 10 m tall tower. Or curling… Adela Walczak lives in Poland, a country without any curling traditions and without any curling facilities. Until now, because Adela decided to build a world class curling club in her home town Łódź in the centre of Poland. Curling Łódź…
This story is featured in Episode 62 Poland’s connections with many geographically distant countries – what a fascinating topic. I heard this story about a famous pre-war Polish painter whose art decorates many palaces in India from a Canadian POLcast listener born in India. He had just come back to Canada after visiting his home country and was fascinated with artist Stefan Norblin’s contribution to India’s culture. Stefan Norblin – (1892-1952) World-renowned artist was born in Warsaw to Stanislaw Norblin and Bronislawa Piasecka on June 30, 1892. His illustrious career had his varied works exhibited in many European countries before WW2.…