Today I will take you on a trip to two continents and to two places almost 10,000 km apart. The first one is in Poland. It’s the city of Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast. Canadian Polish photographer and film personality Ela Kinowska now lives there. For over four decades she has been involved in film, photography and cultural animation. In fact, we featured her on Polcast before – in Episode 40 “Two Polish Canadians’ gift for Canada’s 150th birthday” about the famous red couch with which Ela and her project partner Piotr Sobierajski travelled across Canada, from coast to coast,…
Author: Malgorzata P. Bonikowska
What a long way it has been since the idea to create POLcast was born 9 years ago! It started in 2015 and Episode #1 was released on March 15, 2016. Its official launch was hosted by Poland’s Consulate General in Toronto – see Episode 12. This anniversary calls for memories and summaries. In its 8 years POLcast has featured 100 episodes. I have interviewed well over 200 people and brought you stories from all the continents (well, except for Antarctica, but weather- or climate-wise we reached far north – Alaska and the Canadian Yukon). In this special episode I…
Dear Friends, my POLcast Listeners, It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the 100th episode of POLcast! It’s been a labour of love since POLcast’s launch in 2015. Its purpose has always been to show Poland, Poles living outside Poland and non-Poles’ connections to Poland through interviews with interesting people who share their stories with us. POLcast has featured people you may not have heard of before and others who are well-known but you can learn new things about them. There have been many changes in POLcast’s format as well as the team producing it. There are many more…
May is a very special month for Poland and Poles around the world. On May 1, 20 years ago in 2004, Poland joined the EU, which changed its life and its future forever. Being part of the European family, being able to develop – all that is precious and the beautiful Poland you see now would not be what it is had this event not taken place. Poles can travel freely to all EU countries, work and live there as they please. Now Poles are citizens of Europe and Polish passports are European Union passports, highly valued across the world. …
In this episode I’d like you to meet two celebrities – one human and one animal. I’m talking to Tomek Borkowy, a renowned Polish actor, who has lived in Scotland since the early 1980s. In Poland, he played the leading part of Andrzej Talar in “Dom” (The Home), a television drama showing the post war times in Poland. It became Poland’s biggest and most popular television series to date with over 15 million viewers for each episode. In the UK he has worked as an actor, director, producer, theatre manager, agent and drama teacher. He worked on hundreds of theatre and…
This is a conversation I had during my visit to Kraków with Michael Rubenfeld, a Canadian Jewish theatre artist: writer, director, actor, and producer, whom I knew from Canada and interviewed several times, e.g. in Episode 20, when we discussed his unforgettable play “We Keep Coming Back” about his and his mother’s first visit to Poland, where his family roots are (A life-changing trip to Poland (Episode 20) (now coming back to Toronto!). Our latest interview was part of my Tribute to Ukraine series on POLcast – Michael, already living in Krakow, through his theatre festival FESTIVALT, organized an aid…
This is the last episode of POLcast before Christmas and the last one this year so we wish you: Today’s episode of POLcast will concentrate on two important aspects of Christmastime – help for those who badly need it as well as music. Both stories come from Canada – from the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada’s western province of mountains, prairies, desert badlands and vast coniferous forests. Another reason why I have picked these guests is that we are all founders of Democracy Poland Action Committee in Canada (DPACC), which has worked for democracy in Poland for several years…
It was my great pleasure to be invited by the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, where I studied and then worked and where I did my Ph.D. before coming to Canada. Welcome to the “Canadian” Episode 95 , in which you will hear three interviews: The Canadian Studies programme at the University of Warsaw • Dr. Ewa Luczak, Professor and Deputy Chair at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw and President of the Polish Association for American Studies, author of several books. Prof. Luczak is in charge of the Canadian Studies programme on behalf…
Welcome to Episode 94, in which you will hear two interviews: • Moses, the mega polyglot Moses McCormick from Columbus, Ohio, learned 50 languages (speaking many of them fluently), launched a very successful YouTube channel, developed his own language teaching method and was a guru for many language learners all over the world. Normally he learned five languages a year. I was really heartbroken to learn just recently that Moses McCormick had passed away due to some heart problems in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2021, a few days before turning 40. He left behind his Chinese wife and two kids. I…
According to Ethnologue, the most extensive catalogue of the languages of the world, there are currently 7,117 languages spoken around the world. Most people in the world speak more than one language. Some, however, speak many. In this episode you will meet Marajke Slomka, born in Poland, who lives in Brussels and speaks seven languages. What is it like to be a polyglot? We also mentioned a story of Gacek, a chubby stray black and white feline, has gone viral and become #1 tourist attraction of the city of Szczecin in the top north west corner of Poland. You can…