Dorota Wiland Dorota Wiland is an animal psychologist and animal rights activists, based in Poland. She is the founder and president of IUS ANIMALIA Animal Protection Foundation, coordinating a number of recent animal protection and nature preservation campaigns, also involved in animal-related legislative processes in Poland as a consultant to the Parliamentary Group of Animals’ Friends. Her professional specialization are pathological behaviours in animals, including captive wild animals in ZOOs and circuses, resulting from poor living conditions. In her private life she is a loving foster-mum of four dogs and a horse, all of them once victims of human cruelty…
Author: Malgorzata P. Bonikowska
This story was featured in: Episode 24 Some stories are unknown to the world although they are as tragic and important as others that the world is familiar with. Most people know about the beginning of WWII – the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland on September 1, 1939. Very few, however, know that Poland was also attacked by the Soviet Union from the east, just 17 days later. The Soviets took over half of Poland, the lands in the east, called Kresy, arrested and then secretly murdered 22,000 of Polish officers and Polish intellectuals in what is called the…
This story was featured in: Episode 23 EDDIE ZAWADZKI (1959-2016) Canadian writer, journalist, broadcaster, sports commentator, author, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57. His two most recent books are about Poles and their accomplishments in the New World: Death of sportscaster ‘King of Fight’ Eddie Zawadzki by Judi McLeod Remembering boxing promoter Ed Zawadzki by Steve Buffery Eddie’s blog The story of Eddi and Muhammad Ali A Tribute to Eddie IN POLISH: Pożegnanie na zawsze z Eddie’em Zawadzkim Pomóżmy Eddie’emu Zawadzkiemu ••• In the POLcast Tribute we used parts of an interview with Eddie conducted…
This story was featured on: Episode 23 Donna Solecka Urbikas Donna was born and grew up in Chicago but her Polish-born mother and much older half sister had endured the wartime trauma of Soviet gulag slave labour in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond between mother and older daughter, which was inaccessible to Donna. Donna wanted to be like all her American friends, but her family life was very different – it was full of horrible memories of her sister and their common mother. She explores these painflul family issues and her process of understanding and coming to terms…
This story was featured in: Episode 22 FRANK RUDZICZ Ludwig the robot is the result of extensive research in speech recognition, robotics and Artficial Intelligence by Dr. Frank Rudzicz, a third generation Pole from Toronto. In his early 30s, he has a doctorate in computer science and numerous publications., and is a scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His goal is to improve the quality of life of individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities, especially suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Ludwig not only talks,…
This story was featured in: Episode 20 Ariel Bialski aka Heights Beats Ariel is a 31-year-old Toronto DJ, drummer, piano player, composer, music producer, actor, comedian, who has released three albums. His beats made it to a Juno award-winning hip hop album in Canada. He has composed music for commercials, film and TED Talks. He is currently living and working in Poland, where he is a highly successful and popular DJ and musician. Ariel produces his own podcast Heights Beats: The Podcast Ariel’s website The album that sounds like 1,000 bucks Ariel told us a lot of interesting (and frankly…
American artist Frank Stella has made his debut with Sprüth Magers, showing works from his 1970’s “Polish Villages” and “Bali” series of the noughties at their Berlin gallery. More
This story was featured in: Episode 10 Adam Makowicz is a true master of jazz improvisation. In this episode he talks about the art of improvisation and what he as a jazz musician learned from the best classical composers and pianists. In part 2 of our segment we meet Polish Canadian classical violinist Joanna Makowicz (Adam’s wife, and the reason why he lives part time in New York and in Toronto). She talks about the book “400 Years of Polish Immigrants in America 1608-2008” by Mariusz M. Brymora and Radoslaw Sikorski. Among the famous Poles in America presented in this book, there…
This story was featured in: Episode 10 Bartek (Bart) Soroczynski was born in Poland into a circus family. He emigrated to Canada with his parents, trained as a circus artist and after playing the leading part in “Nomade” by Cirque Eloize (with which he travelled widely and received the 2005 GEMINI AWARD together with the artists from Nomade (Cirque Eloize) for the film Nomade : At Night, the Sky is Endless in the Best Performance in a Performing Arts Program or Series Category, Toronto Film Festival, Canada), he was introduced to the theatre. This started a wave of success and acting…
This story was featured in episode 9 I remember Kamil from the times he was an active member of the young Polish community (Polonia) in Canada. Always participating in everything that was going on, ready to help others, curious. After some time I learned that Kamil was in Brussels, doing great. As a Canadian of Polish descent now living and working in the heart of Europe, he has an unique perspective which we explored in our conversation (Episode 9). Kamil MROZ graduated in Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering from the University of Ottawa in Canada. In 2011 he completed an MA…